As Internet Usage Grows, Sexual Offenses Against Kids Have Decreased

Fri, Aug 8th 2008 6:38am

Filed Under:
downloads, france, movies, piracy, statistics

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Totally Misunderstanding Movie Downloading In France

from the so-many-mistakes,-so-little-time dept

A bunch of folks have sent in this report from Variety about a study talking about what a big deal unauthorized movie downloading is in France. Specifically, it points out that movie downloads are "reaching box office levels." Except... that means they're basically counting every download as a lost sale, which we (as well as those putting the study together) all know isn't true. Even worse, the folks behind the study (who go by the already biased name: Association Against Audiovisual Piracy) seem to totally miss the most obvious point from their own report: that movie piracy doesn't seem to have a major impact on movie ticket buying. After all, their own report points out that the most popular movies at the box office in France are also the most downloaded. If it were really true that movie downloads were harming the box office, then wouldn't that mean that the most downloaded movies ended up with fewer tickets sold? The fact that the two correlate suggest that (as we've seen over and over again) lots of movie downloading just shows tremendous demand for a movie, and it's likely to do quite well at the box office.

Tue, Jul 15th 2008 11:39pm

Filed Under:
blocking, employers, social networks, statistics

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Fun With Statistics: How Many Companies Are Blocking Facebook?

from the depends-on-who-asks dept

Consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas has come out with a study this week claiming that nearly one in four companies blocks employee access to social networks like Facebook and MySpace. It's a good story, which is why you see various news organizations picking up the story and running with it. Of course, if this sounds kind of familiar, that's because less than a year ago, some other company (this time it was a security company) came out with a report claiming that half of all businesses were blocking Facebook. Now, if you assume that both reports are true, then that would suggest that fewer firms are blocking Facebook than were last summer. Of course, chances are neither report is all that accurate. And, to be fair, the "headline" from the press on the second story was inaccurate: the actual study suggested that nearly half of all employees were banned from accessing Facebook. In theory, that could be true if a few large companies banned their employees from using the site. Either way, there are companies who probably ban Facebook at work -- just like in the early days of the telephone there were those that banned telephones at work, and, more recently there were companies that banned email or the internet at work. Eventually, companies recognize that fearing communication tools tends to backfire. Embracing them tends to be a lot more productive.

Fri, Jul 11th 2008 6:42am

Filed Under:
copying, dvd, losses, mpaa, piracy, statistics

Companies:
macrovision

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DRM Company Releases One-Sided Study On DVD Copying

from the let's-pick-this-apart dept

The MPAA has probably been the worst of the various Big Copyright industries in terms of the level to which their studies exaggerate the negative impact of unauthorized copying, while totally ignoring any positive impact. For example, it likes to widely cite a study (which it paid for) that triple- and quadruple-counts "losses" by noting the ripple effects. At the same time, it totally ignores the same positive ripple effects (the ones that cancel out the negative ones, and may even outweigh them). Of course, a big part of this is the claim that an unauthorized copy is a "lost sale."

Now it appears that Macrovision, the big DRM company that supplies DRM to movie studios has cooked up its own study trying to support the MPAA in this argument, claiming that lots of people are copying DVDs and that most of them would buy the DVDs they copy otherwise. However, the LA Times' Jon Healey does an excellent job pointing out the many significant weaknesses in the study, starting, of course, with the fact that it was paid for by Macrovision, with a clear intent in the results. And while Macrovision hypes of the fact that many people in the survey said they would have bought the DVDs they copied, it ignores the fact that the majority of folks they spoke to said the DVDs they made copies of were ones they already legitimately owned.

Even then, the results really aren't as significant as Macrovision would like you (or, rather, Hollywood) to believe. As Healey notes, the study completely ignores the positive impacts of being able to make a copy of a DVD. In fact, the most common reason for making a copy was for perfectly legal time-shifting or back-up purposes from DVDs they legitimately own. In other words, being able able to make those copies is a valuable part of the DVD. Take that away and people will buy fewer DVDs because you've made them less valuable. But, of course, that doesn't show up anywhere in the results, because that's the last thing Macrovision wants people thinking about.

While the study also hypes up the fact that more TV shows are being copied via DVD, it ignores the fact that this is probably quite beneficial. Since TV shows are ongoing experiences, you want more viewers -- and if a copy of a DVD gets someone new hooked on the show, they're more likely to start watching it on TV or to buy a future DVD. But, again, that's not mentioned at all. Either way, props to Healey and the LA Times for digging into the numbers a bit and not just parroting the press release findings, like many other news sources.

Tue, Nov 13th 2007 7:31am

Filed Under:
family activity, headlines, parents, statistics, video games