HOLLYWOOD, CA — Maybe the Motion Picture Association of America’s number crunchers should have spent more time in math class. On January 22nd, the organization that represents the U.S. motion picture industry admitted it botched the figures in a 2005 study of illegal file downloading. Instead of college students accounting for 44-percent of Hollywood’s domestic file-sharing-related losses, the MPAA now says the figure is closer to 15-percent.Oops.

The MPAA used the study to pressure campuses to crack down on students’ internet use and to back legislation currently before the U.S. House that would force them to do so. Even with the vastly overestimated scope of the problem, it hasn’t changed its mind about those things. It also used the figures to justify relentlessly pursuing individual file-sharers in court.

Double oops.

According to the 2005 report, completed by research firm LEK on the MPAA’s behalf, Hollywood lost $6.1 billion worldwide to piracy that year. By its own admission, most of the losses were overseas. The report identified the typical movie pirate as a 16- to 24-year-old male.

Student technologists aren’t exactly placated by the admission of error. According to the vice president of one campus IT group, as much as 80-percent of college students live off campus, which puts the actual loss figure for on-campus file-sharing closer to 3-percent. That’s probably still millions of dollars, but it doesn’t justify punishing all campus denizens for the actions of a very few.

“The 44-percent figure was used to show that if college campuses could somehow solve this problem on this campus, then it would make a tremendous difference in the business of the motion picture industry,” Mark Luker, vice president of Educause, told the Associated Press. “Any solution on campus will have only a small impact on the industry itself.”

The MPAA has agreed to have a third party validate the remainder of the report, although it doesn’t believe anything beyond the percentage of revenues lost to college-based piracy to be in error.

“We take this error very seriously and have taken strong and immediate action to both investigate the root cause of this problem as well as substantiate the accuracy of the latest report,” the association said in a statement.