Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
What was done in the study? Survey forms etc?
Well, I guess changing the results does constitute "human error"...
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.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Somehow it always happens to this kind of outfits. Conveniently, the press will jump on the story of those ugly meanies who steal from musicians, but when it's rectification time, that isn't news.
It's the kind of error whose magnitude is inversely proportional to the proximity of one's ass.
Of course they promise they'll look into it now, because it doesn't matter anymore. The mass public will remember that the MPAA loses 44% of its profits to piracy. That it's since been proven incorrect is almost inconsequential, when it comes to public opinion: the mass media won't cover the story twice just for the sake of correctness, and people will buy right into the MPAA's 'accidentally-mistaken' survey's results.
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
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.)
Kid-proof tablet..
Fearmongering, obviously. "ZOMG IT'S 15 PERCENT" doesn't have quite the same impact as "OH LORD THEY'RE CAUSING NEARLY HALF OUR LOSSES".
Well before this ball gets too far ahead. Let's ask ourselves, if the MPAA can overestimated their "facts"? What makes anyone think that the opposition has underestimated theirs?
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
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 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.
What losses?
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20040903-4156.html
expandfairuse.org
Whatever sells newspapers is good. Bad news sells, and investing time into real research is too difficult. So accept the industry shills, because even if they lied, You Sold Newspapers.
The RIAA is like a labor union or other political lobby. They play the game. They win when people take them seriously. That's why it's awesome people are hacking their lamer websites.
Anti-Globalism
Did you even go to the link? It's an AP story which means every print organization in the US, both electronic and paper, is going to regurgitate it. It probably won't make the same headlines as the original figure did but it will still be in there.
Of losses were found up the marketing departments nose.
Looks like they need some huge numbers to get their campus funding bill pushed through with all those nasty, torrent-blocking strings attached.
How is vastly overestimating (to enhance their point) equal to "botching"?
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
I have been slacking off as of late. I'll just have to triple my output from last semester, but I doubt everyone will so I'll have to compensate, maybe twice that? Does it count if I watch a movie again or show it to a group? Frankly, there isn't much worth downloading.
"There were only 156 actual burners, but some run at very high speeds: some as high as 40x. This is well above the average speed,"
You can't take the sky from me...
Are our movies not good enough for them to cause us a 44% loss of our "PROFITS"
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Most folks I know gave up on downloading illegally- movies at least. Music is still a download staple. The movie files took too long, or it wound up corrupted or some geektard used the MOLOTOV9 video codec that only runs on mainframes in secret Russian gulags, or some other nonsense.
We all just copy Netflix/Blockbuster Online rentals and share via physical copies. The results are perfectly consistent.
"Round up the usual suspects!"
This is the same industry that had the balls to say the movie "E.T." didn't make a dime.
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."
-- Will program for bandwidth
Didn't they say something similar when they found out Sadaam had no WMD?
that which can be adequately explained by malice.
As long as there are valid business reasons.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
...the movie trade association vastly overestimated how much college students engage in illegal movie downloading.
What makes you think that's a "botch"?
What do you expect when the content producers are the ones producing the news content?
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
the fact that this scumbag organization exists. Hopefully all the members will die horribly painful deaths. Not quiet pill laden deaths like Heath Ledger but thousands of molten CD's shoved up their butts. With a pitchfork.
Hey, you think your house is cool?
We Do not Talk about UseNet?
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
As a twenty-something, my first reaction would be "they're on to me, it's a trap!"
Followed quickly by, "I could just trade them in for money at Zia's."
Obviously, these being teenagers, I can forgive them for not thinking far enough ahead to have the second thought.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
Dude! You just broke the first rule, again!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Has that been declared Fair Use, or is it just as illegal? Because, if it is something they'll go after me for anyway, I'll stick to downloading screener copies as they come out. Same quality, without the wait or the need to buy physical disks.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
I talked about nothing, only typed. They way I figure it - if you have to be told *verbally*, you shouldn't be going.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
The study was fine. It got the result that the MPAA wanted, so how could you call it botched?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Q: has this ever been submitted as evidence in a Court case? Could be fun to revisit that ..
Insert
When the decision of whether or not to allow Breathalyzer evidence into court came into play, they downplayed the inaccuracy issues by a factor of 10. I want to say they report inaccurate results 20% of the time and they claimed a 2% error rate, but you'll have to ask jeeves or google if you want the right numbers.
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.
This is the same industry that had the balls to say the movie "E.T." didn't make a dime.
