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.'"
Any details on the actual study itself? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah but... (Score:5, Insightful)
While they are at least admitting that THIS report is highly erroneous, it does not even begin to address the plethora of similar reports they have bombarded the media and Internet with that have similar figures.
So... which reality are they going with? Agreeing that this report is highly off compromises many of their financial claims of the damages file sharing does... or perhaps they will just admit this report is wrong due to "human error" - but the others are right "Please believe everything else we are saying - even though it contradicts our admission of error here."
C'mon... who does the RIAA think they are fooling? (RIAA) retract all your ridiculous claims - or dont bother... the rest of us know the truth - and have for years.
Completely accidental, can happen to anyone (Score:5, Insightful)
"Human" error (Score:5, Insightful)
Root cause of this problem would be: (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth wears spandex. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Completely accidental, can happen to anyone (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:just as I posted on K5... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the teens were thinking, "It's a trap. Remember what Sony did?"
It's an AP report that is linked (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's an AP report that is linked (Score:5, Insightful)
Just for sake of argument, let's say you're more than right and this story receives equal coverage on the news; let's say every person who saw the original story sees this correction. Now, it's just a survey, so people know it represents an estimate of the actual percentage. If you were to ask each person what they thought the actual percentage was, would they guess 15%? Or somewhere in-between 15 and 44%? Like my OP's title suggested, first impressions are important -- even when we're talking about numbers.
P.S. And about actually going to the link: come on, man, this is
Leverage... (Score:2, Insightful)
Looks like they need some huge numbers to get their campus funding bill pushed through with all those nasty, torrent-blocking strings attached.
Damn, we missed the quota. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Human Error (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First impressions (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's exactly what it is. Movies come on all the time on HBO. They don't pay beyond a small subscription fee to watch them (HBO runs $10-12 per month and broadcasts an insane number of movies in that period. If you watched every one subscription fees would be like $0.05 per movie). If you're willing to suffer broadcast you needn't even pay at all. Songs play for free all day long on the radio. The media companies have painted themselves into the corner where people see media as free because largely, it traditionally has been made available as such. Many people have spent their whole lives buying the few pieces of media that were important to them (a pirated copy of Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter series is not worth it for me - I want the real thing), and just recording the rest of it off of TV or the radio. P2P is simply the newest version of an old trick to these people, and you'll have a VERY hard time convincing them that it's wrong.
As such, this report saying 44% of college students pirate media will likely come across will all the impact of reporting that 44% of college students chop down trees at Christmas time.
Rip, rip, rip that DVD! (Score:2, Insightful)
We all just copy Netflix/Blockbuster Online rentals and share via physical copies. The results are perfectly consistent.
Re:Yeah but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Admittedly the root cause is not that the RIAA/MPAA is inherently evil - they're just PR people, mostly (which negates the whole 'they're not the evil ones' argument but bear with me for a second) - it's the member corporations that have the lawyers that are doing the suing and refuse to change their business model to respond to the market. The root cause of the problem here is that it absolutely blindsided the executives, and they had no-one at any kind of level who could tell them what was going on and what they needed to do about it to respond sensibly to the challenges the Internet posed. These executives didn't give a toss about computers, and frankly who could blame them, they're executives of music and movie companies and actually giving a toss about the industry they're in was seen as being revolutionary.
Instead, they reasoned that they'd be inevitably be reeled in by some kind of conman who came in and spoke big words about Internet at them if they tried doing something, and bunkered down and fought like old men. It's a big paradigm shift to think of one's product as essentially a PR stunt to sell peripheral stuff like concerts and DVDs, and for both those who are about the money and didn't want to experiment with new business models, and those who are about the art and didn't want their 'product' becoming essentially worthless, it's a challenge they aren't up to facing.
Profits? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the "root cause" of their error can be attributed to their absolute requirement that they prove huge loses (on their imaginary profits) so they could go to congress and demand "something be done."
Not that I don't disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Completely accidental, can happen to anyone (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but seriously, that's exactly what they are. It's just as easy to say, for example "If those statistics were wrong, then how many other similar statistics were also wrong?", than to say "they did it on purpose to infiltrate our legal system". One has a reasonable train of thought behind it and is very constructive, the other is finger-pointing practically devoid of solid evidence, or even a decent plan of action.
This is much like Breathalyzers (Score:5, Insightful)
The parallel I see is that the damage is done and at this point it is unlikely to be undone.
They presented the argument they wanted to the people they wanted when they wanted to do it. Although many universities do not have programs in place to prevent piracy, the wheels are in motion and the fact that the decision to do so was based on inaccurate information will not stop anything.
lying liars (Score:3, Insightful)
The Writers' Guild of America strike puts the lie to that. The media producers are making boatloads of money, and the WGA wants their fair share as creators of a lot of the content.
