7 ms·

MPAA lied to Congress about the jobs number

345 points by nextparadigms 15y ago

freejack 15y ago
The infographic glosses over an important point - many of the production jobs are contract and as far as I could tell, not included in the job count. I wouldn't rely on this as an indication that the MPAA lied although I wouldn't hesitate to say they "exaggerated" for sure. :-)
- pasbesoin 15y ago
  I guess we (here) could use some more insight into how BLS defines and rolls up these counts. If you're contract, are you still within the industry/category and so part of the count?
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  Correct. Even if you go with the 361k figure, that's still a lot of jobs threatened by failure of existing distribution models, which have caused a lot of job losses already. To win this argument, the tech infustry needs to offer a bettter explanation for how content creators can safeguard legitimate (economically efficient) revenue. Internet warriors don't appreciate how hypocritical it seems to champion full disk encryption and ironclad privacy while simultaneously demonising DRM or anything similar. It's like saying 'all data should be locked down at all times unless I want to use it, in ehich case it should be free.'
  - ZenPsycho 15y ago
    You are conflating privacy with censorship and surveillance here. That is a bit dishonest. To put this in perspective, remember in the book "1984" that the dystopia included both a heavily controlled media, and complete surveillance and lack of privacy. It's not hypocrisy to see both of those things as bad. furthermore, I think it's a bit silly to claim that in order to win the argument, the tech industry must prove that its many millions of jobs are more important than the entertainment industry's 376K. That 376K may be important, but is it THAT important?
  - nitrogen 15y ago
    Internet warriors don't appreciate how hypocritical it seems to champion full disk encryption and ironclad privacy while simultaneously demonising DRM or anything similar. It's like saying 'all data should be locked down at all times unless I want to use it, in ehich case it should be free.' It's hardly hypocritical to think that encryption and privacy should be in the control of the owner of a device, not the device's manufacturer or a third-party content producer.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  - tripzilch 15y ago
    But I want all data to be locked down at all times unless I want to use it, in which case it should be free.
malandrew 15y ago
AFAICT, the statistics in this infographic only lists people involved with theaters and cinemas. I didn't see any categories that addressed people that perform jobs like actors, lighting and special effects, props, costumes, writers, directors, etc. To have an honest discussion on this debate we need to stop talking about raw job numbers lost in one industry and instead talking about: (1) net job losses and gains (2) discounted by the number of jobs that are likely to be eliminated due to changes in consumption patterns and increased productivity (read: automation) in those industries. The whole debate about job losses is dishonest if you don't accept the fact that change happens. This isn't HN quality material. Give us deep analyses instead of a poorly made and misleading info graphic.
- jasomill 15y ago
  Agreed: nothing to see here, especially as MPAA represents the major Hollywood studios, not "workers in the entertainment industry." Here's a study I'd personally like to see: spending on "legitimate" copies of entertainment products easily available through piracy versus availability of discretionary income. I can't help but think that MPAA, if they were _truly_ just a bunch of greedy bastards, would have an entirely different political agenda.
- antics 15y ago
  I don't mean to be crabby, but the infographic explicitly mentions that some of the jobs are from the service industry. If you look at the infographic in context[1], it lists the source[2]. Also, while I generally agree with your point about this meriting a very detailed and thorough analysis, I do not believe that it was "intentionally" misleading any more than my disagreement with you indicates that you are also being intentionally misleading. IMO, that comment (along with your guess about what is and is not "quality") is not helping in your goal of making this a constructive conversation. [1] http://maddox.xmission.com/ http://maddox.xmission.com/ [2] http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs038.htm http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs038.htm
  - malandrew 15y ago
