Pity the poor people who work in the US "copyright industries." Battered by a decade of digital piracy and facing even more of it thanks to cheap computers, fast Internet, P2P file-sharing, and online file lockers, the US creative industries teeter on the verge of collapse. You can tell because the industry:

Pays better than most American jobs

Has outperformed the US economy through a horrific recession

Sells record-setting amounts of product overseas, earning more foreign revenue than the entire US food sector or US pharmaceutical companies

Things are going so "badly" that a major new report commissioned by copyright holders says that these "consistently positive trends solidify the status of the copyright industries as a key engine of growth for the US economy as a whole."

Bad never looked so good

The International Intellectual Property Alliance unveiled the new report today in association with the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus at an event in Washington, DC. The report doesn't even try to quantify losses to piracy anymore—last year, an official US government report concluded that such estimates were all deeply unreliable. Instead, it simply asserts without evidence that "piracy inhibits growth in the US and around the world."

"Inhibits growth" doesn't quite equal "causes staggering job losses," the traditional anti-piracy rallying cry. Indeed, copyright industries are being "hard hit" by piracy in the way that plenty of other US industries are desperate to get "hit." (In this sense, the report is bit like the MPAA's routine announcements of record-setting box office revenues even as the movie studios conjure visions of apocalypse.)

During the recession of the last few years, the report shows that copyright-based businesses have far exceeded the US economy as a whole.

In addition, pay in these industries is between 15 and 27 percent higher than the US average, depending on just how broadly you define "copyright industries."

As for foreign countries, those havens of piratical behavior, revenue is increasing rather than decreasing as the Internet takes hold. "Core copyright" companies made $128 billion in foreign markets in 2007; emerging from a recession in 2010, those same companies made $134 billion.

What about the specter of massive job losses? They aren't happening. The copyright industries have shed a few jobs, but employment has held largely stable through the recession as other industries cut positions and US unemployment surged to 9+ percent.

The report is bullish on the copyright and creative industries. Nothing in it suggests that radical expansions of copyright power are necessary, though MPAA Vice President Michael O’Leary used the report to argue for them anyway. "Strong protections for intellectual property—both in the United States and abroad, where a growing portion of our revenues are being generated—is critical if we want to protect these jobs and be able to continue offering consumers innovative content," he said. "Here in the United States, it is imperative that Congress passes legislation halting content theft by rogue websites, which will help sustain the crafts that historically and consistently make such a valued contribution to America's economy."

The report provides no justification for this stance. Instead, it shows that current (and extremely "strong") copyright protections are sufficient to generate record foreign revenue, hold employment steady during a worldwide recession, and pay well while doing it.

Instead, a bipartisan group of legislators last week decided that Internet censorship was necessary to aid these industries; that search engines, credit card processors, and ad networks should be coerced into the fight; and that companies could cut off any site's US-based payments and advertising without even getting a court order first.

Perhaps they should read the industry's own research first.

Rights holders who don't want their works freely distributed should have the ability to enforce that position, but only a true crisis could possibly justify such draconian enforcement measures. For an industry doing so well, it's an absurd overreach—but one with dangerous consequences for intermediary liability, for private rights of action online, and for the Internet itself.