Well, at least the US economy if you believe the latest report funded by the US entertainment industry. Not content with previous estimations of $6billion in lost sales, they have now examined the “ripple effect” and found that:

movie piracy causes a total lost output for U.S. industries of $20.5 billion per year, thwarts the creation of about 140,000 jobs and accounts for more than $800 million in lost tax revenue.

Fortunately, Jason Shultz from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (one of the major free use/digital rights activist organisations) was on hand to make the perfectly valid point that all because Hollywood doesn’t get the cash/jobs, doesn’t mean it gets taken away from the economy:

“In other words, let’s say people are forgoing paying for $6 billion in movies by downloading or consuming illegal goods but end up spending that $6 billion on iPods, computers and HDTV sets on which to watch the movies, which leads to $25 billion in job creation in the computer/software/consumer electronics field,”

But for the moment, it does look like US politicians are being taken in by Hollywood’s scaremongering.

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