    I have no doubt that there is a discrepancy between the 361,900 figure from the BLS and the over 2 million figure from the MPAA, but that info graphic just isn't clear on several points and clouds the discussion. TBH, you may be right that I am wrong about it being intentionally misleading. It may just be confusing design due to proximity. But if that is the case, I wouldn't be surprised if agenda played some role in clouding out better judgement in how it was designed. I'm still trying to figure out if the 25% refers to: (a) 361,900 jobs, meaning there are 1,080,700 creative jobs in the industry for a total of 1,447,600 people employed; or (b) 25% of the 361,900, meaning that 90,475 people are doing jobs like janitor and concessions and that 271,425 are creative jobs. FYI, I removed the word "intentionally" from my original comment. I agree that including it wasn't constructive. Plus, the same argument can be applied to tech companies. It's disingenuous to talk about people like janitors and cooks and whatnot, when people in every industry need to eat and have the spaces they occupy cleaned up and cared for. The author of the info graphic shouldn't have discounted those jobs from the MPAA's figures without also discounting them from the tech industry figures as well. I'm as anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA as anyone here on HN, but truth and transparency are more important than agenda, and if you give those up, you become those you are critizing.
Zarathust 15y ago
Imputability? Close to 0
jcromartie 15y ago
Not to mention the rather dubious claim that puts millions of jobs at risk. If piracy were going to eliminate any jobs, then they'd already be gone, as piracy is easily within reach for nearly everybody that would otherwise be buying movies. That is to say, if you can afford $30 Blu-ray movies and a player, or going out for a $50 trip to the theatre, you surely have a high speed internet connection.
marknutter 15y ago
Everyone with half a brain know that those jobs numbers are pulled out of thin air. Only problem is that there are a lot of people out there with less than half a brain.
- gbhn 15y ago
  Yes. This is called 'protective coloration.' Ten years ago, it would have been all about national security and about how piracy funnels money to terrorists. Now "jobs" are the political flavor of the month, so anything you want is rapidly reworded to be in terms of jobs.
joeybaker 15y ago
Actually, it's interesting to do the math a different way. Based on Senator Reid's statement earlier today, Congress believes that > Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs Doing that math, for every 1000 jobs lost, the MPAA looses 0.045% of it's workers. So "thousands" could mean as much as what… 5,000 – (2.25%) of their workforce? How are we wasting Congress's time!?
- malandrew 15y ago
  This is the reason why we need to reframe this bill to being about rent-seeking. The money leaving the industry isn't resulting in many lost jobs. It is resulting in lost revenue from rent-seeking activities. How much is highly debatable. TBH, we need to be addressing the issue of rent-seeking activities in general. My favorite explanation of rent-seeking that highlights the problem with it is that rent-seeking is when someone seeks to take a bigger slice of an existing pie, instead helping make that pie bigger.
georgieporgie 15y ago
Assuming this is correct, there is an obvious issue: is the movie industry employing a lot of low-skilled people who would be jobless if tech were favored? Flagged for being really low quality, anyway.
- astrodust 15y ago
  Those low paying jobs would just shift to what people would be spending their money on instead. Most middle to low income earners spend every dime they make. If they're not spending it on movies or music, it's going to something else like beer, diapers or travel.
stretchwithme 15y ago
All sorts of things become more efficient over time. Less people are employed in accomplishing them as technology is deployed. This is not a bad thing. It is the reason we have the standard of living that we have. So waving a jobs number around as a justification for something is somewhat dubious. What matters is the benefit derived for the cost of doing it. If something were invented that healed all illness instantaneously, health care would be over as an industry. But the resources freed up would be spent on other things, with jobs in those areas increasing. The same thing happened when we automated farming, manufacturing, basket weaving. Its how an economy evolves.
scrollbar 15y ago
Could this be the only serious thing ever created by Maddox? His new homepage header is more like the Maddox I remember though: "I hope SOPA PASSES. Update: it didn't :("
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
dw 15y ago
They took our jobs! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=768h3Tz4Qik&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=768h3Tz4Qik&feature=relat... A little silly for HN, but reading the comments I found myself forgetting that this metric can be a red herring. Thought I'd try to inject that thought into this conversation with a little humor.
thebigshane 15y ago
I'm okay with this instance but I really don't want to see a habit of linking directly to images. I assume we did this time because this image was an update to an existing post already on HN (front page yesterday) [http://maddox.xmission.com/ http://maddox.xmission.com/]
jemfinch 15y ago
Pardon, but do you really think the government is taking the MPAA seriously because of its claims and not its members wallets and Washington friendships?
gwern 15y ago
For more on bogus numbers: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con-congress/ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con-...
snowwrestler 15y ago
A large portion of the work in the TV and film industries are not wage or salary jobs, they are contract gigs.
ruswick 15y ago
The MPAA lied. Big surprise.
deepkut 15y ago
It brings me joy to my heart to see Maddox on here after not having been to his site in 7 years.

