RIAA Seeks Estimated $97.8 Billion From MTU Student 827
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.
Yeah, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
"Stealing is stealing" (Score:4, Interesting)
Downloading or having mp3s, as I'm sure every person who reads
At the same time, while I understand the need for deterrent from downloading copyrighted mp3s, I still don't understand why the RIAA seems to be resisting the method of distributing music digitally. Are they planning on going back to cassette tapes? We've got this incredible method of getting into almost everyone's home to distribute music and reduce their costs, and all they want to do is sue people who are allegedly taking their business away.
Not that this is a justification of my downloading mp3s, but I wouldn't have bought probably 3/4 of the mp3s I have because I simply want one song off of the CD. If the record companies would just come up with a service that charged 25-50 cents a song,
Stealing is Stealing (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, stealing is stealing.
Stealing is especially stealing when your corporate interests have bought and paid for laws, which are now being used to essentially ruin the lives of (ie: steal the futures of)students who never would have even heard your product had it not been for file-sharing.
I don't agree with most arguments for file-sharing. It is common sense that the artists and lavels should make money for the songs, and there should quickly set up some usable system - a good one does not currently exist. When it does, I and many, many, many people like me will eagerly use it.
But $98 TRILLION??? [choke] That's just stupidly extortionate.
Re:Can any students comment? (Score:2, Interesting)
People found out about it via word of mouth, eventually the network people found out, first forced him to make it "Opt-In" (it searched everyone's PC whether you wanted in the database or not), and then decided to shut it down entirely because of the availability of copyrighted files on the search engine.
At first, when they told him to make it opt-in, they also made him put up a warning that stated to not make available copyrighted files...yeah, that really did the trick.
So, in conclusion, we don't have a search engine anymore, but I was lucky enough to have bookmarked a couple people's IP addresses so I can access their PC's still
Oh, and BTW, our network admins have pretty much blocked all P2P/file sharing programs network ports, it's pretty much impossible to download anything that's not over the WWW/FTP.
Who didn't see this comming? (Score:3, Interesting)
This goes with what many people said years ago, networks, and possibly search engines should be common carriers. They shouldn't care anything about the content, they should just locate it and move it around. If the content happens to be 'illegal', go after the individual.
This student, and the uni's network staff didn't pirate 10 gazillion songs, other people did. Go after them. The brain dead napster lawsuit didn't help matters.
I'm waiting for the RIAA to sue google for letting people find mp3s, and AOL for running a broadband network that facilitates the sharing of illegal files.
*sigh*
Re:Can any students comment? (Score:1, Interesting)
"The RIAA has traditionally encouraged colleges to work with it and other industry groups, sending two letters in the past six months to university presidents urging them to take action against student violators. "
So it seems the RIAA has send TWO letters in SIX months. Damn it looks like they are working hard. I guess they would rather just pay a lawyer than pay the postman. Now I dont know what effect sending a letter would have on this problem, but I don't think filing a lawsuit is going to expidite the situation.
"But Oppenheim said he also expected Thursday's suits to be a notice to colleges officials who haven't kept track of what's happening on their networks. These weren't small violations, he stresses, and at this scale, the amount of Internet traffic generated by one account is huge."
I'm assuming the RIAA expects universities to packet sniff and track all the traffic that goes on between dorms. I would imagine that you could catch a small amount of illegal activities, but the work involved to track all the traffic alone, and then analyze it would be ALOT of work - not including the Internet traffic coming and going.
Missing the point (Score:3, Interesting)
Whether you are talking frigging Gazillions or about one single Dollar, it doesn't matter, because you have already conceded that the student has to pay *something* and is therefore considered guilty as charged.
That precedent, no matter how high the compensation for the RIAA will eventually be, will change the way people are going to use net.
Either you live by the rules set up by the RIAA, MPAA, BSA or you are threatened to lose your complete financial independence, because the rules allow for a "swift punishment".
Welcome to a world in which the consumer is criminalized to an extent that his risks of non-compliance are too high.
