Just the Facts

This was an article in today's IMDB.com news roundup:

MPAA Admits College Pirate Study Was Wrong
The Motion Picture Association of America has acknowledged that a study that it commissioned in 2005 -- that concluded that widespread illegal downloading of movies on college campuses was responsible for billions of dollars in losses -- was wrong. The study had claimed that students with access to high-speed Internet connections in college dorms were to blame for 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses from online pirating. However, on Tuesday, the MPAA admitted that it got the figure wrong because of "human error" and that it was more like 15 percent. But Mark Luker, vice president of Educause, told the Associated Press Tuesday that the study did not take into account the fact that 80 percent of college students live off campus. He figured that campus networks may be responsible for only 3 percent of illegal downloads. The industry's earlier figure, he maintained, was intended to show that if college campuses got tough on the issue of illegal downloads, "it would make a tremendous difference in the business of the motion picture industry." He said that the new figures show that campus action would "have only a small impact." For its part, the MPAA said Tuesday, "We take this error very seriously and have taken strong and immediate action to both investigate the root cause of this problem as well as substantiate the accuracy of the latest report."

Now, I don't know about you, but revising from 44% (when this was a huge hot-bed topic that all the media were talking about) down as low as 3% (now that is is primarily a back-story and no one is caring), strikes me as a bit of erroneous reporting. Matter of fact, I would go so far as to say it is irresponsible of the MPAA to have released those (original) figures in the first place.

I have sent letters to Jack Valenti describing why I thought he and the MPAA were not only wrong, but salaciously so. Each time I received a nice letter back that proved he had no understanding of how the Internet worked, that his numbers had no solid backing, and that the MPAA just didn't get how much easier just about any other method of copying a movie is compared to using the Internet. He couldn't seem to understand that, even with all of the advances the Internet's structure has undergone to allow for DSL, Cable, and fiber optic connection, the Internet as a whole would screech to a halt faster than the next denial of service attack if the numbers they present are true. The millions of people downloading millions of gigabytes of these movies would bring the Internet to its knees and no one be running faster than the old 9600 baud modems. I will miss his responses, and should write to welcome the new head of the MPAA, Dan Glickman.

The Internet is not where the majority of people get illegal movies. It is much faster, cheaper, and easier to get a Netflix or Blockbuster subscription and, for $14.95 a month, get as many movies as you possibly can, copy them, and return them. Once you have the digital copy, if you have the ability, money, and setup, you can make an unlimited number of other DVDs of exactly the same quality. Those who do get the latest movies before they are even released in theaters are doing it through inside sources-- which no amount of legislature against average Internet users is ever going to solve! The quality of all other sources is so bad that most people are forced to buy a legal copy when it comes out anyway.

Lastly, I've never seen the MPAA release the stats on the percentage of those who do download movies, or get them illegally from other sources, go out and purchase a legal copy of the movie once it is available. In my personal experience, with the few people I suspect may have procured something nefariously, most of them have purchased the legal copy of those they liked once it became available. So, in each of those cases, the law may have been broken but the MPAA did not lose any money.