- Friday, 10 July 2009
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You are only what you are when no one is looking - Robert C. Edwards
Students are not P2P pirates after all
A SURVEY which the movie industry used as the basis to attack US universities has turned out as reliable as a sworn statement by Jeffrey Archer.
For two years the MPAA has waved a survey under the nose of its tame politicians in Washington claiming that 44 per cent of illegal movie downloads were conducted by college students.
The survey was penned by the research outfit LEK, and was used by the MPAA to lobby the US House of Representatives to get laws that would force Universities to clamp down on piracy or lose state money.
It seems the real figure is closer to 15 per cent and since a lot of students live off campus it means that about five per cent of P2P piracy is done using university networks.
In short, all the over reaction, all the court cases, all the song and dancing was all a complete pile of dog doo. What is scary is that the law is still before the House of Representatives and the MPAA does not look like it wants it retracted.
Meanwhile, the MPAA said that the study went wrong because of human error, but it still thinks that students are stealing a huge amount of movies.
In other words, there are no facts here, but the MPAA wants to lock up students because of a gut feeling.
Kenneth Green, the director of The Campus Computing Project told Inside Higher Education that the corrected MPAA numbers confirmed that P2P piracy was primarily a consumer broadband problem and nothing to do with universities.
He added that the MPAA owed an apology to the campus community.
We doubt this is likely to be forthcoming.
More here. µ
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Apparently, in passing legislation, like going to war, there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns. To paraphrase the immortal words of our former Sec. of Defense: "You go to congress with pile of money and fake facts and figures that you have (not the ones you wish you had)." Apparently it takes too long and is too much of a bother to actually find out the truth! I think our legislative system has a good legal case for infringement against Ebay, after all, they've been selling things to the highest bidder long before Ebay was around...
They're probably the majority of those who make money for the recording industry as well.
Just like other issues that are occuring today, the government cannot be trusted to tell the truth.
this study was wrong and mpaa are liars using it as “reliable evidence data” in court to sue innocent people.
I think that after this MPAA "little mistake", the US citizens should collectively request a law that states that, after any of those "little mistake", the balls of one of the MPAA big managers should be put in an open drawer of the US President's desk and the President himself should close it with a swift motion (not picture) during one of his speeches to the Nation (obviously)!!
Jeffrey Archer is the liar; Geoffrey Archer is an author (http://www.geoffreyarcher.co.uk/)
That MPAA and RIAA executives should all be thrown into a pit and stoned for lies, damn lies and evil statistics.
I know I have no proof, but hey, if it ain't stopping them, why should it stop me ?