Long known for their worthless and false statistics hollywood seems to be in a confusion over its claimed losses to p2p.
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/7002/contradict.htmlIn 2006 the domestic take was $9.49 billion, 5.5% higher than 2005 according to the MPAA. 2005 came in at about an even 9 billion. For those who can do simple math the 2005 figures are hardly $2.3 billion off of the $9.54 billion set in 2004. Those figures don't include videos sales, but it is my understanding that video sales have risen every single year since the DVD started to take off. According to another USA Today article from last year 2005 set a record. "After three years of double-digit growth, DVD sales and rentals are expected to slow from 2005's $22.8 billion total".
The USA Today printed an interesting figure that itself has an effect of how much money is drawn yearly from the box office and that is how many films are made. "Hollywood also is cranking out more material. So far this year, 49 movies have arrived in wide release, compared with 48 by this time last year and 35 in 2005."
Could the fact that Hollywood shipped less movies be the cause of the overall 2005 drop? Could it be that this year's movies are simply more compelling? Is file sharing really crushing Hollywood? If so, why are we now looking at setting new a box office record when more people have broadband access than ever before?
Once again we see the pattern of misleading both consumers, politicians and investor alike, the consumer is told how hollywood is needing extra revenue because of year on year losses, the politician is told piracy is killing hollywood and is shown dubious statistics from MPAA paid for research, and the investor is told how each years profits are rather large and mostly increasing every year, a sound investment opportunity is portrayed.
With the constant rehashing of old plots and remade movies its nice to know even the MPAA claims are like the rest of hollywood, lacking originality.