Thats Just Crazy (Score:1, Interesting)
A comparison to the UK (Score:2, Interesting)
I cannot give any indication of real-world reaction in the US, but I have conducted research in the UK on the subject. I interviewed network administrators from 5 UK universities last year when writing my thesis on business p2p. They indicated the impact of p2p downloading upon network resources was negligible in comparison to academic use of the network. I've also traded emails with other universities (who didn't have the time to see me or were a considerable distance away) who were similarly unconcerned by the amount of bandwidth used by p2p apps.
Running the numbers. (Score:5, Interesting)
Moneys sued for my RIAA: $97,800,000,000
Average life expentancy in the US: 76 years
Average cost of a CD: $15
Number of Months in a year: 12
US Population as of April 1st 2000: 281,421,906
Which brings us to the following formulas:
97,800,000,000 / 281,421,906 = $347520 per citizen
$347520 / $15 = 23168 CD's per person in the US.
23168 / 76 = 304 CD's per year/person in the US
304 / 12 months = 25 CD's/month for their entire life from birth that each person in the US must by to be equal to the damages they are filing for.
Now there is a possibility that there was a math error as some have suggested and it might be 97.8 billion dollars instead of trillion.
If so that just breaks down to 23 CD's in each person's lifetime for every person born. Which there is no way in the world that one person could of downloaded that much.
Given that they are roughly charging $1 per track(23 * population * average tracks on a CD) is roughly 97.8 billion.
Then take into account that an average MP3 is about 5 megs, that comes out to 5 * 97,800,000,000, or 489,000,000,000 Also known as roughly 489 Terrabytes of music.
Which brings me to the question who's network attached storage solution did they use to store all that alledged music?
On P2P networks on university campuses (Score:1, Interesting)
I would normally never suggest such a thing... (Score:1, Interesting)
1. Letter writing campaign suggesting that musicians represent themselves without the RIAA. Perhaps even without their record companies. There are thousands of private recording studios (including the ones the musicians operate themselves) that can be used to produce music. Next there is distribution...
2. Stores which sell CD's for the most part, make little margin on them, they are there to entice buyers into making other purchases. So its a huge incentive for stores to get CD's regardless of where they come from. Stores which want to purchase CD's to resell order them from a central warehouse (s), which (yes) stores all musicians music.
3. Hack RIAA's computers, and place direct connect on each of them, generate a log of connecting to them, counter sue.
With this plan, artists would receive nearly 100% gross sales revenue from their CD's, with this they pay their recording studio's, and subsidize the cost of the warehouse.
Advertising? On the radio (they need to play SOMETHING), P2P (people will buy more since CD's will surely cost less), and stores advertising. Everybody wins, fuck the RIAA.
The RIAA is killing their credibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Hear, Hear. I don't condone the theft of media either, but the RIAA has behaved so poorly, I find myself unwilling to argue in their defense, even from a strictly philosophical *theft is wrong* sense.
The RIAA is of course going to be disliked by heavy p2p users, but things like this, and lobbying to make firewalls illegal just serve to alienate themselves from reasonable individuals, who would otherwise argue in their defense. This is absolute madness.
Unique Choice - Michigan Tech (Score:5, Interesting)
American History (Score:2, Interesting)
Deportation? Deportation to where I hear you asking... Why the new colonies in Australia and America of course...
Wasn't that latter country (ostensibly) founded on the idea of stopping cruel oppression by a rich elite?
scientific research (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Here's a little more math (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm just curious, but at some point, doesn't it make sense just to leave the damn country for good? I mean at least we can still come and go sort of freely (for now)...why don't we all just go? No country can have power without a reasonably large populace underneath it. Clearly, this one is broken, and there is a lot of resistance to fixing it.
Speaking of which, whatever happened to John's Switch To Canada parody [cjb.net]?
Comparison to the McDonald's coffee lawsuit (Score:3, Interesting)
The plaintiff in that case suffered third degree burns over 6 percent of her body from one cup of coffee. A jury awarded punitive damages in the amount of two days worth of profits from McDonald's coffee- which turned out to be $2.7 million dollars. (On appeal a judge lowered the award to $480,000- or about a third of a day's coffee profits- and it was finally settled for an undisclosed amount. But just to be conservative, let's use the 2.7 million figure, since that's the one everyone is familiar with.)
