Rob Reid's TED Talk

I saw the title of comic author Rob Reid's TED Talk, "The $8 Billion iPod" and was instantly drawn to it. With a title like that, how could you not be? When he started off his talk by mention SOPA and ACTA, I was even more thrilled. He goes on to talk about how the MPAA estimates that the American economy lost $58 billion in the bast year due to content theft. He lays out how, despite the fact that music industry revenue was down about $8 billion in 10 years, the TV, movie, book and radio revenues are way up. It's not possible to be down $58 billion. Which poses the question, is the MPAA lying to us? He decides that, under the practice of "Copyright Math", the missing $50 billion in revenue must be made up by something that hadn't existed before the first survey was taken.... Illegally downloaded ringtones. (cue an uproar of laughter). He touches on the topic of job loss due to piracy and average revenue loss for every copyrighted movie that is downloaded. Using the power of humor, he pretty much annihilates the MPAA's entire argument in under 6 minutes.

The best part in the whole speech was when Reid said that the MPAA stated that for each movie/song that is illegally downloaded, $150,000 is lost. He then proceeded to talk about the MP3 player. He said "[The first MP3 player] was a big Christmas hit, because what little hoodlum wouldn't want a million and a half bucks-worth of stolen goods in his pocket?” along with this equation: "10 songs x $150k = $1.5 million". I was laughing so hard that my mom came into my room to check on me. I loved it when he said, "Today's iPod classic can hold about 40,000 songs... Or $8 billion dollars in stolen media... Or about 75,000 jobs."

Reid uses humor to his advantage so well. He completely gets his point across, (that the MPAA's official statement is total you-know-what), but he does it so hilariously that I feel the need to re-watch it over and over again. I'm not saying that pirating music/movies/TV shows is okay, but I also don't think it's as massive of a deal as the MPAA and American government are making it out to be. Bravo, Mr. Reid. Bravo.

http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod.html