RIAA Seeks Estimated $97.8 Billion From MTU Student

theodp writes "The Detroit Free Press does the math on the damages sought by the RIAA from the Michigan Technological University student. The total? About $97.8 trillion--yes, trillion with a T--or enough money to buy every CD sold in America last year over again for the next 120,000 years, according to RIAA statistics." Update: 04/05 21:58 GMT by M : The Free Press can do the math, but not very well: the numbers provided show the RIAA is seeking some $97 billion dollars, not trillion. I'm sure the student is *much* happier. Headline updated.

97 Trillion?

[MeanMF]

Well that explains the lawyers with frickin' lasers mounted on their frickin' heads...

for that kinda money

[stonebeat.org]

i want 2 copies of each CD!!! :)

One million dollars...

[djocyko]

Oh, I just had to say it..

Throw me a frick'n bone, people.

One Billion-Kagillion Dollars

[The_Rippa]

But Dr. Evil, that kind of money doesn't exist in 2003!!!

Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

That could buy a really large Beowulf Cluster.

Well....

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like a fair amount....

Hahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahaa

Cough cough, Hahahah etc...

Only in United Bluff.

Seriously America, snap out of it !!

In other news...

[Penguuu]

"RIAA starts funding US military actions in countries with highest piracy rates"... you can buy many missiles with $97.8 trillion.

$ 97 TRILLION ??

[Anonymous Coward]

... at least give em a break on the Hanson tracks, we all knew they were a fad

Remember

[JCCyC]

John Ashcroft says there is no such thing as excessive punishment! (unless if it's drunk driving and snorting coke and you're in Texas and... oh, never mind)

Flight Risk

[spoonist]

Dude, I'm thinkin' that if I were staring down the barrel of $97.8 TRILLION dollar lawsuit, I'd be tempted to find a country without extradition treaties. Preferably a friendly, inexpensive country with a tropical climate and lots of nude beaches.

What's the statute of limitations for copyright violations?

Brought to you by:

The United States of America(R) (A Wholely Owned Subsidiary of A Consortium of Multinational Corporations)

Heck yeah! You have to ask for that much...

[VitrosChemistryAnaly]

How else are they going to buy more laws? I mean, come on, buying laws isn't cheap.

That kind of money could buy a lot of laws.

Brilliant!!!

Boy, that's a lot of money....

[geewiz45]

It makes me sad to think about someone facing that kind of lawsuit. So, to feel better, I'm firing up my Kazaa client and downloading some happy songs. I suggest you all do the same, just not on any school campus.

Re:They did the math?

[MeanMF]

I think they're off by, ... ohh, about a factor of a thousand?

I'm sure the students are breathing a sigh of relief that it's only $97.8 billion...

Re:This seems a bit much

[Fishstick]

Ya think?

Hmmm, should we seek some reasonable amount to compensate for our loss? Something like $4,000 or so? That ought to cover it.

Umm, no... we need to send a message. We need to make sure that it gets in the papers. Let's sue them for (wait for it...) a _million_ dollars!

What?! Are you nuts? You'll never collect, these kids don't have that kind of money and no judge in the universe is going to award that kind of judgement! You might as well sue them for a hundred-trillion dollars.

Oh, I see... Then we'll do that! That way they'll know we are _serious_!!!

*groan*

Re:Can any students comment?

[TC (WC)]

Are people eager to jump in and replace them?

Student 1: Hey man, the mp3s are down... how the hell am I going to get my muzak.
Student 2: Didn't you hear, the RIAA shut them down!
Student 1: Crap. We should probably start something up to replace them, then.
Student 2: You didn't let me finish, they're getting sued for 97.8 trillion dollars!
Student 1: Hmm... on the other hand, maybe we should make a website about cats.

Re:They did the math?

[idfrsr]

Ahhh...

You didn't use the RIAA special loss due to priracy arithmetic. Its the same calculations used to calculate what music the american public is going to buy and how much.

Using this much more complex adding system, you will reach the result of 97.8 Trillion dollars

Re:They did the math?

[theodp]

Oops...guess I should have double-checked their math before I posted--good catch! Even at $97.8B, that's still a whole lot of hours at a part-time Kinko's job. :-)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Obligatory Simpsons quote

[prostoalex]

Will you accept a check?

Re:How did they come up with that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the same way they calculated that a desktop PC contains 48 CD burners.

The damages they're claiming is more than double the GDP of the entire fucking planet. I'm seriously flabbergasted that they haven't been fined out of existance by the courts for continuously abusing the system.

so....

[digitalsushi]

according to some popular sites on the web, the human being is worth real rough about 2 million bucks, if you want to buy the parts, i mean. so at 2 million a person... (no really, at least one site told me 2 million- www.humanforsale.com).. er.. this is the part where i wish i finished high school math (i was worth about 850k so bear with me) 97 trillion = 97 000 000 000 000 divided by 2 000 000. so ugh. thats like 97 000 000 divided by 2, right? so 48.5 million people. So the RIAA should just collect those college students and their immediate and distant families and stop when they hit 48.5 million people. then they can just pack 'em up and drive them over and shut the hell up.

Re:They did the math?

[AnalogDiehard]

I think they're off by, ... ohh, about a factor of a thousand?

