On Sunday night the venerable CBS news show “60 Minutes” did a segment on motion picture piracy. To those of us working actively in this space, it was pretty accurate but not new. It generalized a fair amount, but those of us with a journalism background understand this was a short segment targeting a general audience not familiar with BitTorrent or DVD-sniffing dogs. I was pleased it ran. But I was most amused by the reaction of a small but noisy online community to the report.

Driven by some cranky bloggers who are determined to deny any possible harm from copyright infringement, a few dozen folks found their way to the “60 Minutes” web site and posted complaints about the report. The complaints were by and large off base, reflected at times no evidence whatsoever that they had actually watched the report, and were frequently comical (like the auto industry, one wrote, we should just let all movies be made abroad).

I couldn’t help but notice that, first of all, no one noted that “60 Minutes” has posted a high-resolution, uninterrupted video of the segment just following broadcast, and has created an opportunity for people to comment on the segment. If that isn’t a media company embracing new technologies to benefit consumers, I don’t know what is.

I also noticed that the world the commenters were complaining about isn’t real, and wasn’t reflected in the segment.

Yes, Leslie Stahl only interviewed people from the motion picture industry, including acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh. Personally, I would have liked to have someone who objects to the copyrights held by motion picture producers. I would have liked to have seen someone try to defend the criminal piracy depicted in the segment. I would have liked to have seen someone try to argue that no financial harm is caused when millions of “consumers” consume a creative work without a penny going back to all of those involved in the creation of that work.

Perhaps they would have cited a poll of 1,008 people in the U.K. showing that Pirate Bay users claimed to have also spent a whopping 77 pounds Sterling on legitimate creative works. Naturally, they would have ignored the fact that massive infringers are by definition the largest “consumers” of creative works, and the better question would have been how much they might have spent had they not had the opportunity to massively infringe.

I also would have liked to have seen an actor who was not a household name. Ms. Stahl noted that “Wolverine” was a victim of pre-release piracy yet still made “a ton of money.” Mr. Soderbergh admitted that box-office receipts can create an impression that all is well, although he also noted that the big movie star “isn’t hurt” but other actors and crew are. Their residuals from DVD and other post-theater distribution services have declined as infringement has grown.

I also would have liked to have seen an independent film producer. They don’t get the theater play that “Wolverine” does, so a much greater percentage of their revenues come from DVD sales and from other licensed digital distribution services such as iTunes. If you can go grab an independent fiction or documentary film off of BitTorrent before it’s on iTunes or DVD, that has to undercut revenues.

Speaking of BitTorrent, the depiction in the segment was perfect. It explained in simple terms for a general audience how the technology works. Ms. Stahl noted it was “perfectly legal,” so those on the “60 Minutes” chat board saying they like BitTorrent because they use it to download Linux updates are simply making Ms. Stahl’s point. But it is also true, as the segment states, that creative works are infringed millions of times daily using torrents. To deny that is to deny that water contains oxygen and hydrogen.

The piece correctly noted the connection between commercial piracy and organized crime; there is solid evidence of that in a respected report prepared by RAND. It would be hard for someone to believe that “60 Minutes” made up the individual they showed being arrested for wholesale distribution of pirated videos, or to say the LAPD is making up the statistic they shared with Ms. Stahl that more than one million counterfeit DVDs are confiscated by LAPD annually. Raids of massive piracy operations in The Philippines and Malaysia, mentioned in the segment, are real and well documented.

I have two gripes with the piece. One, it doesn’t seem right to say that watermarking is something copyright owners want to keep “secret.” It’s true that a banner doesn’t run across the FBI warning stating that watermarking is used, but it’s been my impression that all creative industries want people to know when watermarking is used, so it acts as a deterrent. Better to prevent the infringement to begin with than chase after the infringer after the fact.

The other gripe I have is Ms. Stahl calling piracy a “sport” and Mr. Soderbergh agreeing. This is not a sport. Sports have rules, they are strongly enforced, and the very credibility of the game is called into question if the rules are not seen to be enforced fairly. (Heard the hubbub about wrong calls being made in the World Series?) Infringers, whether commercial or otherwise, do not follow the rule of law or any other rules for that matter. That’s the real problem.