One of the frequent refrains about the “costs” of “piracy” is, “750,000 and $200 to $250 billion”.

Well Aris Technica took a look at this number to figure out where it came from, and the answer is: Nowhere.

The Commerce department did a study recently, and said, “$60 billion,” but the authors admit that this is a guess, based from data collected from self selected respondents who are overhwelmingly tied into IP intensive business models.

All they could show on their own was $23 billion.

Of course, $23 billion ain’t chicken feed….That’s what 50 days in Iraq?