Why did colleges stay mum on MPAA stats?
John Heidemann was skeptical about what the movie industry was saying about campus piracy.
A researcher in the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California, Heidemann had heard the film studios' claim that college students downloading movies on campus were responsible for 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses to piracy.
That added up to about $572 million. So, working with a team of researchers last summer--the famous Hollywood sign on the mountain clearly visible from his workplace--Heidemann and the group came up with a way to track file-sharing use on USC's network. Following a 14-hour monitoring of the system, the team concluded that between 3 and 13 percent of those on the school's network (PDF) were using peer-sharing technology and accounted for between 21 and 33 percent of overall traffic, he said.
There was no way for Heidemann to discern whether the information being transferred was pirated. But even in a worst case scenario, 13 percent indicated that only a small minority of USC students were engaged in illegal file sharing. Heidemann's research flew in the face of the MPAA's claims.
This was an example of a university not relying on the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to tell it what was happening on its network. But USC is the exception rather than the rule.
For two years, the film industry has relied on an erroneous figure to persuade the public that college students are thieves. The MPAA acknowledged Tuesday that a survey it released in 2005 overstated the damage caused by piracy at the nation's universities. The MPAA now says that instead of 44 percent, students account for 15 percent of domestic losses, or about $195 million.
But how did the error go unchallenged for so long? Why weren't network managers from UCLA to Harvard the ones to sound the alarm? Observers say that many schools were probably afraid to do their own studies.
"Look at them, the universities were running scared," said Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, a company that tracks peer-to-peer traffic. "They probably didn't do the research because they were afraid about what they would find. (Colleges) have been singled out as the enclave of the most egregious piracy."
If Tuesday's revelation from the MPAA did nothing else, it should serve to teach college presidents that they shouldn't rely on the word of a third-party to say what its students are up to--especially one that has spent the past two years telling Congress that college students are responsible for almost half of all movie piracy in the U.S.
Mark Luker, vice president Educause, an organization representing college information technology departments, said plenty of people were skeptical and asked to see the data. But the schools "did not run their own surveys," Luker acknowledged. He added that college administrators should have at least "insisted that we see the study."
The MPAA has backed proposed legislation that would require universities participating in federal student financial-aid programs to consider offering "alternatives" to illegal downloading or "technology-based deterrents" to piracy.
MPAA Washington general counsel Fritz Attaway told reporters last November: "I think it's perfectly legitimate for Congress to say, 'Wait a minute. If we're giving you money, we don't want it to be used to help college kids infringe copyright.' "
Just what impact the MPAA's goof will have on the proposed legislation remains unclear. A spokeswoman for the House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor, which has already passed the higher-education bill backed by the MPAA, said Wednesday that the committee has asked the MPAA for more information and "we plan to review it."
In the meantime, perhaps college presidents should chat with their IT chiefs to see what's going on.
Had anyone at the University of California at Berkeley ever asked Vanessa DeGuzman, a technology support manager for a 7,000-person campus dorm, about the MPAA's estimates, she would have told them, "It definitely seemed like their numbers were high."
DeGuzman acknowledges that all she has is anecdotal information, but she's noticed that the number of "takedown" notices she has received from entertainment companies has been falling significantly. The notices are legal documents that typically notify the school that someone on their network is pirating content.
She credits a greater emphasis on educating incoming students about copyright infringement. UC Berkeley has programs called "Learn Before You Burn," and "Think Before You Click." Students who receive a takedown notice are immediately booted from the network for a week. A second notice and the student must appear before a peer-review board before getting their Web privileges back.
In the future, perhaps the universities can add their own notice: learn the truth before you cower.
CNET News.com's Anne Broache contributed to this story.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. 
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I also asked why it is that the RIAA and MPAA insist on treating all their customers as potential thieves, and why they are punishing their legitimate paying customers with more and more draconian content restrictions, when in fact
it is only a small percentage of people that actually pirate and do not pay for content.
It appears that they have used misinformation to persuade Congress to agree in lockstep to all their claims relating to piracy. I hope some of the people in Congress now have the courage to repeal some of the most obnoxious pieces of legislation they were persuaded to pass, since it is now clear the "figures" and "data" they were relying on are wrong.
Restore fair use for consumers!!!!
not wrong, but plain lies. The thing is, all those involved, MPAA, RIAA, the concerned lawyers, and of course the legislators, now know
these figures were lies. When you are off by a margin of 200% from what you proclaim is the truth, then the industry can only be labelled a liar. Even in the case of the accepted 15% piracy
rate, there's no independent corraboration.
As for restoring fair use for consumers, forget it. DRM is now a weapon to fight Steve Jobs; Amazon.com now supplies DRM-free downloads; but this becomes a privilege tobe denied to iTunes.
But, if a DVD goes through the mail, it's just a rental?
One could just as easily assert that a "pirated" movie doesn't result in the loss of a DVD purchase, but simply the loss of a DVD rental.
I strongly suspect that if I were to download a movie from somewhere, I would watch it once or twice, and then free up the space on my machine. This would be a pirated rental, not a pirated DVD.
IMHO, Hollywood needs to understand that the bigger threat to their income is Netflix and Hollywood video DVD rental, and not downloading over the net. Yet, they don't seem to be doing anything about that.
It just makes no sense to me.
If these were congressional hearing, which I believe a few of them were, and
"The MPAA acknowledged Tuesday that a survey it released in 2005 overstated the damage caused by piracy at the nation's universities"
the MPAA knowingly lied in a congressional hearing under oath. I may be wrong, but isn't that an instance of perjury? And to pressure colleges into backing down by using false numbers an instance of fraud? In which case, the government should take legal action against the MPAA and shut it down for good.
Do you..?
If they are taking the RRP of a video and multiplying it by the number of pirate copies then they are likely getting a hideously overestimated figure.
- Industry's own fault
- by perfectblue97 January 26, 2008 9:14 AM PST
- People will happily pirate movies and CDS but worth $100s but won't shop lift a 50c candy bar, why? Because they see the candy bar as a physical asset with value, but not a movie or a CD.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(13 Comments)The hyper-capitalist entertainment in industry is making poor quality productions with too many restrictions, is selling them at too high a price, then is rapidly moving on to the next "must have" product with complete disregard for the products already on the market.
This leads to people not valuing music or movies and feeling that they are being conned by the industry. In turn this makes them more likely to see music and movies as valueless transient objects.
In short, most piracy is the industry's own fault.