RIAA Again, Admitting To Lies This Time

The RIAA has been pushing our legislators for bills to protect their pocketbooks, such as the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007. This was justified based upon a 2005 MPAA study, where they blamed 44 percent of the movie industry's losses on college students illegally downloading movies.

Associated Press MPAA Admits Mistake on Downloading Study reports

But now the MPAA, which represents the U.S. motion picture industry, has told education groups a "human error" in that survey caused it to get the number wrong. It now blames college students for about 15 percent of revenue loss.

And it gets better.

Mark Luker, vice president of campus IT group Educause, says it doesn't account for the fact that more than 80 percent of college students live off campus and aren't necessarily using college networks. He says 3 percent is a more reasonable estimate for the percentage of revenue that might be at stake on campus networks.

NewsWeek, in MPAA admits mistake on downloading study reports

The original report, by research firm LEK, claims the U.S. motion picture industry lost $6.1 billion to piracy worldwide, with most of the losses overseas. It identified the typical movie pirate as a male aged 16-24. MPAA said in a statement that no errors had been found in the study besides the percentage of revenue losses that could be attributed to college students, but that it would hire a third party to validate the numbers.

It's time for our legislators to take a hard look at bills like H.R.4137. The MAFIAA has been out of control for some time, and this needs to stop.

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Talk About Mixed Emotions

Hackers vs the RIAA. Hackers 1, RIAA 0.

Apparently the RIAA is so busy suing consumers that they forgot to hire a decent programmer. With a simple SQL injection, all their propaganda has been successfully wiped from the site.

As a networking / security consultant, I dislike hackers, even though I was one (very lame, I know) long, long ago.


Big smile of the week.



But I hate the RIAA (now calling themselves the MAFIAA - seriously!) even more. So I will say

Congrats

to the hackers.

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Alan Ralsky Indicted

The Detroit Free Press reports, in Mich. spammer, 10 others indicted in alleged Chinese stock pump-and-dump scam, that

Michigan spam king Alan Ralsky , his son-in-law and nine others have been indicted in Detroit on charges of violating federal anti-spam laws

.

Unfortunately, the most serious charges carry a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. But, it's a start.

Happy New Year 2008.

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