Errors and Omissions

More on blind acceptance of online piracy statistics

From today's Times:

An article in Business Day yesterday about a deal between Warner Brothers and BitTorrent to sell movies and television shows online referred imprecisely to the results of a study commissioned by the Motion Picture Association of America. It found that in 2005, movie studios lost $2.3 billion to online piracy, not to piracy in general. (Go to Article).

It's easy to cite this statistic--it's in plain numbers, easy to understand and, of course, large--in the billions of dollars. (Organizations like the MPAA commission these studies so they can arm the press with evidence of the magnitude of the problem--from their viewpoint.) I wish the Times and other papers would analyze these statistics more closely (will someone please reproduce the exhaustive George Ziemann analysis of online music piracy statistics for movies?). If it turns out that the revenue lost to online piracy is a lot less than $2.3B, it makes it more difficult for the studios and record companies to portray themselves as victims.

Also, online piracy gets all the attention, when selling pirated DVDs when the movie is still in theaters is costing the studios real money. This op-ed piece from the Times on Saturday illustrates a straightforward, though radical, way for the studios to manage this problem--compress or eliminate the release windows.

New York Times, errors, piracy, movies, TV

posted by Unknown @ 5/10/2006 08:41:00 AM