A third of US students are thieves
p2pnet.net News:- Fully one third of all American teenagers and college students are thieves, says a new Hollywood report.
“Research conducted by the MPAA revealed that one-third of all internet piracy is committed by college students in the U.S,” says the Hollywood ‘trade’ organization, going on:
“The vast majority of Internet piracy in the U.S. – 71 percent – is committed by individuals between the ages of 16 and 24.”
In its specious Red Carpets Ratings service, “Piracy is theft, and pirates are thieves, plain and simple,” the MPAA states unequivocally. “Downloading a movie off of the Internet is the same as taking a DVD off a store shelf without paying for it.”
It’s not the same at all, of course. Nor are a third of US students and kids thieves. But facts and truth are configurable PR resources for the MPAA, and for brother outfits the RIAA and BSA, with the mainstream media acting as compliant industry PRADMs (public release and dissemination mechanisms).
Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, the Big Six Hollywood studios, claim they’re being ruined by file sharing. But in the same report, “I am pleased to share the good news that this summer season is off to a good start,” says MPAA boss China Dan Glickman.
“In the first five months, box office is up almost 5 percent over this time last year.”
However, he says sternly, “behind every blockbuster is a lot of hard work and investment, which many movie-goers don’t realize” and, “That is why our battle against piracy continues to be so important – millions of lost dollars directly affect our ability to invest in next summer’s movies. In fact, new research reveals that piracy cost the American movie industry $6.1 billion last year.”
The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and BSA (Business Software Alliance) have a number of things in common, not the least of which is the routine use of creative research and accounting practices which allow them to issue disingenuous statements to the mainstream media on huge and ongoing losses, attributed to ‘piracy’ and file sharing.
The fact the studios, labels and software companies continue to simultaneously report mind-boggling revenues never seems to faze corporate scribes.
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August 18th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
thats really bad
August 18th, 2006 at 7:15 pm
And guess what the biggest demographic of movie ticket purchasers is…
How convenient that the MPAA failed to include in their report information that could very well prove that movie “piracy” promotes legitimate movie viewership.
August 19th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
There’s an apple, if I buy the apple, there are no more apples for anybody else to buy, thus the price of the apple comes from scarcity. If I grab the apple and take off without paying for it, I am a thief.
Now, there’s an album or movie available for download on some p2p network. I have actually made a copy of it (but you can’t replicate an apple), the original movie is still available for sale on blockbuster video, there’s no fuckin’ scarcity that applies. Yes you haven’t paid to watch the movie, but you haven’t prevented anybody from watching it either.
Perhaps, you think $17 for a new release is too much to pay, and you’re not willing to pay that much, but they give you no choice, $17 or nothing, but again, there’s no scarcity like I said. When there’s no scarcity, the price of an item should be as low as it can be, not a fixed price arbitrarily set, or you’re being price discriminated, which should be illegal in some situations if you ask me.
Water, or air, are not really infinite resources, but they’re treated like they air, because for all practical purposes they are. I know they sell bottled water (I am fine with tap water), but they’re not just selling the water, or nobody would buy it, they’re also selling the idea bottled water is better for you for a, b, c reasons, just pure marketing strategy. You’ll live just as long drinking tap water all your life, believe me.
Anyway, see, there’s a difference. A movie is an infinite resource, it can be replicated forever, if you set an arbitrary price for it, you are depriving a segment of the papulation of having access to what have been labeled as cultural expression items. Price discrimination should be illegal for this kinds of things, music, movies, etc…
Of course, greed won’t let this be.
August 19th, 2006 at 6:37 pm
Your subject doesn’t make sense.
Are a third of college students downloaders of pirated entertainment or are a third of all users on P2Ps and torrents college students?
These don’t mean the same thing.
August 19th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
This doesn’t make sense because of the source. Paid for surveys do not all see the light of day. Only those paid for and come to the “correct” conclusion will be the ones spread out for public consumption. No one said it had to make sense, only that it needs to support the preconcluded notion that downloading is bad for the industry to see public viewing of the results.
The cartels aren’t the only one monkeying with the stats to make it sound good. It’s so common place today that hardly anyone remarks on the obvious fallacies involved. One has only to read the newspapers and see the latest criminal bust to find “adjusted” figures. Another good example is the Business Software Alliance figures that come up fairly regularly. Outlandish claims of software unpaid for in huge amounts and equally outlandish assumptions that it is a lost sale. Maybe the cartels are in better position in this matter than they would like to make out to be, eh? There certainly couldn’t be a hidden agenda in their position could there? (/sarcasm mode off)
Where else could they get free advertisement and at the same time sue for further income? The rampant greed of such organizations always seems to speak louder when associating them with their words and deeds. One should never take a devious demeanor at their word but rather by their deeds.
August 19th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
http://www.p2pnet.net/story_images/9617.jpg
August 20th, 2006 at 12:52 pm
This is an exageration.
I dout that one hundreth of one percent percent of American youth has been convicted of a felony.
Innocent until proven guilty.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
August 21st, 2006 at 7:43 am
What would it say to the MPAA and the RIAA if what they called “theivery” slowly dwindled down to nothing? It would almost be certain that such a trend would also include precipitous declines in movie attendance, DVD rentals, CD sales, and radio listenership. Why? Because what they are distributing is G~A~R~B~A~G~E!
Notice that I said ‘distributing’, not creating. The corporate conglomerates don’t ‘create’ anything, they just distribute it. They are rapidly becoming a superfluous middleman in delivering creative works from those who create them to those who enjoy them.
No wonder, they are full of bluster and blather because their empire is threatened. The people running these conglomerates are not artists and entrepreneurs, they are accountants and lawyers. So, it’s only natural that when they feel threatened, the lawsuits spew forth, and the beans get counted, and the numbers get cruched, and jiggled, realigned in deceptive ways to ‘prove’ the dubious points in their spurious lawsuits supported by exceptionally tenuous evidence, or computer printouts (with no chain-of-custody or authentication) they claim is evidence, but that someone could have just ginned up with a word processing package.
Where are they getting their statistics from? No doubt from some place where the sun don’t shine.
–TurboGeek
August 21st, 2006 at 9:45 am
How about 100 percent.
All kids high school to college students I know all either downloaded, shaere or have copies of cds. If it is all criminal activity” then all the kids are “criminals”. If the parents are responsible, then all parents are “criminal” also.
But as in the land where the average height is 10 feet, and being 10 feet does not make one tall, in the land where everyone shares or copies or owns a copy then no one is a criminal for doing it. Copying is then right. the acceptable thing, a tradition. Too easy to prohibit.
If lobbies and their politicians differ in values, they then do not fit. They are not part of the society they live in another world, out of economic convenience. But they do not own the government, the people do.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com