Inflation of The "Pirated" DVD Value
The New Century Media Corporation issued a statement showing just how inaccurate and untruthful the MPAA's statement was. In the raid, some 14,640 DVDs were seized, comprising 2,440 sets of a 6-DVD "Romance collection" produced for a third party, the publicly held Genius Products, Inc., company.
Although I couldn't find a 6-DVD Romance set on Genius Products' web site, I did find a similar set with 5 DVDs that they sell for $19.99. I would imagine that the price of the 6-disc Romance set is something close to that. Let's call this set's retail price $24.99 to account for an extra disc. At that price, the 2,440 sets would have a retail value of about $60,975. New Century says the seized DVDs were worth $10,540. This is the same group of discs that the MPAA is claiming was worth $30 million. Even if you throw in the value of the equipment seized by the Task Force, you don't even get close to $1 million, much less $30 million.
So let's do the math here. $30 million divided by 14,640 discs works out to approximately $2,049 per disc. I don't know about you, but I've never paid $2,000 or more for a single DVD. I doubt that Genius Products was going to get $12,000+ for a set of 6 of them, either.
The Shutdown of the Factory
The MPAA reports that the New Century Media Corporation's factory was "shut down" by the High Tech Task Force. New Century's statement implies that there was a shutdown during the raid by the task force, but says that "The High Tech Task Force permitted production to start again immediately." That doesn't sound like the factory was shutdown (other than very briefly) to me. I'll bet their stamping out their 80,000 discs-per-day even as I type this.
Why Would the MPAA Say These Things?
It's very clear that the MPAA is using tactics similar to those employed by the computer software industry's anti-piracy group. Grossly inflating the numbers gives uneducated people the impression that there is a serious problem, and that the industry is being bankrupted by the actions of the suspected pirates.
Consider the impact of saying "Authorities seized approximately 15,000 counterfeit DVDs with a street value of approximately $61,000, along with equipment worth approximately $15,000. After the raid, the company was allowed to continue with its legitimate DVD production work, producing around 80,000 DVDs per day." Doesn't sound very dramatic, does it?
Compare that with "Authorities seized $30,000,000 worth of counterfeit DVDs and production equipment, shutting down the illegal operation in the process." That sure sounds significant, doesn't it? Makes it seem like there must be counterfeit DVDs everywhere and that the MPAA is losing millions instead of thousands (assuming of course that the seized DVDs are in fact pirated material and were not seized in error).
What Really Happened?
I think what happened here is that someone gave the MPAA reason to think that the 6-DVD Romance set produced for Genius Products by New Century Media Corporation contained unlicensed copyrighted content. Based on that, the MPAA sent the High Tech Tash Force after New Media Corporation. The Task Force seized the DVDs in question and the equipment being used to produce them, based on whatever evidence the MPAA presented to the task force. Now that the DVDs are in the possession of the task force, the MPAA will have to prove that Genius Products didn't have the legal right to produce the disc set or contract New Century to duplicate it. If they can provide that evidence (which I question, given that it looks to me like Genius Products only sells old public-domain movies that are no longer copyright-protected), then Genius will have to cough up some cash and New Century may get slapped on the wrists for unknowingly duplicating that content for Genius Products. If they can't provide that evidence, I suspect that New Century will get its equipment and discs back, it will complete the production run, and deliver it to Genius Products. And if I were either of the two companies, I think I would sue the MPAA for its false statements and make sure it was well-publicized, so that any "shock value" they get from the $30 million dollar figure is quickly dissipated in the light of the truth.
If this is how much the MPAA is exaggerating all its figures, then the "$5.4 billion" they claim to be losing each year to piracy works out to about $2.7 million... worldwide. (That is, if $15,000 worth of seized items is worth $30,000,000 to the MPAA, then each "real" dollar is inflated to $2,000. So if you divide $5.4 billion by 2,000, you come up with $2.7 million. Compare that to a single "blockbuster" movie raking in hundreds of millions of dollars. Doesn't make movie piracy look so terrible anymore, does it?
But then, as Dennis Miller so often says, the above is just my opinion. I could be wrong...
