from a new york times article regarding the mpaa admitting that they overstated the numbers of people pirating movies online at college campuses. previously they stated that 44% of piracy was on campus. now they are saying
“oops our bad. its only 15%”
but they are quick to say that campus life only makes up 3% of the population so for 3% of the population to commit 15% of the piracy is still a bad thing and that they are still creating the bonfires to burn the witches and heretics!
so what about the other 85%. seems to me that this would be the greater need for focus. not the measly 15%. so what if its disproportionate to the demographic of the population as a whole. i doubt very much that people from the ages of 0-9 and from 65-whenever are doing a heck of a lot of anything over the internet. i’m sure that would shave the percentage down. then you can remove all the people of ‘internet’ age that wouldnt even know how to P2P download, mostly age groups 40-64, and then you get a statistic that would show you college students actually acount for much less proportionately of the piracy than the MPAA actually thinks.
the wonderful thing about statistics is that you can manipulate them so easily to say what you want them to say.
perhaps instead of blaming whole groups of people, some of which dont participate in illegal downloading or distributing, the MPAA should focus on the actual individual criminals. blanket blaming doesnt do anything but insight fear and is borderline slander.
~adieu