US Pirate Party Study Shatters MPAA Claims
Written by Ernesto on July 09, 2008While the Pirate Party might be well known in Sweden, and heard of elsewhere around Europe, it’s not really taken off in the country that prides itself as being ‘the land of the free’. Unperturbed, the US Pirate Party has soldiered on and with the preliminary release of data from it’s first study, it’s hitting back at the media lobbyists.
Claims by the music or film industries that ‘piracy is costing billions’ are commonplace. In 2005, for instance, the MPAA funded the LEK study, which claimed that over $6 billion was lost to MPAA members due to piracy. However, the figures and data behind those claims have never been publicly released, a fact underscored this past January when the MPAA had to release a statement saying ‘they made a mistake’ in one of the figures. It’s a figure that’s been quoted a lot, to this day, and was something that rankled US Pirate Party Administrator, Andrew Norton.
“I was tired of seeing those claims on every press release,” he tells TorrentFreak, “knowing there was no evidence to back them up. They could have said that the loss was $20 billion, if they think they could bluff it out. The sad fact is that we have news outlets, and politicians quoting this figure as fact, and yet not one verified any claim. If I said I could turn lead into gold, I would be bombarded with requests to prove it. They have turned air into $6billion, and supposedly smart people accept it without question.”
Frustrated, Norton decided he should study the MPAA’s own figures. When he couldn’t find any data to support their claims, he decided that there needed to be a study of the data the MPAA did put out. “I was thinking about where I could look, when the MPAA announced a new record year, and I thought ‘of course’. The MPAA can hardly question the accuracy of the data published by its members, and itself.”
The preliminary findings of the study, published today, show a different picture to the one the MPAA paints. Norton took the view that the films most likely to be distributed on filesharing networks, and sold on street corners, would be the big blockbuster films, and so he should look at the top 10 films of each year. The results from that are shown below.
With average growth throughout the time period, it would seem that claims of cinema piracy hurting box office figures (leading to cinemas issuing night vision goggles to staff, and teenagers being charged with crimes for recording 20-second clips) are unfounded. When certain p2p protocol lifespans are marked on the graph, for comparison, the MPAA claims are pretty much shattered.
Mr. Norton is also aware that he will have to prove he is not just making things up. The US Pirate Party, who is publishing the study, has stated that all data used in the study will be available when the full study will published at the end of July. He does have a comment for the MPAA however. “Prove your claims, or shut up about them.”
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94 Responses
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Finally some really good news today!!!!!!… still feeling sick with the news of that bastard cop (against TPB) going free…
Nice
Owned
With those kind of revenues, you can see how easily the industry can buy politicians and legislation.
Consistent revenue isn’t good enough for these people. Growing revenue isn’t even good enough for these people. They want their revenue to grow even more - if their revenue isn’t growing as much as they want, they must be loosing money (even if they actually aren’t).
If your industry is actually in trouble (and you aren’t being stupid by paying actors 20 million dollars per picture) then I might have sympathy for you. However, you would have to be nice - your attempts to further bring fascism to the internet is not nice to us.
I’m interested in the dip between 2004-2006
Awesome. I would certainly agree that the MPAA isn’t losing money based on this data.
I’d only be concerned with the leap that Napster/KaZaA/BitTorrent were increasing profits, which would be pretty tough to prove. It wouldn’t be a bad assumption though if we knew when aXXo started uploading (Anyone know?). If he started in mid-2005, then I’d be pretty confident that BitTorrent, etc. is having a major beneficial effect on the movie industry.
Now if this info could get into the hands of the actual artists and they could begin to understand piracy is not their worst enemy, then maybe there might be a shift in the tide… albeit a very slow one. This is a great preliminary step though (proving the MPAA is essentially lying at every corner).
Tell your friends, tell your neighbors! The Pirate Party is in town baby!
@6 yeah it’s strange… then again only the top 10movies were studied
Take a closer look at the graph, look at where the actual little dots are for each year. Thats actuley the earnings for that year (Which fluctuate as you will notice). The line is to show you its general increase, basically so you can see that its growing and not just fluctuating up and down.
Well you should also check out what kind of movies were released in these years. If you check at IMDB top 250 http://www.imdb.com/chart/top.
You will notice that there are several movies in 2004 being noticed in the IMDB top 250.
