A confidential study for the Australian government has concluded that industry statistics concerning financial loss due to piracy are "unverified and epistemologically unreliable." The study by the Australian Institute of Criminology and leaked to the The Australian, a national newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, was said to be in an "early draft" stage. Referring to a comment in the report that statistics used by copyright owners are "absurd," the Institute's principal criminologist, Russell Smith, said that such language would not appear in the final version because "it's not accurate, it's hyperbolic and overblown." What is particularly striking, the newspaper suggested, was that copyright owners had been lobbying to have such a study conducted, hoping that it would encourage stronger law enforcement on piracy. Instead, the report called into question the method in which the owners estimated losses, pointing out that they assume that every person who buys pirated goods would otherwise have paid full price for legitimate ones. "It is inappropriate for courts and policy makers to accept at face value currently unsubstantiated statistics," the study concluded.