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.
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 distribution system in place so that the "Napster of movies" never happens, and try to gain customers, not scare them away. It really is that simple.
... 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 ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Root cause of the piracy problem with their study.
Could it just be crap movies, overpriced tickets, and crappy treatment of their customer base??
Imagine that people voting with their dollars.
TSS
It looks like I'm the only one here to take on the argument. As much as this forum is big on wishful thinking, care to show me how the "media empire" is actually "falling"? Changing, maybe? Falling? I doubt it. Were else would piratebay get it's material? Certainly not from all the independents out there. And even if it was? What makes anyone here think the independents like being abused by the public any more than the big guys do?
To which I reply:
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Maybe clutching at some copyrighted straws here, but could it mean that if you are sued you can fight them on the basis that their information is unreliable?
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
... Or I could just sue you till you run out of money and say, "If he was innocent he would have won."
I happen to download some stuff now and again, but it's mostly (guesstimate >90%) stuff I would never buy anyway.
FTFY
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
**AA - "What?? Is that all??"
Study coordinator - "I'm afraid so"
**AA - "Ok, go and fix it. Remove everyone who denied downloading anything. They're all lying bastards"
--half an hour later--
Study coordinator - "ok the results are in. 100% of all students who admit downloading movies are downloading movies"
**AA - "That's better. Now go and make up some obscene dollar figures for our losses and publish it"
They meant to say biotch.
The 44% is the number which they have been using to influence the U.S. congress.
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.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Can't you read? [EOM] !!! Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
They're going to keep the flawed report out there, so they can keep screaming about the wrong statistics and simply create corroborating reports in the future.
Nothing to see here. Move along!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The original story would have been on page 2. This story will be on page D-14, botton left corner of the page under an advertisemsnt, under "correction", following ian item about someone's name bein misspelled and the color of an ice cream wrapper being wrong.
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"
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
98% of satistics are made up.
Your post made me think of the first episode of STNG and I had to read it twice to realize that it actually wasn't.
No wonder I can't get laid!
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Even 15 percent seems a little high.
Aha! A fellow broke college student. Remember, bro, everything has some value to someone. The university even buys back old books, those things are worth their weight in gold!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Do college students now have grounds to launch a class action suit for libel?
Just a thought.
While I'd love to jump on the bandwagon, these stats aren't new- they're corrected. I don't expect you to read the article, but read at least the title, if not the summary.
They even admitted a mistake and didn't release a follow-up on a new survey, as this comment implies. They can't claim any causation between the two numbers.
What kind of idiots modded this stupidity? Funny, I'd understand, but Insightful?
The MPAA, of course, won't lift a finger on any lawsuit where jurors may have been swayed by that report. That's for the defendants to do...
I'm so ashamed! America is ROBBING the MPAA! (Well, technically, who they represent.) Doesn't anyone out there understand! How can we do this, people! They have a *RIGHT* to their multi-million dollar homes, yachts and cars! I mean, really, if we keep this up, they may have to skip a caviar cracker or two. It is SHAMEFUL! ...all for their own profit. The copyright laws are not for them, they are for us. Has anybody ever read the copyright section of the US Constitution? Copyrights not there to guarantee profit or to keep little Johnny from stealing music. There is a much bigger reason and its spelled out right there in the constitution. It should be MP/AA - More Profit / Assaulting America
Honestly, though, they get paid far more than they should. In my book a racket is a racket and when you've got one like the entertainment industry, well, its not polite to flip the bird, but for the MPAA and their clients, I would make an exception. Who cares about these greedy goons. They destroy lives, spread propaganda and continually put forth bad examples to society.
Why are they blaming the overcalculations on "human error"? They clearly lied just to get Congress to, yet again, deprive us of our civil liberities.
So now are they going to withdraw all their stupid legistlation to deprive collage students of the right to privacy? I don't think so.
qwerty
"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."
So how does that whole "give the music to the whole world for free" business model work again?
"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"
Or downloadable volume and polycarbonate ground up and stuffed down some "tubes".
"and for both those who are about the money and didn't want to experiment with new business models"
Interesting how those who do the most talking about "business models" do the least to impliment them.
"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."
Yes a career change caused by the apathetic and greedy is hard to face. Wonder if the greedy and apathetic are up to the face of their creation?
The only challenge is can those who desire to make a living stay ahead of those who intentionally or just plain apathetic make it harder and harder to do so?
I eagerly await the next round of excuses that future will bring.