Swedish Movie Industry Exaggerating Losses from Illegal File-Sharers?

Brokep of The Pirate Bay breaks down the alleged annual losses his country's entertainment industry is claiming and the numbers just don't add up.

Since early last week everybody's had a field day with the MPAA's mea culpa about how their 2005 piracy study erroneously blamed US college students for being responsible for 44% of its annual losses in this country. The MPAA cited "human error" in the matter and revised the figure to a mere 15% instead, meaning that it had initially been inflated by almost 300%!

Now Brokep of The Pirate Bay(the world's largest BitTorrent tracker site) makes an interesting observation of his own in his "Estimation Constipation" blog posting.

He writes:

We’re all used to lies from the entertainment industry. They’ve tried to be subtle about them. They’ve made lies that are hard to prove. They’ve made hilarious estimates that we all know is total bullshit. But the latest from the Swedish movie industry is just amazing!

The movie industry tells us that there will be 700.000 people in Sweden downloading movies this year. I hope it’s more, but that’s besides the point. They also claim that this will result in a loss of profits of 6.2 billion SEK (about 1 billion USD). So let’s go back to the sixth grade and do some math;

1 billion USD divided by 700.000 persons would be roughly 1400 USD per person. If we divide that up per month it’s over 100 USD a month. In profits. I would estimate that if you add VAT, distribution etc it would mean about 4-500 USD monthly in expenses for each of these 700.000 individuals. A yearly expense of 7000 USD for movies alone. Or 20% of a normal income before tax in Sweden. It equals a low to normal rent for most Swedes…

Sounds to me like the Swedish entertainment industry is guilty of grossly over inflating its piracy figures just as the MPAA was discovered of doing. I guess one has to fudge the numbers to try and make politicians believe their propaganda about billions of dollars in losses and starving actors, movie producers, and stage hands.