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)
Re:Any details on the actual study itself? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Any details on the actual study itself? (Score:5, Funny)
Very interesting, sir! VERY interesting!
Re:Any details on the actual study itself? (Score:5, Funny)
Human Error (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I guess changing the results does constitute "human error"...
Re:Human Error (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Human Error (Score:5, Funny)
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I have - but it's already at 5 ;-) [EOM] (Score:2)
Re:Human Error (Score:5, Funny)
litigate. LITIGATE! LITIGATE! LITIGATE!
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There really is no reason to go insulting Daleks, especially since they can count...
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Re:Human Error (Score:5, Insightful)
It was not botched (Score:2)
Re:Human Error (Score:4, Insightful)
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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.
Cool. Where can I download one of these little asian guys?
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.
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.
Re:Yeah but... (Score:4, Funny)
There's definitely mold of some sort involved, anyway. Mycology knows better than to give in.
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.
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So, like what, if you are about the art, the only value your art can have is along monetary lines?
Free The Art (Sep 29/07)
Free the Art and
Free the Artists
Let's break loose and
Let's get started
Change the world and
Make it better
There may be crying but
We'll cry together
Tired of waiting on
Promised changes
Come together and
Let's rearrange it
You can use those lyrics under a Cr
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You are indeed correct... I had planned on putting the obligatory **AA, which got me thinking of the RIAA - add that to not enough coffee and you see what happens! :-)
Thanks
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Especially as MPAA also makes the accusation that piracy is used to fund global terrorism and organised crime, hence attempt
Completely accidental, can happen to anyone (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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If you look at the bigger picture, one could easily argue that both are credible.
The first is merely a logical reaction to someone who has been caught in a bold-faced lie. How many other lies have they told?
The second takes a bit of a larger picture to gain credibility, but sounds believable enough when you factor in lobbying efforts, extension to copyright, vast increases in the punishment for infringement, and a vast increase in the enforcement of infringement.
How much more difficult would it have
Not that I don't disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
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I, for on, do NOT welcome our new corporate overlords. Isn't the younger generation supposed to be burning shit down? Ours owuld have!
-mcgrew
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http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/01/23/tech-mpaa-downloading.html [www.cbc.ca]
"Human" error (Score:5, Insightful)
First impressions (Score:5, Informative)
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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
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.
Dead trees (Score:2)
A truthful, non-corporate-stooge newspaper would have big black headlines on page 1 screaming MPAA LIES ABOUT SURVEY RESULTS (smaller headline underneath that one) "Piracy" taking almost no toll on studios, despite fake study's claims"
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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.
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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.
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I do NOT own this comment. I hold a "limited" time monopoly on this comment.
I own my house, I own my car. I do not own my latest slashdot journal (which is about whores, making it kind of on topic, considering we're talking about the MPAA).
Some here (including myself) have started calling it "imaginary property" which is far more fact
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."
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Without the permission of the owner, of course...If you go into someone's house and use something, it's not theft. It's tresspassing.
Unless what you use is some kind of consumable. e.g. you eat their food.
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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 imp
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.
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You spend $10,000 developing your own 'special' sourdough starter. Then you sell it to 5 people. Because they can't afford to spend $2,000 each to buy it, you sell it for $10 each, but tell them 'I'll give you it for this price, as long as you don't let anyone else have any'. You'd be miffed if they gave a bit to each of their friends, or if they started selling it themselves without your permission.
The movie companies COULD charge everyone $20,000,000 to see a film, and forget about piracy sinc
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Or maybe it does matter. They got the benefit of claiming 44% losses 2 years ago, and now that they revise the estimate down, they can put out a new "study" claiming 44% losses this year *and* claim that losses have more than tripled in the past 2-3 years! The horror! Then, in 2010
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Should be fruit of the poisoned tree. Every law that touched that figure should be automatically repealed. If it isn't that way, it should be.
[this is not legal advice] (Score:4, Interesting)
(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.)
Dude! (Score:2)
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Would somebody now please put the cat back into the bag, again?
Root cause of this problem would be: (Score:4, Insightful)
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Fearmongering, obviously. "ZOMG IT'S 15 PERCENT" doesn't have quite the same impact as "OH LORD THEY'RE CAUSING NEARLY HALF OUR LOSSES".
Exaggeration is not fear-mongering. Yours is the second post in the last day or so to get it wrong. Fear-mongering is about inducing or playing upon actual visceral fears that the public has. You know, of dying or of your family dying, that sort of thing. The public in general doesn't give a rat-sass about the fiscal health of the movie studios. They certainly do not lie awake in bed at night worrying about it the way some people do about terrorism.
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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The truth wears spandex. (Score:4, Insightful)
just as I posted on K5... (Score:5, Interesting)
___
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the teens were thinking, "It's a trap. Remember what Sony did?"
Re:just as I posted on K5... (Score:4, Interesting)
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
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Quite a bit, I think. I know that I have used allofmp3.com regularly. And I know I have downloaded some songs multiple times (sometimes at least 3 times) because at 10-15c a song it is e
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Well, I have been saying 5 cents for years but 10 might work fine. But they need to do it soon. If they wait too long, I will have given up on my old loves and be playing only with music h
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Maybe they should have saved those Perry Como, The Early Years CDs for someone a little more mature than teen girls?!?!
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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.
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That's just weird. Not sure I believe it happened.
Consider, was it even worth the effort needed to convert the disks to MP3?
I have all the old music CDs that I actually WANTED and PAID FOR from the 80's and 90's, and it's generally not worth the hassle of manually converting them to MP3. Is it really worth grabbing random disks to sort through if I then had to MP3 convert anything I actually wanted to keep? You have to rip any good songs to M
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So now, copyright infringement may well lead to real thieft, since the imaginary is now as real as the real.
-mcgrew
Another 27% (Score:4, Funny)
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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.
Never attribute to stupidity (Score:2)
As long as there are valid business reasons.
Lies, damned lies and stats (Score:2)
Damn, we missed the quota. (Score:2, Insightful)
421 burners (Score:2)
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.
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."
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.
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-mcgrew
(Hey, they should use some of my slashdot journals or old K5 diaries as scripts. My life is a lot more interesting than today's movies, unfortunately for me)
"human error" (Score:2, Informative)
Typical misleading title. (Score:2)
What makes you think that's a "botch"?
Lost profits???? (Score:4, Interesting)
Lying in Court? (Score:2)
OMFG I'm hopeless (Score:2)
No wonder I can't get laid!
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.
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So I looked up "Breathalyzer" and found that they don't exist [uncyclopedia.org]. Breathalyzers, I mean, not humungous breasts. Unless of course you're referring to Bighead [slashdot.org], who has no breasts at all. She could be in the Guiness book as the world's flattest chested woman. Of course the skinny l
Didn't see this one coming (Score:2)
I understand why record companies are doing crap like this, scare tactics are basically all they have left. But movie studios already have a system that can survive the digital era. They are rolling in cash right from DVD sales, and theaters aren't going away any time soon. But the same people they are going after with lies, threats, and misinformation campaigns are the people that are going to be the biggest consumers in five or ten years. How can they not see that?
Get a comprehensive digital distrib
Sorry, I downloaded... (Score:3, Interesting)
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excuse me, but... (Score:2)
A number below 15% is just too large of a margin.
This is an outrage and my congressperson ought to be ashamed of herself for buying into this crap.
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He's not buying, he's selling. The MPAA is buying.
Translation (Score:2)
Nothing to see here. Move along!
In all honesty... (Score:2)
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(NOTE: Yes, I know.)