MPAA Botched Study On College Downloading 215
An anonymous reader writes "The Associated Press reports that in a 2005 study the MPAA conducted through an outfit called LEK, the movie trade association vastly overestimated how much college students engage in illegal movie downloading. Instead of '44 percent of the industry's domestic losses' owing to their piracy, it's 15 percent — and one expert is quoted as saying even that number is way too high. Dan 'Sammy' Glickman's gang admitted to the mishap, blaming 'human error,' and promised 'immediate action to both investigate the root cause of this problem as well as substantiate the accuracy of the latest report.'"
First impressions (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yeah but... (Score:5, Informative)
This article is about the MPAA, not the RIAA. It is understandable how you got them mixed up, though. They seem to be molded from the same cloth.
"human error" (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Root cause of this problem would be: (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention that the "losses" figure is entirely fictitious in the first place. 3% of a fiction.
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Re:It's an AP report that is linked (Score:4, Informative)
I'd expect this number to increase but not spectacularly, so I'd say it's getting reasonable coverage but no, it's not set the world on fire or anything.
Re:First impressions (Score:5, Informative)
There's a reason why "Intellectual Property" laws have a whole separate framework of legislation that sets them apart from basic criminal legislation like theft of physical property, and that reason isn't because the legislators thought it would be fun to write the same sorts of laws twice. It's because legislators have to treat the concept of IP protection with a legal rationale which is completely separate from the idea of theft of physical property.
If you want to argue that IP protection is a good thing, then to make any sort of logical headway you're going to have to show (either through logic or empirical evidence) that IP protection provides some sort of net good to the general society. In addition, the issue is so emotionally charged that the argument that "it is obvious" isn't going to fly: you're going to have to provide references to either peer-reviewed economic studies that show a net benefit to society via IP protective-type mechanisms, or references to case studies of comparable societies with and without IP protective-type laws, where an analysis has been done on the relative pros & cons between each society.
Re:Yeah but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:First impressions (Score:3, Informative)