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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.
Not every story on the AP wire will get published by newspapers that subscribe -- the editors choose what to publish and what not to. I doubt this story will make any but the lengthiest print publications, and certainly not headline any online ones.
/.
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
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
Of losses were found up the marketing departments nose.
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
What do you expect when the content producers are the ones producing the news content?
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
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.
Well at the time of writing the AP story is dated at 10 hours old by Google, and there are 113 reprints of it according to Google News Sorted by date with duplicates included (seem to be a couple of non-duplicates on the same topic as well, Ars Technica for example, and this Slashdot story will probably show up at some point).
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.
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