MPAA: we made a mistake in downloading study
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jan 23, 2008 at 7:58am
In a 2005 study it commissioned, the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that 44 percent 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.
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. 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, reports the Associated Press. It now blames college students for about 15 percent of revenue loss.
The MPAA says that’s still significant, and justifies a major effort by colleges and universities to crack down on illegal file-sharing, the article adds. But Mark Luker, vice president of campus IT group Educause, told the AP it doesn’t account for the fact that more than 80 percent of college students live off campus and aren’t necessarily using college networks. He says three percent is a more reasonable estimate for the percentage of revenue that might be at stake on campus networks.
The original report, by research firm LEK, claims the U.S. motion picture industry lost US$6.1 billion to piracy worldwide, with most of the losses overseas. It identified the typical movie pirate as a male aged 16-24. MPAA said in a statement that no errors had been found in the study besides the percentage of revenue losses that could be attributed to college students, but that it would hire a third party to validate the numbers.
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
