The cost of illegal downloading on university campuses was overestimated by 300 percent in the study that has been a cornerstone for the movie industry’s fight against student piracy for the last two years.
The Motion Picture Association of America has alleged that since 2005, 44 percent of its domestic losses came from piracy traced to university campuses. It corrected that number to 15 percent last Tuesday, citing human error for the discrepancy.
“This was a great surprise to me as an administrator, because in the past the MPAA has been resolute in their belief as to the level of complaints emanating from college campuses,” said Kenn Heller, assistant dean of students.
Heller said he was concerned by the magnitude of the error since it made the association’s argument seem more convincing when they lobbied Congress to takes steps against colleges.
The incorrect findings have been used by the association to successfully lobby Congress for more stringent laws on how universities regulate and prevent piracy.
Kent Wada, director of information technology, said he felt the 889 instances of movie piracy attributed to UCLA was a misrepresentation because movies are often downloaded in several individual fragments.
“It was both puzzling and annoying. It goes back to the fact that these raw numbers are not very helpful. There’s no context,” Wada said.
Matt Dodge, a second-year computer science student, said he feels college students are singled out for piracy too often.
“The automatic targets are college students because we have that reputation of being reckless. That’s unfair when you really think about it,” Dodge said.
Dodge, who was cited for illegal downloading last year, said that 44 percent seems like a very high number to attribute to college students alone, since he believes middle and high school students also do a lot of illegal downloading.
Heller said the news of any statistical errors will not change UCLA’s position on illegal movie or music downloading and he maintains that UCLA has done significantly more than other campuses to prevent it.
“One of the things we have is an ongoing education program, called Get Legal. We provide information during orientation, and a letter goes out to each student at the beginning of the year explaining their responsibilities,” Heller said.
Part of the Get Legal campaign includes directing students away from illegal file sharing sites and promoting legal alternatives.
One service, Ruckus, is free for UCLA students and offers nearly three million music titles available for download. However, the tracks cannot be transferred onto portable devices such as iPods and MP3 players.
Another service open to the public is Qtrax, which was launched at midnight Monday and utilizes a new business model that gives listeners free unlimited downloads while using advertising revenue to keep artists and record labels in profit.
Qtrax claims to have the support of the major record labels because it requires listeners to view “non-intrusive and relevant advertising,” according its Web site.