MPAA's Still Not Changing Attack on College Students After 300% Mistake

Still says that those responsible for a mere 15% of domestic and 3% of global piracy must still be pursued and held accountable - even if it means going after federal education funds.

Last week I reported how the MPAA had a mea culpa of sorts and announced that it had "mistakenly" overstated total domestic losses due to piracy by college students in a 2005 study by some 300%!

Now how it's possible for one of the world's so-called "top consulting firms" to make such an egregious mistake is beyond me, but something smells awfully fishy. If domestic piracy losses are some $1.3 billion and they have corrected the percentage of that attributable to college students from 44% to now 15%, that denotes a real difference of some $377 million USD! Is a reputed "top consulting firm" so incompetent as to make such a dramatic error? An error of say around 1 or 2% could possibly be chalked up to an overzealous intern or a calculator with a mind of its own, but a 300% error? My gut tells me the MPAA needed dramatic results and it got what it paid for.

What's now so troubling is who the heck comprises this other 85% of so-called pirates? Why are they not being targeted? Why are STUDENTS - the ones whose education is critical for the future of this country - being singled out?

In a press release regarding the "clarification" of the data, the MPAA had the gumption to write the following:

The latest data confirms that college campuses are still faced with a significant problem. Although college students make up three percent of the population, they are responsible for a disproportionate amount of stolen movie products in this country.

How do they know this? Is a mere 3% of the US population really responsible for $195 million USD worth of movie piracy losses?

Kenneth Green of Inside Higher ED wrote a nice piece yesterday that punches and crunches all the facts and figures at hand and shows just how nonsensical the MPAA is being here.

He writes:

The MPAA’s release says that “college students make up three percent of the [U.S.] population.” In fact, “college students” ages 16-67, account for almost 6 percent of the US population. The Department of Education reports the projected number of full- and part-time college students in two and four-year degree-granting institutions for the 2007-08 academic year totals some 18 million students; the U.S. Census Bureau reports that the U.S. population as of December 2007 totals some 303,579,509 individuals. Do the math and you’ll find that 5.9 percent of the nation’s population could be classified as “college students,” a population that includes full-time undergraduate and graduate students, part-time students in undergraduate and graduate programs, commuter students in community colleges, and adults enrolled in online degree programs, among others.

But the population of college students that most concerns the MPAA are the undergraduates who live in campus dorms and who have 24/7 access to high speed campus networks: these are typically college freshmen and some sophomores in large public universities and the majority of undergraduates in small, private liberal arts colleges. The dorm residents total some two million students and account for 11 percent of the much larger population of 18 million college students, ages 16-67.

I and others continue to provide evidence that colleges have policies and impose sanctions on students who engage in illegal P2P activity using campus networks. Unfortunately, the MPAA and the Recording Association of America continue to press for costly “technology solutions” that campus IT experts have deemed both expensive and ineffective.

Now let’s turn the MPAA’s claim that college students account for a “disproportionate amount of stolen movie products.” The real metric for assessing “proportionality” should not be college students as a proportion of the total U.S. population, which includes millions of infants and the elderly who don’t go the movies or rent DVDs, but college students as a proportion of the movie-going population. Although the MPAA does not publish separate data for college students as a proportion of the U.S. movie-going audience, it does report that individuals aged 12-24 account for 28 percent of the “movie going” public. (Interestingly, the MPAA data seem to ignore all the “moviegoers” under age 12: this makes you wonder about Hollywood’s infamous accounting practices and suggests that no one under age 12 goes to the movies. But what about millions of kids under age 12 who went to see Pirates of the Caribbean, Cars, Night at the Museum, Superman Returns, Ice Age, Happy Feet, and Over the Hedge — seven of the top 10 grossing films in 2006?)

Extrapolating from the MPAA’s public data on paid admissions (i.e., the number of purchased movie tickets) we see that individuals aged 18-24 accounted for 19 percent of the 1.332 billion movie tickets sold in 2006. Admittedly, a significant number, but not all, of the 18-24 year olds going to movies in 2006 were college students. But without condoning illegal P2P piracy, these numbers suggest that the proportion of downloading that the MPAA now attributes to college students (15 percent) may be roughly proportionate (or possibly even “under-proportionate”) to college students as a segment of the movie going public. (Perhaps the MPAA will offer up a grant for an independent study of the movie-going behaviors of college students, plus additional funds to find the millions of “missing” children under age 12 who are not included in their numbers about movie attendance.)

Green makes absolutely excellent points here. What is the MPAA still holding back and why isn't the MPAA changing its position on its proposed anti-P2P legislation currently before Congress?

More importantly here is where the heck are elected officials on this one? Where is their outrage over being misled by 300%! If a lobbying group told me there was a dire problem in America and they had "proof" who was responsible fro almost half of it I'd be downright angry if it was later revealed to be a measly 15% instead! I'd be especially irate if I had been part of efforts to threaten the cutoff of critical education funds and a proposed mandate that colleges and universities alike spend millions of dollars fighting it when it could have otherwise been spent on scholarships, labs, equipment, and other MORE IMPORTNAT needs.

As Green points out, "Arizona State University CIO Adrian Sannier testified that his institution had spent approximately $450,000 on P2P technology deterrent software over the past six years; Mr. Sannier also described illegal P2P activity as an “arms race” that neither side will win, an assessment affirmed by other campus CIOs testifying at the June hearing."

And Congress wonders it has such a low approval rating.