Rob Reid destroys the movie industry piracy claims

I had the pleasure of meeting author Rob Reid at a party at SXSW last weekend. We immediately hit it off; he writes science fiction and is really smart, funny, and clever. While we were chatting, my friends came up to me in amazement -- they had seen his talk at SXSW that day and were raving about it.

I missed Rob's talk, but he told me he did a short TED talk about copyright math and piracy that was coming out soon... and lo! Here it is!

[Note: you might have to refresh the page to see the embedded video.]

I cracked up watching this. I do understand that piracy is a problem, but I also think -- based on copious evidence -- that the movie and music industry are full of it when it comes to the impact of it. And given that this was the brain trust behind SOPA and PIPA, you can imagine how I feel. Perhaps at some point I'll write more about all this, but you can also get a decent grip on my opinion by checking out this infographic on the topic, as well as The Oatmeal's Matt Inman's now-famous web comic about it.