• The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, January 23, 2008 11:33 AM

The Motion Picture Association of America, which for years has blamed college students for a large portion of illegal downloading, has got its math wrong. Big time. In 2005, the MPAA released a study saying that 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses came from illegal downloading by college students. The organization used those astronomical figures to pressure universities into cleaning up illegal file-sharing over their networks and to support legislation forcing them to do so. However, it turns out that the 44 percent figure is dead wrong--college students actually account for 15 percent revenue loss. The prior figure was attributed to "human error" from LEK, the research firm that authored the original report.

However, Mark Luker, vice president of university IT provider Educause, says the revised figure doesn't account for the fact that more than 80 percent of college students live off campus and thus, aren't using school networks. He adds that 3 percent is a more reasonable estimate for lost revenue on campus networks.

The LEK report shows that most of the $6.1 billion the U.S. motion picture industry lost to piracy worldwide comes from overseas. The MPAA says the report contains no errors other than the percentage of revenue losses attributable to college students.

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »