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Hollywood laid much of the blame for illegal movie downloading on college students. Now, it says its math was wrong.

In a 2005 study it commissioned, the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that 44 percent of the industry’s domestic losses came from illegal downloading of movies by college students, who often have access to high-bandwidth networks on campus.

The MPAA has used the study to pressure colleges to take tougher steps to prevent illegal file-sharing and to back legislation currently before the House of Representatives that would force them to do so.

But now the MPAA, which represents the U.S. motion picture industry, has told education groups a “human error” in that survey caused it to get the number wrong. It now blames college students for about 15 percent of revenue loss.

The MPAA says that’s still significant, and justifies a major effort by colleges and universities to crack down on illegal file-sharing. But Mark Luker, vice president of campus IT group Educause, says it doesn’t account for the fact that more than 80 percent of college students live off campus and aren’t necessarily using college networks. He says 3 percent is a more reasonable estimate for the percentage of revenue that might be at stake on campus networks.

“The 44 percent figure was used to show that if college campuses could somehow solve this problem on this campus, then it would make a tremendous difference in the business of the motion picture industry,” Luker said. The new figures prove “any solution on campus will have only a small impact on the industry itself.”

The original report, by research firm LEK, claims the U.S. motion picture industry lost $6.1 billion to piracy worldwide, with most of the losses overseas.

Popular BitTorrent search engine TorrentSpy lost a copyright case brought against it in a US cought by the Motion Picture Association of America by default for destroying evidence, reports the BBC. The site’s operator’s apparently ignored an order to keep server logs of the IP addresses of people who facilitated the trading of files via the site.

“They have engaged in widespread and systematic efforts to destroy evidence and have provided false testimony under oath in a effort to hide evidence of such destruction,” wrote Judge Florence-Marie Cooper in her decision.

For their part, the defendants, site operators Justin Bunnell, Forrest Parker, Wes Parker and Valence Media, put forward multiple arguments for why they should not hand over server logs. Initially, they argued that because their servers were located in the Netherlands they were under the jurisdiction of Dutch law and were protected by a US court order to turn them over.

Later they told the judge that they could not comply with an order to turn over certain server logs because it was temporary information and was not able to be retained. The lawyer for the defendants said that they were reluctant to turn over records of IP addresses to protect the privacy of their users.

The BBC reports that TorrentSpy is expected to appeal. The MPAA was predictably pleased by the ruling, calling TorrentSpy a “one-stop shop for copyright infringement” in a statement.

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The MPAA has a stated hard line stance against infringement of copyright. “pirates are thieves, plain and simple” and has vigorously prosecuted both direct infringers and producers of DRM breaking software.

In their website targeted at teaching kids about copyright (understandable by any kid with a law degree) they rigorously define the terms that apply to copyright, including this one about permission granted by a copyright holder.

The GPL gives permission for derivative works to be created as long as the GPL applies to the whole work. To enable the freedom of further derivatives, the GPL specifies that any software covered by that license must have source code available.

Ubuntu Linux is highly committed to open source and in their license explains clearly what is required of anyone creating applications or distributions based on Ubuntu, including the following line

Must allow these rights to be passed on along with the software. You should be able to have exactly the same rights to the software as we do.

The MPAA released a University Toolkit designed to help universities detect copyright infringement on their networks, which included Ubuntu and Apache amongst other applications covered under the GPL. This toolkit included custom traffic monitoring software. The source code for this component was not included or otherwise available, no doubt to prevent easy subversion.

Given this violates the permissions for reuse specified in the license for Ubuntu, the technical director asked them to either include the source code or stop distributing the package. The MPAA essentially ignored the request until their ISP was served with a DMCA takedown notice.

Irony is indeed delicious.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) withdrew a controversial new amendment from the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act Monday afternoon. Reid’s amendment would have required the Department of Education to compile an annual list of 25 colleges that were considered the worst culprits in file-sharing, based on the volume of letters received from RIAA and MPAA enforcers–letters that are not subject to judicial oversight, and are considered opinions of the RIAA and MPAA.

Universities appearing on the list would have been put “on probation” with unknown consequences and forced to demonstrate a plan of action detailing how they planned to stop piracy on their networks using technological means.

While Reid withdrew the amendment without comment, it would seem the withdrawal was the result of a fierce outcry from concerned individuals and groups such as the university coalition EDUCAUSE. EDUCAUSE last week issued an urgent call to action to its members: “CALL, not write, your state’s U.S. senators’ staff members … and tell them how much higher education opposes this amendment.”

The Reid Amendment was just one amongst a flurry of others added on to the Higher Education Act of 1965, a process that Inside Higher Ed described as “fast and furious” and those close to the situation described as “fluid.”

Moments after Reid announced the withdrawal, an e-mail circulated around the senate floor saying the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass), had agreed to incorporate a modified version of the Reid amendment. Under the new version, universities would be required to warn students of the penalties of illegal file sharing, outline campus policies on file sharing and describe what is being doing to stop it on campus networks.

We resent writing about the MPAA, simply because every time the organization makes a statement it invariably exposes some aspect of its backwards perspective. This time the Association has made the rather preposterous claim that the efforts of staff and customers in preventing illegal recordings of Spider-Man 3 gave the film “a fair shot at its record-setting opening.” In all, 31 people were caught illegally recording the movie, a figure which is apparently thanks to night vision equipped cinema staff (motivated by a $500 reward for each case) and reporting from the patrons themselves in a few cases. The logic that this in some way helped assure that the film would be a commercial success is shaky at best: it only takes a single recording for the film to become “pirated.” And of course, if the system for detecting illegal recordings of movies is working so well, why do we still have to sit through those patronizing anti-piracy PSAs? [Via TechDirt]

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Stanford University, the birth place of Yahoo! and Google, has come up with a lucrative way to deal with DMCA complaints from the MPAA and RIAA against its students: terminate their Internet service and charge a reconnection fee. First time offenders will be charged $100, a second offense will cost $500, and a third DMCA means paying $1000 and signing a letter indemnifying the school.

