Why Does The Press Still Blindly Believe 'Studies' Put Out By The Entertainment Industry?
from the makes-no-sense dept
For years upon years, we've seen the press parrot the "findings" of various entertainment industry "studies" about copyright or file sharing, and usually, as you dig into the details, you discover that the report's methodology is laughable. You would think that, with the GAO highlighting how bogus most of these reports are, earlier this year, that the press would be a bit more cautious about simply repeating the findings. No such luck.A bunch of you have been sending over various versions of the story about a new study, sponsored by the movie industry in Australia, suggesting that practically all BitTorrent traffic was for infringing files, with the number 99.7% of the traffic being thrown around by otherwise respectable publications. Thankfully, TorrentFreak actually bothered to look at the details and rips apart the problems with the study, noting that each of the four questions the study "answers" appear to be based on bogus data.
None of this is to suggest, of course, that the majority of BitTorrent usage is not likely to be infringing works. I don't think anyone doubts that it is most widely used for such things. The question, however, is whether or not it's really just 0.3% that's not infringing. It's possible, but the study used here doesn't seem to support the claim.
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Filed Under: bittorrent, file sharing, studies
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Because...
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Re: Because...
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press = wrong word
Anyone else does not believe it....
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Re: press = wrong word
Would you really consider Arstechnica to be a 'big media' company?
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"The Press" doesn't believe anything.
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Why Does The Press Still Blindly Believe 'Studies' Put Out By The Entertainment Industry?
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Researchers?
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Re: Researchers?
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Cheaper
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Because...
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Re: Because...
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A real journalist would doubt the report and actually spend time investigating and confirming the facts. Also since the papers required ad money they will never really question a potential revenue source in fear that it may alienate those monies.
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why?
For the same reason that you blindly believe that people using BitTorrent are "potential customers" who will eventually pay something willingly. Oh, I know that everyone claims that they're just "tasting" and they'll pay "if it's good enough", but we know how it works and you blindly believe them.
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Re: why?
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Re: why?
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Re: why?
You seem to have erred; if they 'will' eventually pay something then they are not potential customers, they are future customers. I believe you meant 'may' eventually pay something.
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Same reason you blindly follow your studies
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Re: Same reason you blindly follow your studies
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Wow... someone tell Blizzard!
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Re: Wow... someone tell Blizzard!
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Re: Re: Wow... someone tell Blizzard!
I don't know if Debian distributes older versions via BitTorrent, but lets assume they do. They have a crapload of torrents. And that's just ONE Linux.
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Re: Re: Re: Wow... someone tell Blizzard!
They way they did the study, regardless of bogus data, is heavily biased towards 'popular' torrents. While traffic for things such as Linux distributions may be far higher for individual files overall, they are not even included in the study because they are unlikely to ever have enough traffic at one time to be considered popular.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Wow... someone tell Blizzard!
The study is basically "we ignored the major sources of legitimate BitTorrent traffic and found that most of the remaining BitTorrent traffic was illegitimate". Well, d'uh.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wow... someone tell Blizzard!
What's really priceless is their response to the criticism:
"Thank you for your enquiry regarding our research report "Investigation into the extent of infringing content on BitTorrent networks". As researchers, we not only stand by the findings that we have arrived at, but - having made our methodology public - we are providing other bona fide researchers to replicate and/or dispute our findings. Their results can in turn be assessed through the peer review process; this is the process that normal research activity takes.
You have raised some interesting points that are fundamental to the validitiy of any study in this area: the sampling strategy; verification of results and so on. We believe that our methodology was rigorously applied to the sample that we obtained. Over time, we will replicate the sampling process, so that we will gain better estimates of the population results. This is the fundamental tenet of statistical sampling."
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Re: Re: Wow... someone tell Blizzard!
Linux is quite a large chunk of the traffic. Also, Twitter is now using torrent protocol to update its servers.
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What doesn't have copyright that can also be shared on internet?
Doesn't mean everything is illegal to share.
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Sure it is. The same way the Internet (or any other communication medium, including talking) is mostly used to transmit infringing content. Heck, if it was up to the to content creators, just humming a song would already be infringing. It's almost impossible to do anything that can't be considered infringing these days.
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The Laziness of the News Media
Then there's the fact that for newpapers the Entertainment section isn't treated as hard news (i.e. requiring a modicum of fact checking etc.) because it's really a cash cow. Kind of like the "New Homes" sections. (For television think the entertainment segment which is treated the same.) This stuff is considered fluff and the entertainment industry knows and exploits this.
Reporters will tell you they don't believe a word of these reports but they plop it out there anyway because "who cares, it's only fluff and doesn't really affect anything". Having said that they then treat it with all the gravity that a break in at Ft. Knox or the Bank of England would get.
Then, of course, the same reporters and organizations wonder why they're about as well believed and trusted as politicians are and almost as loathed while the claim that they are vital to the proper functioning of a free society.
That last part is true though no one would know it any more as not offending advertisers or chasing them so closely they might as well stick their collective noses up the advertisers tail pipe. Particularly the entertainment industry's tail pipe. I guess it smells better.
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Silly-Ness
I'm with Nina - the Media and the Entertainment Industry are one and the same basically these days.
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ummmm
Who owns the press?
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The press has a vested interest in protecting the old way of doing things. Nothing surprising here.
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