Love this media release on the FBI web site. Nothing like overstatement. “Does the number TWENTY THREE BILLION DOLLARS get your attention?”

It explains:

“That’s how much money was lost last year as a result of criminals swiping copyright-protected digital copies of music, movies, software, and games… and distributing them through websites, chat rooms, mass email, FTP, and peer-to-peer networks.”

Weeellll, maybe. If, and a big if, everyone who ‘swiped’ (lovely turn of phrase from the Bureau) turned around and paid for the material instead. Which is extemely unlikely. And therein lies one of the core issues. The copyright content industry makes a great deal of noise about ‘lost’ revenue. But is it really lost? Losing it implies it can be found. And I haven’t seen anything which suggests that’s true.