345 points by nextparadigms 15y ago

The infographic glosses over an important point - many of the production jobs are contract and as far as I could tell, not included in the job count. I wouldn't rely on this as an indication that the MPAA lied although I wouldn't hesitate to say they "exaggerated" for sure. :-)

pasbesoin 15y ago
I guess we (here) could use some more insight into how BLS defines and rolls up these counts. If you're contract, are you still within the industry/category and so part of the count?
anigbrowl 15y ago
Correct. Even if you go with the 361k figure, that's still a lot of jobs threatened by failure of existing distribution models, which have caused a lot of job losses already. To win this argument, the tech infustry needs to offer a bettter explanation for how content creators can safeguard legitimate (economically efficient) revenue. Internet warriors don't appreciate how hypocritical it seems to champion full disk encryption and ironclad privacy while simultaneously demonising DRM or anything similar. It's like saying 'all data should be locked down at all times unless I want to use it, in ehich case it should be free.'
- ZenPsycho 15y ago
  You are conflating privacy with censorship and surveillance here. That is a bit dishonest. To put this in perspective, remember in the book "1984" that the dystopia included both a heavily controlled media, and complete surveillance and lack of privacy. It's not hypocrisy to see both of those things as bad. furthermore, I think it's a bit silly to claim that in order to win the argument, the tech industry must prove that its many millions of jobs are more important than the entertainment industry's 376K. That 376K may be important, but is it THAT important?
- nitrogen 15y ago
  Internet warriors don't appreciate how hypocritical it seems to champion full disk encryption and ironclad privacy while simultaneously demonising DRM or anything similar. It's like saying 'all data should be locked down at all times unless I want to use it, in ehich case it should be free.' It's hardly hypocritical to think that encryption and privacy should be in the control of the owner of a device, not the device's manufacturer or a third-party content producer.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- tripzilch 15y ago
  But I want all data to be locked down at all times unless I want to use it, in which case it should be free.

malandrew 15y ago

AFAICT, the statistics in this infographic only lists people involved with theaters and cinemas. I didn't see any categories that addressed people that perform jobs like actors, lighting and special effects, props, costumes, writers, directors, etc. To have an honest discussion on this debate we need to stop talking about raw job numbers lost in one industry and instead talking about: (1) net job losses and gains (2) discounted by the number of jobs that are likely to be eliminated due to changes in consumption patterns and increased productivity (read: automation) in those industries. The whole debate about job losses is dishonest if you don't accept the fact that change happens. This isn't HN quality material. Give us deep analyses instead of a poorly made and misleading info graphic.

jasomill 15y ago
Agreed: nothing to see here, especially as MPAA represents the major Hollywood studios, not "workers in the entertainment industry." Here's a study I'd personally like to see: spending on "legitimate" copies of entertainment products easily available through piracy versus availability of discretionary income. I can't help but think that MPAA, if they were _truly_ just a bunch of greedy bastards, would have an entirely different political agenda.
antics 15y ago
I don't mean to be crabby, but the infographic explicitly mentions that some of the jobs are from the service industry. If you look at the infographic in context[1], it lists the source[2]. Also, while I generally agree with your point about this meriting a very detailed and thorough analysis, I do not believe that it was "intentionally" misleading any more than my disagreement with you indicates that you are also being intentionally misleading. IMO, that comment (along with your guess about what is and is not "quality") is not helping in your goal of making this a constructive conversation. [1] http://maddox.xmission.com/ http://maddox.xmission.com/ [2] http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs038.htm http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs038.htm
- malandrew 15y ago
  I have no doubt that there is a discrepancy between the 361,900 figure from the BLS and the over 2 million figure from the MPAA, but that info graphic just isn't clear on several points and clouds the discussion. TBH, you may be right that I am wrong about it being intentionally misleading. It may just be confusing design due to proximity. But if that is the case, I wouldn't be surprised if agenda played some role in clouding out better judgement in how it was designed. I'm still trying to figure out if the 25% refers to: (a) 361,900 jobs, meaning there are 1,080,700 creative jobs in the industry for a total of 1,447,600 people employed; or (b) 25% of the 361,900, meaning that 90,475 people are doing jobs like janitor and concessions and that 271,425 are creative jobs. FYI, I removed the word "intentionally" from my original comment. I agree that including it wasn't constructive. Plus, the same argument can be applied to tech companies. It's disingenuous to talk about people like janitors and cooks and whatnot, when people in every industry need to eat and have the spaces they occupy cleaned up and cared for. The author of the info graphic shouldn't have discounted those jobs from the MPAA's figures without also discounting them from the tech industry figures as well. I'm as anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA as anyone here on HN, but truth and transparency are more important than agenda, and if you give those up, you become those you are critizing.

