MPAA admits college piracy numbers inflated
Found on Ars Technica on Tuesday, 22 January 2008
After commissioning a 2005 study from LEK Consulting that showed collegiate file-swappers were responsible for 44 percent of movie studio "losses" to piracy, the MPAA then used the report it bought to bludgeon Congress into considering legislation to address this massive problem. Now the MPAA admits that the report's conclusions weren't even close to being right; collegiate piracy accounts for only 15 percent of "losses."
The fact that one of the key data points in this lobbying for the last two years was overstated by a factor of three is bad, but the fact that it came from a secret report just makes it all worse.
I don't even believe those 15%. Plus, that "human error" excuse is just bogus: if someone comes up with a number showing that almost half of your losses are made by a few students, it should make you raise an eyebrow. Putting that aside, there's also no way to calculate those losses, simply because there's no way to predict the sales. Customers may very well just be fed up with what the industry is delivering and buy less records. It's not like sale numbers are carved in stone; it's a dynamic market and if your business plan fails, don't try to blame something like P2P.