The numbers were "fudged" because the student was in possession of 42X CD writers.

Re:Here's a little more math

[Jeffrey Baker]

I wish there were less pedants around here.

Re:652,000 MP3s?!?

[happyhippy]

Maybe its something like 652 tracks. You know how the RIAA are good with numbers....

Re:In other news...

[mythr]

Uh, I don't think that could happen... *cough* Geneva Convention *cough* *cough*.

must be right

[frovingslosh]

U.S. gdp is 10.2 trillion...

No, the $97.8 Trillion figure must be right. Otherwise it would mean that the music industry plays with numbers, making things artificially high when it suits them and artificially low when it suits the need to cheat the artists. Since it's an entire industry doing this as a collaborative effort, it would even rise to the levels of felony crimes including racketeering if it were shown that they have a long history of bogus math behind their accounting.

The student should call AmeriDebt and get those

[SensitiveMale]

payments reduced to a comfortable amount.

And the payments may even qualify as tax deductable.

Re:Here's a little more math

[evilpenguin]

Fewer!

Unintended consequence Was: Flight Risk

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this might work out best in the long run. The way I see it, eventually they're going to get a life-ruining judgment against a student who isn't all that stable to begin with, and then maybe said student will snap under the pressure of owing a billion or so to the RIAA. Then, instead of being a good little debtor (slave) for the rest of their lives, they'll go get a Glock and shoot up a record company's headquarters, operating under the idea that they might as well take some of the bastards with them. If they get lucky and tag an exec or two before they're killed it might cause the record companies to back down a bit, seeing as siccing the lawyers on a poor student ultimately ended up with a bloodbath.

Or not, in which case the ultimate result might be even more dead record people.

Re:Running the numbers.

[pyro_peter_911]

Which brings us to the following formulas:
97,800,000,000 / 281,421,906 = $347520 per citizen

I think the parent was moderated as interesting for his interesting use of division.

Peter

Re:In other news...

[Loki_1929]

" "RIAA starts funding US military actions in countries with highest piracy rates"... you can buy many missiles with $97.8 trillion."

Bush will personally sell you a Minuteman II nuclear missile along with the silo for $97.8 trillion.

Perhaps this is the RIAA's motive. "If lawsuits and jail are not an effective deterent, perhaps we need a nuclear deterent to file sharing!"

Re:652,000 MP3s?!?

[pyro_peter_911]

Maybe he put his 2 TBytes of mp3's in his backpack sized iPod. I'll bet the jog dial on that sucker is tough to reach when you're wearing it.

Peter

Hmm...

[Loki_1929]

1. Find student with mp3s.
2. Sue student for $97 Billion
3. PROFIT!!!

Holy shit, it works!

Further than Pluto

[Michael.Forman]

The size [hypertextbook.com] of a dollar bill is 6.6294 cm wide, by 15.5956 cm long, and 0.010922 cm in thickness.

A stack of one dollar bills worth $97.8 trillion would be 10 billion meters high or slightly more than 25 stacks of bills that each would reach to the moon.

Laid end-to-end the bills would stretch 15.25 trillion meters. That's long enough to stretch from the sun to pluto [the-planet-pluto.com] almost three times over.

That many dollar bills would cover the entire 68 square miles of the District of Columbia in a pile of bills two feet deep.

Oh, wait. Now I get it.

Michael. [michael-forman.com]

That's Trillion ...

[recursiv]

That's Trillion with a "B"

Well shite....

[soulsteal]

I've got some downloading to do. I only owe them $687.3 million.

In further news . . .

[Vinnie_333]

... the RIAA has been heard screaming, "You are our BITCH!!"

Re:Here's a little more math

[randyest]

where are we gonna go?

Cajones

[L. J. Beauregard]

The record companies have had us by the cajones since then.

They've had us by the large boxes?

Or did you mean cojones?

And $12? Where are you getting CDs so cheap?

Re:97 Trillion?

[Ponty]

Sledgehammer? They're using nuclear weapons!

Re:97 Trillion?

[trb]

With good legal defense, he should be able to get the penalty cut in half.

Re:for that kinda money

[ryanr]

Yeah.

Heh, pretty bad when I' rather have a government agency running things, eh?

Never in my life....

[CatPieMan]

...would I have every thought I would be so happy for my campus' overly protective firewall.

-CPM

In other news...

[Kjella]

...the RIAA has now calculated that total sum of money owned by all the pirates in the world now exceeds the total value of Earth. Because of this, Earth today filed for restructuring under Chapter 11, making RIAA the supreme dictator. All hail RIAA!

Kjella

Re:97 Trillion?

[SoSueMe]

Nope, it's an AMD chip [zdnet.co.uk].

Re:Flight Risk

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be tempted to find a country without extradition treaties. Preferably a friendly, inexpensive country with a tropical climate and lots of nude beaches.

I hear Iraq is pretty warm this time of year...

Good idea

[Pupp3tM]

Obviously, the RIAA is alienating the biggest consumers of music by making them bankrupt.
Oh, wait, it's been doing that for years.

Re:Sure, if you say so

[mgs1000]

What credibility?

Re:Perception

[Dr. Zowie]

UNIX is a fascist state, Windows is a democracy.Which works?

Huh? How is UNIX more fascist than Windows?