MPAA Botched Study On College Downloading

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.'"

[this is not legal advice]

[adolf]

Remember, kids: In America, downloading movies isn't illegal; uploading them is.

(I'd tell you all how (in a world of BitTorrent) this can be mad to work, but doing so would violate the First and Second Rules, respectively.)

just as I posted on K5...

[Creepy Crawler]

My content from the financial perspective of DRM.. and pretty much why they're done for.

___
What alternatives do we have?

Our body of law gives rights to the creators and their protected ability of being the one to approve copies. Regardless of whether we agree or now with this, that is our situation.

Now, we take this to the "digital domain". Those older creators want, no.. need these protections as they see in the non-internet world. The only real way to "guarantee" this is by digital restrictions. The best way I think of this is that of a akin to a capability system and the copyright maintainer has an account on your machine.

However, our machines are ours. The geeks amongst us demand that we are able to control our software and hardware. What was unable to do in WinXP, Vista seems to offer the beginning of that capability system with the media companies at the kill switch. And to top it off, Vista has remotely disabling drivers for "holes" that might appear. For those that own a machine, this OS laughs in their face, as if saying "Bring It On!"

And there are many casualties. Those casualties are the Joe and Jane Publics that don't understand this issue close enough, or think that all needs to be done is burn to DVD... just like the iPod to music. When they find out that they are locked with binary garbage that cannot be used for any fair use purpose (backing up owned DVDs is fair usage).

And where are we now? When the users know they are eventually shafted, those that have the know-how will show others where to download the movies and the music they legitimately bought. Once they know they were taken advantage of, any feeling of "theft" (or whatever you call it) will be gone. The media companies had their chance to do their dealings with the public honestly, but have failed.

Just like língchí.. Death by a thousand cuts.

From K5 [kuro5hin.org]

And just to expand on that, the media guys had their chance to do honest dealings with the public and the artists. They instead thought they could continue on with their little game. They simply cant.

As a last comment, ill give the link [nationalreview.com] and the quote of the starting of the nasty fall of the media empire...

This past week's issue of The Economist has a heart-rending vignette from one of the most ruthlessly capitalist industries on the planet: "In 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. "That was the moment we realized the game was completely up," an EMI exec told the magazine.

Re:just as I posted on K5...

[Creepy Crawler]

I really doubt it.

Considering the big wigs brought them within headquarters, they most likely offered the best of what they had to offer. Maybe it was good, I dont know. All I do know is that music and movies are easy to get to online, pay or no pay. Why deal with archaic discs with formats from the 80's when 12 mp3s download in a reasonable amount of time, legality or not?

A service that could keep the record companies afloat is if they opened their collections completely, flat rate .10$ per download. And if you lost the songs, another .10$. Dont keep records of who bought what, too much bookkeeping, and it's just a dime. I just wonder how much money they would make on that kind of deal...

Re:just as I posted on K5...

[Quiet_Desperation]

But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. "That was the moment we realized the game was completely up

That's just weird. Not sure I believe it happened. I don't like most of what's popular these days, but even I'd grab some freebies just to see what's up.

Lost profits????

[secretwhistle]

With the motion picture industry's creative accounting, it's a wonder there's any "profit" to be lost. The following is taken from the Hollywood Law Cybercenter website. http://www.hollywoodnetwork.com/Law/Hart/columns/ [hollywoodnetwork.com]

A substantial portion of the direct cost of a film produced on a studio lot is charges for the use of the studio's facilities, including the sound stages, vehicles, equipment, etc. Although the studio incurs no out-of-pocket expense for providing these facilities, it insists that the charges are proper because they comply with the SPD language defining production cost. The charges made for using these facilities are substantially in excess of the actual costs... For example, a studio will charge a motion picture for the use of a vehicle at a rental rate based upon the rental rate being charged by the leading rental-car companies, typically $45 per day or more. This charge, which includes a profit rate equivalent to the rental companies' profit rate, will be made even if the vehicle has long ago been purchased by the studio, and even if the cost of the vehicle has been charged against other films...

I would think this would keep them rolling in money without having to deal with inconveniences like paying taxes or profit percentages.

Sorry, I downloaded...

[Yvanhoe]

... these songs, yeah I know, it is a lot of them. I know that's wrong, but that's a human error, you can surely understand that ?

Re:Human Error

[Anonymous Coward]

At a relatively small non-tech company I do some support for, the major means of movie sharing goes like this:

Every other week, an Asian man who speaks little English sells dvd's containing newly released or about to be released movies.

Those that get purchased are the passed around the employees to be viewed at home.

Any that turn out to be defective, or too dim to be watched, are returned to the Asian man for acredit against the next dvd's purchased.

The whole process is off-line and involves no P2P networks, college students or campus networks.

Re:Yeah but...

[rtb61]

Well perhaps US colleges and students should consider a class action law suit for the malicious mendacities and slanderous accusations published by the MPAA, clearly intended to bring into to ill repute and cause permanent harm the fine reputation of US college students, as well as college staff and administration for their implied complicity in illegal and hence criminal activities.

Especially as MPAA also makes the accusation that piracy is used to fund global terrorism and organised crime, hence attempting to connect and establish a link between US college students and those activities, it appears to have worked with the US Department of Homeland (in)Security sneaking and skulking about colleges on the lookout for all those unshaven computer geeks (armpits count just like beards for all you independently thinking female computer geeks) ;).