Zarathust 15y ago

Imputability? Close to 0

jcromartie 15y ago

Not to mention the rather dubious claim that puts millions of jobs at risk. If piracy were going to eliminate any jobs, then they'd already be gone, as piracy is easily within reach for nearly everybody that would otherwise be buying movies. That is to say, if you can afford $30 Blu-ray movies and a player, or going out for a $50 trip to the theatre, you surely have a high speed internet connection.

marknutter 15y ago

Everyone with half a brain know that those jobs numbers are pulled out of thin air. Only problem is that there are a lot of people out there with less than half a brain.

gbhn 15y ago
Yes. This is called 'protective coloration.' Ten years ago, it would have been all about national security and about how piracy funnels money to terrorists. Now "jobs" are the political flavor of the month, so anything you want is rapidly reworded to be in terms of jobs.

joeybaker 15y ago

Actually, it's interesting to do the math a different way. Based on Senator Reid's statement earlier today, Congress believes that > Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs Doing that math, for every 1000 jobs lost, the MPAA looses 0.045% of it's workers. So "thousands" could mean as much as what… 5,000 – (2.25%) of their workforce? How are we wasting Congress's time!?

malandrew 15y ago
This is the reason why we need to reframe this bill to being about rent-seeking. The money leaving the industry isn't resulting in many lost jobs. It is resulting in lost revenue from rent-seeking activities. How much is highly debatable. TBH, we need to be addressing the issue of rent-seeking activities in general. My favorite explanation of rent-seeking that highlights the problem with it is that rent-seeking is when someone seeks to take a bigger slice of an existing pie, instead helping make that pie bigger.

georgieporgie 15y ago

Assuming this is correct, there is an obvious issue: is the movie industry employing a lot of low-skilled people who would be jobless if tech were favored? Flagged for being really low quality, anyway.

astrodust 15y ago
Those low paying jobs would just shift to what people would be spending their money on instead. Most middle to low income earners spend every dime they make. If they're not spending it on movies or music, it's going to something else like beer, diapers or travel.

stretchwithme 15y ago

All sorts of things become more efficient over time. Less people are employed in accomplishing them as technology is deployed. This is not a bad thing. It is the reason we have the standard of living that we have. So waving a jobs number around as a justification for something is somewhat dubious. What matters is the benefit derived for the cost of doing it. If something were invented that healed all illness instantaneously, health care would be over as an industry. But the resources freed up would be spent on other things, with jobs in those areas increasing. The same thing happened when we automated farming, manufacturing, basket weaving. Its how an economy evolves.

scrollbar 15y ago

Could this be the only serious thing ever created by Maddox? His new homepage header is more like the Maddox I remember though: "I hope SOPA PASSES. Update: it didn't :("

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

dw 15y ago

They took our jobs! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=768h3Tz4Qik&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=768h3Tz4Qik&feature=relat... A little silly for HN, but reading the comments I found myself forgetting that this metric can be a red herring. Thought I'd try to inject that thought into this conversation with a little humor.

thebigshane 15y ago

I'm okay with this instance but I really don't want to see a habit of linking directly to images. I assume we did this time because this image was an update to an existing post already on HN (front page yesterday) [http://maddox.xmission.com/ http://maddox.xmission.com/]

jemfinch 15y ago

Pardon, but do you really think the government is taking the MPAA seriously because of its claims and not its members wallets and Washington friendships?

gwern 15y ago

For more on bogus numbers: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con-congress/ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-copyright-industries-con-...

snowwrestler 15y ago

A large portion of the work in the TV and film industries are not wage or salary jobs, they are contract gigs.

ruswick 15y ago

The MPAA lied. Big surprise.

deepkut 15y ago

It brings me joy to my heart to see Maddox on here after not having been to his site in 7 years.