Re:First impressions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:First impressions (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but stealing does not work that way. Theft means one thing and one thing only: To remove physical property from someone so that they may no longer use it and to keep it in your possession.
If you go into someone's house and use something, it's not theft. It's tresspassing.
If you break something of someone else's, it's not theft. It's vandalism.
If you take someone else's idea and claim it as your own, it's plagiarism. Not theft.
See, to steal is not the same thing as to infringe. They are two different words for a very good reason.
Besides, you're assuming that these people who download these movies would pay for them otherwise. Just because I wouldn't pay X dollars to see a movie doesn't mean I wouldn't pay X/2 to see it. Or, heck, some movies are so ridiculous these days, I'd only go to see them if someone paid ME. But I suppose others my settle for "free."
Re:Human Error (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:First impressions (Score:3, Insightful)
I said I see the similarity between 'stealing' and illegally copying movies
Actually, you said, and I quote, "it's called stealing" (seriously, it's easy for anyone to check, it's just two posts up, so you can't get out of this one, sorry). You didn't say "it's like stealing" or "it's similar to stealing", you said "it's called stealing". It's not called stealing. Yes, there are similarities to stealing, but using the word "stealing" for copying movies is AT BEST a metaphor, and like any metaphor, it's imperfect.
There is a marginal cost to the provider, however small, to *providing* a free ride at a theme park, in the form of wear and tear / maintenance, energy costs, property rentals and taxes, insurance and risk etc.. If someone copies a movie illegally from a friend over a computer network, the marginal cost to the provider is ZERO. They have not lost anything that they did not have before. They don't wake up poorer. They wake up EXACTLY the same as the day before. There isn't less money in the bank account, and they don't have to pay any penalties.
That doesn't condone illegal copying. Obviously if everybody copied, and nobody bought, the movie makers couldn't make money.
But it's not called stealing. It's the wrong word. That doesn't make it "less bad", we're not trying to justify it (I mean, I make my living making and selling software, and I have first-hand seen people pirating my own software) --- we're just trying to avoid broken metaphors that lead people to think about these things in an incorrect way.
Re:First impressions (Score:2, Insightful)
'Society' doesn't make laws. Lobbyists write laws, which lawmakers (who owe their political well-being to the companies that lobbyists represent) then pass.
The implication of your question is that all laws must be inherently good for society, because they wouldn't be passed otherwise. This panglossian viewpoint ignores the fact that laws are overturned, changed, or reversed all the time.
Re:First impressions (Score:4, Insightful)
Copyrights not only protect artistic works - but indeed they are the basis of the GPL (which protects major open-source software such as the Linux kernel). When you see a company or person break the GPL license - justice is quickly meted out here.
That said, the "problem" isn't with copyrights et cetera - it is consumer expectations.
At least in the USA, we've been very used to paying for "premium" works, and getting older works for free or near free. The major air networks routinely broadcast movies, shows, and music for "free." The ones paying for these are advertisers, obviously - but beyond that it's essentially free. I can record onto tape, share it with a friend, keep it in on a shelf.
For premium works we buy tickets, subscriptions, DVD's, hard-back books, COTS software, and whatnot. The average consumer spends a lot of money here, and they feel that "buying" the work entitles them to fairly use these works.
Herein lies the problem: Consumers expect to be able to watch/read/listen on their computer - and they want to do it for around the same price they're already paying. They want choice, freedom to share with a few friends, and what have you.
Consumers have been "fooled" into thinking it was all really free because broadcasters have been making it essentially "free" for years. But instead of a VCR or a casette tape, we want to use computers - and the internet.
Copyright holders then did a stupid thing. They blamed their customers for stealing, while at the same time broadcasters are busy pumping content over the air. They called us "pirates" and evil-doers. They said consumers are rapist.
Here's your solution then. Start distributing your works over the internet. Sell the premium content for a fair price and stop calling the internet evil. Sure, you can build in a few protections like watermarking or digital signing to catch the real pirates! But stop turning against your customers!
In other words - do what you do best, and stop worrying about the kids that are *stealing* your works. They did it twenty years ago with mix tapes and VCR's - and yet the product still sells. The thing is - people really DO want a quality product. It is about the experience, it is about feeling like your getting a fair value for your money.
It's time to start moving those models that work in real space onto the internet. Broadcast it, sell tickets, sell movies, market it, and make money. Stop suing grandmothers and kids - it makes you look like monsters.