
MPAA Costs Hollywood More Than US BitTorrent Piracy - lomegor
http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-costs-hollywood-more-than-us-bittorrent-piracy-111122/
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klodolph
> 16.5% of total Internet traffic on an average day comes from BitTorrent.
> Since BitTorrent traffic goes both ways (upload and download), 8.75% of this
> is downstream traffic.

Uh, what? No. In a closed network, 100% of all traffic is downstream
_somewhere_. It's like saying that 50% of all phone calls in the world are
phone calls to someone, and the other 50% are phone calls from someone.

~~~
Cieplak
Moreover, bittorrent connections are almost never as simple as Alice sending a
file to Bob. The network topology is far more intricate, with Bob and Alice
sending and receiving chunks simultaneously from dozens of seeders/leechers.

~~~
humbledrone
Doesn't matter. The sum of the size of the chunks downloaded for a movie is
the same whether they came from one server or dozens.

~~~
Cieplak
You're totally right.

For some reason I was thinking the quantity downloaded could exceed the
quantity uploaded in a torrent swarm, but that's just wrong. The inputs equal
the outputs.

I now see that { A->B, A->C, A->D } is three separate one-to-one mappings,
instead of a single one-to-many mapping, in the context of A sharing a chunk
with B, C, and D.

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DaveMebs
It doesn't matter how much the MPAA costs in relation to current levels of
BitTorrent traffic. The comparison you need to make is the cost of the MPAA
vs. the amount of money Hollywood made from Netflix. From the MPAA's
perspective, if there was unfettered piracy and no making/enforcement of the
laws, everyone would pirate their content. Thus, the MPAA is protecting the
$180 billion that Hollywood made off Netflix because those customers did not
steal.

Now obviously lawsuits and lobbying drive some customers to choose Netflix
over BitTorrent, but there's also the fact that Netflix and BitTorrent deliver
completely different online movie services. Netflix serves customers a limited
selection of movies that they can start watching right now. BitTorrent
delivers "customers" any movie they want, but they need to wait before they
can start watching it the first time. They can watch it right away any time
after that, even if they aren't on the internet, however. The author assumes
that, cost aside, Netflix provides a superior offering. That might be true,
but if both were legal, I know what I would choose (and it's not Netflix).

~~~
ericd
Most people will choose the most convenient solution that doesn't cost a ton,
it's definitely not lawsuits, lobbying, or anything to do with the MPAA that's
driving people to use Netflix. In the cases where Netflix has something I want
to watch, I much prefer to watch it there. If Netflix had a library as
complete as BitTorrent, very few people would continue watching things via BT.

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devindotcom
Yeah, I was looking at this earlier - it's a good demonstration of the
limitations of napkin calculations, especially when you stack the napkins on
each other. There's a lot - a loooot - of information missing here, although
it is a thought-provoking little post.

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bunderbunder
The actual figure wasn't quoted in the article, but some quick Googling
reveals an LA Times article that indicates that the MPAA's budget was $64m in
2009: [http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/10/business/la-fi-
dodd-...](http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/10/business/la-fi-dodd-
mpaa-20110510)

If you also correct for that spurious division by 2 but keep the other
assumptions, the correct figure for increased revenue should be $120m.

Needless to say, 64 is not greater than 120.

~~~
snowwrestler
It's also worth pointing out that fighting piracy is only one part of what the
MPAA does. Their budget also covers the entire film rating system, quite a bit
of industry research and reporting, and lobbying at the state and federal
level for things like tax breaks, union regulations, etc.

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jaylevitt
The article assumes that Netflix's revenue is a function of traffic, not
subscribers. Without any data to show that BitTorrent users (a) aren't already
Netflix subscribers but (b) would become subscribers if.. something..

it's a meaningless exercise, even before you ask 'OK, what's the something?'

Which they also don't do. In fact, they seem to think that if the MPAA stopped
suing file-sharers, the file-sharers would all move to Netflix. I'm not really
clear why that should happen.

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iaordemanyct
What if Wal-Mart busted a shoplifter and charged him with both the cost of the
item and the lost opportunity of him buying the item?

If I'm never going to buy a movie, then there is no loss. Whether I watch it
on a friend's TV or download it, there is no lost value and no lost
opportunity.

Furthermore, 0% of 100% is nothing. Let me pay $1.20 to download/rent a new
movie or give me a simple way to pay after viewing a movie I watched at a
friend's or downloaded.

If it's a great movie, I want to support the filmmakers. There's many movies
I'd never had paid to watch but after seeing wanted greatly to show monetary
support but can't.

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granitepail
I can't help but feel as though this article is almost purely sensational. The
figures are based on such loose generalizations that they hardly prove a
point. Better would have been an article comparing the hard numbers regarding
what Hollywood pays the MPAA and, perhaps, a more philosophical discussion of
how this has become quite similar to the war on drugs -- how we need to
rethink our policies in a much broader setting instead of seeking out
punishment for minor infringement.

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Poyeyo
MPAA still costs much less than Hollywood profits? Then the MPAA works.

If piracy were costing Hollywood a lot more than the MPAA, it would be a
failed entity.

