The thing is, especially with Ireland, "reports" like these that come out are never without an agenda behind them, never.
The figures also, my god, they basically just pulled them out of their arse to create more spin.
The biggest loss to the broadcasting industry in Ireland was not and is not piracy, it's Netflix - but they'll never admit that nor even attempt to include it in their figures.
The outdated legislation they're talking about is nothing new, lobbying groups have constantly and incessantly over the years tried to lobby hard on the government here to have the laws changed so any and all forms of what THEY deem as piracy, be dealt with as criminal rather than civil acts under the justice system.
Laws already exist to deal with piracy also, but again, this is more about lobbying to change the laws exactly the way these corporate entities want them change so as to create therefore a monopoly or cartel of sorts in regards broadcast media in particular and control of same.
Piracy is just an easy excuse for them to use and like they did, pull figures from their arse to back themselves up.
Grant Thornton are just another crappy lobbyist group of corporate elitists putting out spin for the media, of which none of the mainstream have even picked up on because they know it's just lobbyist spin. It might pop on on thejournal.ie if they have a slow news day or run out of stories about cute and fluffy cats, but that's about it.
Laws like this, if they are to be changed as these lobbyists want them to be, will have to pass through public consultation and most likely broadcast live and in their entirety on oireactas TV, good luck to them trying to shill their way through that one. The current government (Fine Gael), who are themselves very corporate friendly, won't even manage to sneak law changes through as we've too many left leaning independents and non corrupt TD's in the Dail who would notice and stop it from happening.
It's just spin, nothing more, figures are made up and no laws will be changing any time soon because no laws need to change, there are already strong laws both criminal and civil to deal with piracy.
Put it this way, the starting salary for a Garda (Irish police) in Ireland is less than 25k, they're underfunded, under resourced and not nearly enough of them to deal with real criminal activity. If anything were to happen at all, it will be show cases and even then the courts are so backed up, as are the prisons, that little more than punitive fines will come from it all and the cost be so prohibitive in the first place as to make it rather pointless anyway.
Their (the broadcast industry in Ireland) biggest problem is Netflix, not piracy, and Netflix is all above board, legal and widely used across the country (and the world for that matter).
If anything, the hidden agenda behind this latest spin is to try get laws changed to then abuse and restrict or hinder access to Netflix itself, so their competing mediums will take over.
That or most likely, try to restrict or hinder access to spotify or other such music distribution services.
Lobbyist spin, spin and more spin, with an extra helping of spin thrown in for good measure.
:)