54. 8.4 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (end march 2004 released)
69. 8.4 Untergang, Der (end february 2005 released)
82. 8.3 Hotel Rwanda (end december 2004 released)
126. 8.2 Million Dollar Baby (end december 2004 released)
145. 8.1 The Incredibles (begin november 2004 released)
164. 8.1 Crash (begin may 2005 released)
183. 8.0 Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (half april 2004 released)
242. 7.9 Shaun of the Dead (end september 2004 released)
In comparison to 2005:
79. 8.3 Sin City (begin april 2005 released)
102. 8.2 Batman Begins (half june 2005 released)
147. 8.1 V for Vendetta (half march 2005)
In comparison to 2006:
43. 8.5 The Departed (end october 2006 released)
51. 8.4 Leben der Anderen, Das (released in 2007)
59. 8.4 Laberinto del fauno, El (end december 2006 released)
85. 8.3 The Prestige (end october 2006 released)
156. 8.1 Children of Men (end december 2006 released)
165. 8.1 Letters from Iwo Jima (end december 2006 released)
184. 8.0 Little Miss Sunshine (end july 2006 released)
You can check the box office earnings per movie per year here:
2004 - http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2004&p=.htm
2005 - http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2005&p=.htm
2006 - http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=2006&p=.htm
So I think we can conclude that in 2004 a lot of good movies made it to the screen, while in 2005 it were less. There were also good ones in 2006, but they were coming at the end which means a lot of people saw them in the next year 2007…
I don’t want to spit in this soup, but the relation between the box office earnings and piracy doesn’t tell you much. Yes, the earnings might have increased while piracy increased, but it’s a fact that cinema attendance is in decline and has been for years. The fact that movies make more money these days, is based on the higher ticket prices and inflation. Indy 4 for example marks Spielberg’s biggest box office weekend to date, higher than Jaws, Jurassic Park, E.T. etc. However, if you count the numbers of people who saw it, you’ll get a different picture.
Piracy definitely has an effect on how often people go to the movies, so do flat screen TVs and surround system and annoying teenagers in the movie theater, video on demand, netflix and supposedly GTA4.
Piracy DOES hurt the movie industry, there is no denying that. The question is how much the damage is. And the figure the MPAA gives is utterly ridiculous.
Most times, piracy enables people to watch stuff they would not see in theater in the first place, or buy it on DVD. They’d pick it up at Blockbuster/Netflix. So the loss is marginal.
“Piracy DOES hurt the movie industry, there is no denying that”
Uh, as evidenced by what exactly. I for one think its a load of crap.
J.
Piracy DOES hurt the movie industry, there is no denying that. The question is how much the damage is.
No it doesn’t. Movie “industry” hurts itself by releasing complete and total bullshit that nobody wants to watch. Same goes to music and games. Quality product will always sell.
PS Turning movies and music into “industry” is what actualy hurts it all imho. It’s form of art, and art cant be “industry”
“I’m interested in the dip between 2004-2006″
Yeah, that is interesting, especially considering the cunning Hearts & Minds PR campaign they had running an all.
“Prove your claims, or shut up about them.”
QFT
I think what @14 was saying is that piracy does _have an impact_ on the movie industry. Whether that’s harm or help is subjective and of great debate.
I think it’s great that there is some alternative research being presented here. Unfortunately, the movie industry as it exists now will never accept a benefit to piracy. As for-profit companies, the continued existence of the major studios requires growth–growth in profits, growth in market share, growth in consumer control systems, growth in share-holder value. At best there will be a smattering of industry insiders and small studios that speak up on the side of file-sharing.
If we really want to change the face of the industry, it will require supporting only the studios that are embracing new media. I say that if the existing hollywood mafiaa aren’t willing to share their work, then I’m not interested in it at all! The liberation of creative works held captive by their restrictive copyrights may well be a noble act, but if we build a new industry based on freedom from the ground up, then the writers, directors, actors and crews will follow, and mighty Paramount will crumble in our shadow.
Here’s a starting point, an open-source software animation released on a Creative Commons arbitration license.
http://orange.blender.org/
I don’t think the movie industry is losing much money but if they were wouldn’t it be from dvd sales?
Yawn, screw the MPAA and the RIAA while we are at it. Morons.
http://www.FireMe.To/udi
> “Here’s a starting point, an open-source software animation released on a Creative Commons arbitration license.”
It was indeed a great starting point, but I believe it was more aimed at showing the power of open source tools (and that it did well).
is that money standardized over the years?
because the value of the dollar hasnt been exactly constant…
More importantly, why doesn’t the graph take into account how much money was spent on these films? If they continue to spend more and more (and it seems like they are) when that’s taken into account, the graph might take a downward tilt.
Sorry, but if we’re going to get on the MPAA’s case for pulling numbers out of thin air, we need to get our math straight as well. Gross income is meaningless to this discussion.
“I believe it was more aimed at showing the power of open source tools”
Indeed, but this isn’t a battle over just movies or music or software. We really need to look at how our entire digital lives are organized. The open source/gpl software communities share much with the copyleft creative communities, and both need our support as the creative consumers of this new age.
The movies, musicians and software developers we choose to support now will help to create a digital environment in the future that is free and open for all. If we continue to support (to watch, talk about, buy) corporate, proprietary, restrictively-copyrighted products, those companies will continue to pressure our elected representatives to crack down. But if we support those creators that have embraced digital freedoms instead, they will be elevated and help to affect positive changes for our shared digital future while the old guard lose profits, market share and influence.
People are taking the statistics way too literally..
You can draw statistics any way you want to prove your point, you can account for gross income and profit and tax and expenditures or whatever you can come up with.. it doesn’t matter..
Statistics don’t really prove that much, it doesn’t matter how much these stupid companies make (Even though its completely rubbish the claims they make). Its all about control and power, they release crap and expect you to line up like a mindless robots.
They are outdated, I don’t care for there garbage, and its time for them to go.
I want freedom, not there controlling bull shit, they have made there bed and now they can sleep in it.
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