Yesterday, we wrote about a report provided by Movoto that claims to show the most pirated movies, tv shows and games from each state. This report showed some interesting results such as Watch Dogs being the most pirated game in the U.S.
We have now learned that this report may not be as accurate as it claims to be. Torrent Freak took a look at the report and felt something was a little off.
What stands out immediately is that some of the most-downloaded movies in certain states are barely downloaded at all through torrent sites. “La Grande Bellezza” in New Jersey, for example, or “Cuban Fury” in Florida. The same is true for “Witching and Bitching” which, according to the map, is very popular in Indiana and Tennessee.
Are these movies really more often downloaded than blockbuster successes such as Divergent and X-Men as the map below suggests?
They then downloaded the underlying data and found that the map does not actually reflect what was most pirated in each state.
To our surprise, the maps in question don’t represent the most-downloaded titles. Instead, they appear to reveal for which shows the download numbers differ the most when compared to the national average. This is completely unrelated to which movie, TV-show or game was downloaded the most.
They also found that the data itself is flawed in a major way.
Confusingly, however, a map of the most pirated movies per state would list “Blood Widow” on top in pretty much every state.
This suggests that there’s an issue with the data itself too, as this movie is nowhere to be found in the list of most shared files on The Pirate Bay and elsewhere. The most likely explanation is that the researchers ran into a fake torrent file with bogus IP-addresses.
This, thankfully, means that my faith in Oklahoma is somewhat restored. Oklahoma no longer counts a Naruto game as its most downloaded.
Let this also be a lesson to all of us. While such reports make great headlines, we must be a little more on the ball when it comes to verifying the data. Piracy is a big business on both sides, and there is a very big incentive to manipulate data to suit our own agendas. The only way a true dialog will happen is if we use accurate data and then let the results speak for themselves rather than twist and distort them.
Source: Torrent Freak
