Piracy and persecution:
a hairy business

The Motion Picture Association of America admitted a huge "oops" yesterday, admitting a 2005 study wrongly pegged 44 percent of illegal file-sharing to college students at on-campus high-bandwidth networks.

The MPAA used the study to pressure colleges and universities to take a hard line on filesharing, and to back related legislation in Congress.

Revised figures find students account for only 15 percent of motion picture industry revenue loss. The MPAA blames the mistake on human error, according to AP News.

But VP Mark Luker of Educause, a campus IT group, calls the new numbers equally false. They do not account for the 80 percent of students living off-campus, he said.

Luker speculates the real figure falls around 3 percent.