The MPAA has never been too high on college kids — remember the dishonor roll? — but it looks like Hollywood set is bummed about not being invited to that last kegger, because the MPAA is now admitting that it drastically overstated the effect of college downloading in previous studies. Back in 2005, the MPAA claimed that a whopping 44 percent of revenue losses came directly at the hands of carefree coeds nationwide, and used that number to pressure colleges into enforcing harsher downloading policies and even propose legislation currently before Congress that would tie federal education funds to copyright enforcement requirements. We’re not sure why the industry is now backing off that 44 percent number, but it’s now saying that “human error” resulted in a miscalculation, and the revenue loss from college piracy is more like 15 percent — a number which is further disputed by campus IT groups, who say it should be more like three percent. Of course, while it’s good to see the MPAA take an upfront stance on this, simply admitting you’re sleazy doesn’t actually wipe the slime off, so let’s see how the industry approaches future studies, shall we?

Thanks Engadget.

MAKE THIS YOUR SIG: Human error: An excuse for lying and justification for nigh-extortion, but not for downloading a movie you would never pay for.

So, here is the back-story. There is a Firefox extension called Greasemonkey which allows the user to build a library of scripts that change web pages. They automate tasks, and creating a script for Greasemonkey is much easier than writing and publicizing an extension.

Apparently there is now a script called Netflix Download Links which automates the long process of finding, hacking, and downloading a Netflix streaming movie.

DISCLAIMER: Download these movies at your own risk. This is a questionable process as you pay for the service, but are still violating copyright laws. In addition, it is possible to get your account banned for this. Don’t come crying to us if this doesn’t go well.

Now that we’re past that little bit, let’s get in to the details. You DO have to have a subscription to Netflix to do this. The script claims that it works on all platforms, but if you’re using Vista it is reported to have problems. The non-windows user will need to set the variable "IAmRunningWindows" to false, and you’ll still need a Windows machine or a Windows emulator to remove the DRM. For more help with this, you might want to look through the comments on the article that I heard about this from.

By prying apart a simple $5 lantern battery, you can get 32 AA batteries at a cost of less than $0.16 per battery.