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What the MPAA Still Isn't Telling Us
Scott Jaschik writes "An essay at the Inside Higher Ed site looks at the fallout from the MPAA's admission that its statistics on college student downloading were seriously wrong. Among the questions: What is the MPAA still holding back? Why isn't the MPAA changing its position on legislation? 'Perhaps the MPAA's press release acknowledging its "300 percent error" will set the stage for new, less rancorous private and public discussions about P2P piracy. Colleges and universities respect copyright; colleges and universities are engaged in serious efforts to inform and educate students about the importance of copyright. And MPAA and RIAA officials ... should acknowledge, respect and strongly support the continuing efforts of campus officials to address copyright issues, in part by ending the public posturing that portrays colleges and universities as dens of digital piracy.'"
If there's one thing I'd like to know about the P2P controversy, it's this: why would people bother to waste bandwidth and disk space downloading bootleg copies of most of the garbage that the MPAA (not to mention RIAA member labels) attempts to foist upon the public? If anything, the MPAA should be paying people to watch garbage like Meet the Spartans and Untraceable.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
And MPAA and RIAA officials ... should acknowledge, respect and strongly support the continuing efforts of campus officials to address copyright issues, in part by ending the public posturing that portrays colleges and universities as dens of digital piracy.
The MPAA and RIAA aren't interested in anything except changing the publics' perception of their "plight". By recognizing their flawed research and statistics it would mean that their campaign to flood the eyes and ears of the uninformed via the media outlets, who are hungry for trash, would possibly end.
They are currently winning the war over parents and the majority of educational administrators who are worried that those they have jurisdiction over are doing things that someone told them was theft. They don't want to have others look poorly on them and they are going to spend an inordinate amount of time ensuring that they are doing everything they can to stop this horrible threat to our youth! Unfortunately, that comes at a serious cost in an arena that is notoriously short on funding and which should honestly have a lot more important shit to worry about.
What is the most tiring is that the media outlet continue to eat what the MPAA/RIAA are feeding them and the parents don't sit down to think about anything other than how to "talk to their kids about drugs" errr, I mean "stealing"! I guess because many of us who are either just becoming parents or aren't planning for kids for at least a few more years have sat through the majority of the Nancy-period and the bullshit anti-drug messages, we are more immune to being bombarded with this crap. Unfortunately, the rest of them are all caving to the media pressure. "Don't let this happen to you!"
I wish that more higher education institutions had the ability to pull off what Harvard did but the financial funding just isn't there to fight it in the short term but instead, wasting resources and funds over the long term is. The MPAA/RIAA knows exactly what they are doing and how to exploit those they are attacking and it sucks, bad.
Which is exactly why 'artists' like Metallica and U2 shouldn't help support that fallacy.
people will trade movies online. for free. without any limitations. they just will, get used to it. no matter what laws anyone passes. end of story, there really is no alternative to that future
movies will still be made for $100 million. the studios will just make their money only in the theatres. there just will be no more online/ dvd/ vhs aftermarket
oh yeah, remember the vhs? that the studios fought tooth and nail in the 1980s because it was going to kill their movie business? which they now count as a huge cash cow? and which they now vigorously defend? pffft. yeah, like those guys understand a damn thing about what they are talking about
people announced the death of the moviehouse in the 1950s. why? television. this was two decades before "Jaws" and the birth of the summer blockbuster. some genius prognostication there, huh? same with those predicting the internet, and the hdtv, and all of that will kill the theatre. uh, no. history repeating itself. the theatre business is secure, really
studios will still make lots of money, people will still jam movie houses, no matter what a bunch of asocial slashdotters in their parent's basement say. watching anime on a 17 inch monitor by yourself in your basement is NOT a threat to people going to the movies on dates, in families, in groups, to see the blockbuster first, etc. no matter what technological advance is made. seriously
hollywood: you're just going to have to wean yourself of the dvd aftermarket. there will be nothing online to match that cash cow, and the internet is going to kill that cash cow. go ahead and pass a bunch of laws, pay off some congressman, step up in enforcement. doesn't matter in the least. that cash cow is going bye bye, nothing is going to replace it. deal with that, nothing is changing that fact
just put yourself in your 1980s "the aftermarket is going to kill the movie business!" point of view, you'll get used to the change
morons
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
According to this Ars Technica article ( http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060505-6761.html ), the $6.1 billion that the MPAA claims is lost to piracy is a highly inflated number. Ok, I'll pause while everyone says "Well, DUH!".... ... done? ... ok, good. Let's proceed.
Apparently, "bootlegging" costs them $2.4 million. This is typically "hard piracy" or a guy on a street corner selling a copied DVD for $5. Let's give the MPAA this figure.
The next portion is $1.4 billion "lost" to illegal copying. Now this isn't someone putting Star Wars up on a P2P network. This is someone taking their Star Wars DVD and making a backup copy of it. Apparently, the MPAA feels that you should pay for backup copies and not doing so is costing them money. This is likely just a load of horse manure, but let's leave it be for now because the next one is what really interests me.
Finally, they claim $2.3 billion in losses to "internet piracy". Since they claim that most of the losses are overseas (say, 40%) and 15% of the US Internet piracy happens on campuses, that's $138 million ($2.3 Billion * 0.4 * 0.15). Now, they also are claiming that each P2P copy downloaded is a lost sale. I disagree with that and think that the real "lost sales" figures are far lower. I'm willing to grant them a compromise, though, and assume that a one in three downloaded copies is a lost sale. This takes the losses figure down to $46 million. Finally, some of those "lost sales" would have been used copies, rentals, or other legal "reduced cost" methods. So let's assume that this takes reduces their revenue by 20% (again, being generous)*. This takes their Internet Piracy loss down to just under $37 million.
So for $37 million lost annually, the MPAA wants severe Federal laws that would deny students a college education if someone else on the campus pirates a movie?
* Ok, I pulled a lot of the numbers out of my behind, but so did the MPAA. At least my numbers are likely to be closer to reality.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Movies are (sadly) much like how videogames have become. For every great piece of work, there are ten horrible pieces of work lining up behind it. Once you are able to recognize crap from a distance, however, you tend to stop noticing it.
Living With a Nerd
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Meaning if the US slips into tyranny now, not one of us is going to see the end of it...
If it's so secret, then how come I've never heard of it?
But if we keep putting it off, our children may be the ones to never know freedom. Besides, it took so long to tear down the Soviet Union because the citizens that destroyed it had never known a free Russia. We have seen how things ought to be, and therefore will fight hardest to regain it. If nothing else, we can lay the groundwork for the fight against tyranny.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.