The Wall Street Journal-20080123-Piracy Figures Are Restated
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Piracy Figures Are Restated
Associated Press
Hollywood laid much of the blame for illegal movie downloading on college students. Now, it says its math was wrong.
In a 2005 study it commissioned, the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that 44% 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 used the study to pressure colleges to take tougher steps to prevent illegal file- sharing and to back legislation that would force them to do so.
Now the MPAA, which represents the U.S. motion-picture industry, says "human error" in that survey caused it to get the number wrong. It now blames college students for about 15% of revenue loss.
Mark Luker, vice president of campus IT group Educause, says that doesn't account for the fact that more than 80% of college students live off campus and aren't necessarily using school networks. He says 3% is a more reasonable estimate for the revenue at stake on campus networks.
The original report, by research firm LEK, says the U.S. motion- picture industry lost $6.1 billion to piracy world-wide, with most of the losses overseas. 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.