The school claims they get so many complaints that it takes three full time employees to sort through them all, and the fees will help pay for those resources. Schools fingered by the RIAA and MPAA as top havens of piracy have taken divergent approaches toward dealing with the problem. Some have banned P2P traffic outright, some have simply ignored the complaints from the industry associations, and others, like the University of Wisconsin-Madison, are demanding a formal subpoena before handing over any student information. But Stanford might be the only school that has tried to turn a profit out of it.

The RIAA has been more aggressive at targeting students for copyright infringement. Sending “pre-litigation” settlement notices to students, which threaten lawsuits and offer a settlement for a nominal fee (usually around $3000). Some have pointed out that these settlements are generally small enough that it is not worth it for students to go to court. Some people, however, suspect that US and international courts will soon find that the IP gathering and monitoring techniques used by the RIAA in order to get information about users to send out its “pre-litigation” notices are not legal.

*This is a mass email to All Faculty & All Academic Professionals & All Civil Service Staff & All Undergrad Students & All Grad Students

*This was sent March 31, 2007 at 1:07 AM

As you may have read in the popular press, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) among others are increasing their copyright enforcement activities. As part of this increased effort, the RIAA has begun to target college students specifically, which means that students who engage in unlawful peer-to-peer file sharing are more likely than ever to be identified and sued by the RIAA.

We think that these increased enforcement activities warrant taking a moment to discuss the relevant policies and practices at the Urbana- Champaign campus of the University of Illinois.

The University does not condone the use of peer-to-peer software for illegal file sharing. Those who engage in it violate U.S. Copyright laws as well as the campus’s own policies, including the Student Code and Policy on the Appropriate Use of the Computer Network. Additionally the University bears significant costs associated with responding to DMCA violation notices and the network capacity absorbed by file sharing reduces its availability for general research, teaching, and administrative purposes. For additional information of University related copyright issues, see

The BSA, RIAA and MPAA are all well known for their bogus stats about piracy that are easily disproved. In fact, when it comes to the BSA, the company they contracted to conduct the study has even complained that the BSA is misusing the stats. You would hope that a younger, more dynamic industry wouldn’t fall into the same trap. Unfortunately, though, it looks like the video game industry is going down the same pointless path. Todd Hollenshead from id Software is getting a lot of attention today for trumpeting the ESA’s latest bogus stat numbers that appears to assume all pirated copies are lost sales and not taking into account (at all) the fact that pirated copies can later lead to legit sales. Hollenshead goes on to talk about various annoying means of copy protection to keep anyone from pirating the game. This isn’t a new argument for id. Last year, the company put out a similar statement about how piracy was killing the video game industry (which actually appears to be pretty vibrant). It also ignores id’s own history. The early success of games like Castle Wolfenstein and Doom were, in large part, thanks to pirated copies being widely available and getting people hooked (often resulting in them buying legit copies, or later software products from id). It also ignores the success of other game publishers, such as Stardock, who decided that treating all its customers as if they’re criminals is a bad idea — and releasing their game with no copy protection at all… and having it turn into a best seller.

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It is no secret that the MPAA and other anti-piracy organizations track down alleged pirates by uploading fake torrents. Up until now it was always unclear where those files came from, and how to identify them.

The MPAA and other anti-piracy watchdogs try to trap people into downloading fake torrents, so they can collect IP addresses, and send copyright infringement letters to ISPs. They hire a company to put up fake copies of popular movies, music albums, and TV series. They even use pirate like filenames such as “Battlestar Galactica S03E07 REPACK DSR XviD-ORENJi” and “Miami Vice[2006]DvDrip[Eng]-aXXo“.

One of the btjunkie admins has found a unique way to identify trackers that host these fake files, which makes it easy to efficiently remove them.

A tough California bill that would have prohibited companies and individuals from using deceptive “pretexting” ruses to steal private information about consumers was killed after determined lobbying by the motion picture industry, Wired News has learned.

The bill, SB1666, was written by state Sen. Debra Bowen, and would have barred investigators from making “false, fictitious or fraudulent” statements or representations to obtain private information about an individual, including telephone calling records, Social Security numbers and financial information. Victims would have had the right to sue for damages.

The bill won approval in three committees and sailed through the state Senate with a 30-0 vote. Then, according to Lenny Goldberg, a lobbyist for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the measure encountered unexpected, last-minute resistance from the Motion Picture Association of America.

“The MPAA has a tremendous amount of clout and they told legislators, ‘We need to pose as someone other than who we are to stop illegal downloading,’” Goldberg said.

Consequently, when the bill hit the assembly floor Aug. 23, it was voted down 33-27, just days before revelations about Hewlett-Packard’s use of pretexting to spy on journalists and board members put the practice in the national spotlight.

Legislature records confirm that the MPAA’s paid lobbyists worked on the measure. An aide to Bowen, who was forced out of the legislature by term limits and was elected Secretary of State, said the MPAA made its displeasure with the bill clear to lawmakers.

“The MPAA told some members the bill would interfere with piracy investigations,” the aide said. The association “doesn’t want to hamstring investigators.”

The MPAA declined to comment for this story.