“Hollywood laid much of the blame for illegal movie downloading on college students. Now, it says its math was wrong,” Justin Pope reports for The Associated Press.
“In a 2005 study it commissioned, the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that 44 per cent of the industry’s domestic losses came from illegal downloading of movies by college students, who often have access to high-bandwidth networks on campus,” Pope reports.
“The MPAA has used the study to pressure colleges to take tougher steps to prevent illegal file-sharing and to back legislation currently before the House of Representatives that would force them to do so,” Pope reports.
“But now the MPAA, which represents the U.S. motion picture industry, has told education groups a ‘human error’ in that survey caused it to get the number wrong. It now blames college students for about 15 per cent of revenue loss.”
“Terry Hartle, vice president of the American Council on Education, which represents higher education in Washington, said the mistakes showed the entertainment industry has unfairly targeted college campuses,” Pope reports. “‘Illegal peer-to-peer file-sharing is a society-wide problem. Some of it occurs at college s and universities but it is a small portion of the total,’ he said, adding colleges will continue to take the problem seriously, but more regulation isn’t necessary.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Shawn P.” for the heads up.]
Major error is an understatement.
MPAA = pure concentrated evil
What!? The MPAA is wrong about something? Nooo!!! It CAN’T be true!
Looks like it’s the Motion Picture Association of America that needs regulation.
in other words “we have no idea who or how many people illegally download or if they would have legitimately paid for the film even or just did it because it was free.
MPAA will blame Apple for LEGAL movie downloads.
Revenue loss? It’s NOT entirely from peer-to-peer. What about the thousands of people burning pirated movies (that are still in theaters) to DVD and selling them on the streets. There are several people doing this within two blocks from where I used to work.
Maybe the problem goes deeper? Maybe theater prices have gone up way too high in the past five years? Maybe the movie studios should start making movies that people WANT to see in theaters, instead of churning out flops that nobody would pay theater prices to see.
It’s not lost revenue if they never would have bought it anyway. The assertions that it’s lost revenue is purely speculative.
Sounds like the MPAA need s to go bacj to school and sharpen their math skills.
In any event, a serious study might prove that what’s being thrown out to the public is absolute crap and the public isn’t interested. This year might be different, with movies like Indiana Jones 4, the next James Bond and Batman movies, Cloverfield, and a couple of other which escape me at the moment. Keep bringing us crap like remakes of Bewitched and Dukes of Hazzard and the people will run in the other direction.
Major math error? I blame Excel. And Karl Rove.
The data was obviously provided by the US “Intelligence” Agencies.
“Ooooops” my a$$.
I have a good solution to the problem. Lowering the prices.
People only make certain amount money every month, and they can’t stop eating, so there is only limited amount of money that they are going to spend to the movies and tv shows.
Instead of buying X amount of movies for Y amount of money, you would be buying 2X for Y. If people would spend the same amount of money in to the movies as they have been spending so far, Hollywood would keep getting the same amount of cash as they have gotten so far.
The only difference would be that people wouldn’t have to download pirate copies.
Of course this only works for digital downloads. Not Blu-rays and DVDs.
Software companies count every downloaded copy (of an app costing 5000$) as a lost sale. Only true when the person could afford it. Not every 15 year old kid can afford the AutoCAD or something. So it’s pretty absurd and movie studios and record companies do the same type of math.
Another thing that could use a big adjustment:
– Crappy movies that only have lukewarm story and pretty surface
– Crappy music – 2 hits & 8 filler tracks
= Make better content, it makes more money in a long run
The MPAA f__ked up! I’m shocked.
If they found that the piracy was being performed by employees at work during their lunchtimes would they begin to sue private corporations? Gutless wonders…
You can’t stop every single person from stealing. We need more movies on what is morally right. Like why its evil to charge a 1000% markup on pop-corn.
Stealing it is about all you’d pay for some of these movies nowadays. They certainly aren’t worth the cost of admission….Maybe if they made the movies a little cheaper (work out the cost of taken two adults+ two kids to cinema-> expensive) and got rid of the idiot factor in cinemas people might pay to go watch them. Giving us something worth watching might also help (probably just encourage theft more then).
Flipside -> movie business probably go the same way as music because of massive loss of income: hardly any good new artists, lots of the tried and true from yesteryear. I am amazed how many kids know a lot about music from the 80’s and 90’s. Guess since there seems to be very little new music around (music companies don’t have to cash to take risks on bands anymore?)-> they’re looking backwards (and plus its easier to steal as well). Guess that explains lots of formulaic movies and the fact there aren’t that many new movies around anyway (bit early for the writers strike to bite yet I think). Maybe the theft is starting to bite??
I expect to see a lot more of these types of admissions as people begin to wake from their Windows induced brain-slumber
mw: dead
This is still not calculable.
I have the full suite of Adobe products on my system, did i buy them nope…..i rarely use them, and when i do it wouldn’t be close to enough to warrant purchasing them. So is adobe really losing out on a sale because i have bootleg versions of their software?
Not even close.
Now if a company or graphic artist uses the software a lot and they don’t buy it, then its definently a problem for adobe because that person or company would warrent a purchase of the software.
Same goes for movies, id bet that at least 7% of that 15% get illegal copies of movies they wouldn’t normally ever get tickets for, buy a dvd for, rent, or get via VOD. So they do it just for the hell of it, which does not translate to a real lose of sale since they wouldnt have spent the money anyway.
I am all for legal purchases, but this research is far from reality.
Loss = [Movies Downloaded x Estimated Revenue per Movie View by Legal Methods* x 3 / 100].
That’s 3% for any Windows users reading this
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*Includes dvd purchases/rentals; legal movie downloads; cinema tickets… and 0.5% of expected return on commercials screened on free-to-air or cable tv.
D’ohhhh!!!
If I was the MPAA I would stick with the 44% number. Actually I would make it higher, like 87% of illegal downloads were by college students. When it comes to crime it’s always easier to target and blame one group and stick with it no matter what the data might say. It’s the same with war.
I just don’t trust college kids with all their book learnin’. That’s what’s wrong with the world today. Too much education. I say we shut down the universities and put college kids and professors in jail.
Your potential. Our passion.™
@Zune Tang
windoze+DRM is a kind of jail…
Just more FUD in the flawed argument that piracy has a 1:1 relationship with lost revenue…
I average one movie in the theater every 18 months. Last movie I saw, I’m sure, it was expensive though. For two of us, it was $20.00 to get in and out conservatively. I buy DVD’s instead, cheaper and I can watch the extras. If I can wait a bit, I can find out the real value of the movie since the crappy ones end up being $5-@$10 in a very short time. I understand that it takes a lot to make some movies, and that many people are getting fed by the work and process that goes into them. I just can’t justify $20,00 for a one time “canned” event. Pixar has been the exception to the rule, there are always those movies that need to be seen on the big screen, with great sound, and some one on their cell phone sitting right behind you.