$97.8 billion divided by 2.7 million means we're talking about the equivalent of 36,000 McDonald's coffee lawsuit jury awards. To get a punitive damages award against you this high, you would have to amass over 4500 gallons of overheated mediocre coffee- enough to fill 81 standard 55 gallon drums- and pour it all on an old lady wearing synthetic fabrics. Actually, more than one old lady. For that kind of money you could completely cover 2,173 old ladies in third degree burns over 100% of their bodies. McDonald's would have to sell coffee for 198 years just to break even if it did something this bad.
Remember kids, sharing files is wrong!
Re:Flight Risk (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the statute of limitations for copyright violations?
Three years [freeadvice.com]. Or is it 5 [usdoj.gov]? I think it's three [artslaw.org].
I know Joe Nievelt (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.cpwire.com/archive/2002/4/22/1045pri
He finished fourth at this nationwide competition at MIT. www.topcoder.com
If they even take a small chip out of him, he should countersue. MTU needs to stand up and not call him "dumb". See the link here:
http://wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,58351,00.
MTU watch yourself. If MTU continues to mess with you...Joe...transfer to a school that will protect your rights, or at least stand up for you.
May the RIAA burn.
See you at the MUB.
Re:for that kinda money (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.riaa.com/pdf/2002yrendshipments.pdf [riaa.com]
if I'm reading it right... the various media companies had 12.6 Billion in revenue in 2002. That's revenue, not profit. The $97B still looks pretty silly, eh? Anyone know what the profit amount is? Surely it's much less.
Anyway, for 250M Americans, that's about $48/year/person. How about we just include that amount in our taxes, and we all get all the free music we want? Let the record stores, P2P services, etc... all compete to sell $.50 CDs, all the downloads you can eat, etc..
I'm sure the dollar amount will be much less if we just consider the profit amount, too. Then radio stations dont have to pay licensing fees, and the RIAA can let go all the staff who have to track piracy, thereby increasing their per-employee performance.
We'll still let them exist so they can tell us who the top 40 are, who has gold "records", which record companies and artists get how much of the share, etc.. you know, all that stuff they are supposed to exist for.
Heck, I've got more money and kids than most people.. I'd be happy to pay a proportionally higher amount to help subsidize poor people. Put it on my phone bill, $4/month, like we do to subsidize people in the middle of nowhere and old people.
Re:Focusing on the wrong thing? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you think that's illegal, I hope someone nails you to the wall next time you link to a site containing copyrighted material.
Its clear cut theft. (Score:3, Interesting)
I do think the $$$ amount is a bit excessive, but this fellow "created a bazzar of illeagle activity", as the article says. I would place the fine at $20 per unlicense song swap! Depending on the actual amount swapped it would bring the fine down into the hundreds of millions instead of billions.
Encryption; Thats is what the file swappers are going to have to resort to. Terrorism in the eyes of the Justice dept, since only criminals/terroris use crypto! Hehe... They had better watch out cuz they might go from bad to worse, from the pan to the fire as Tolkin would say. I mean it seems obvious to me that in order to swap files people are going to have to embrace crypto on a person by person basis until crypto is a common notion in America. on second thought, what am I saying... this would hinder crypto... stay away file swappers! stay away!
this is a big steaming pile of sh*t (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Stealing is stealing" (Score:2, Interesting)
Until the human race evolves powers of telepathy and can erase peoples minds, theft of IP will be impossible, because the origional owner will still have their origional copies. Do you get it yet? Copying versus taking. Its really not that difficult.
I swear, all the intellectual handwaving that goes on these days by people who can't grasp the concept of copyright is staggering.
I'll say. Of course, you appear to be one of them.
Re:Go where? (Score:2, Interesting)
I can think of a lot of places which offer exactly the set of advantages you comment on here. America is not the only country with good roads. Nor is it the only country with clean running water, gas, and electricity.
As you admitted yourself, there are many places with better health care.
Now, America DOES have the largest standing military in the world, more or less, and the largest defence industry. I'm not exactly sure that's something to be proud of, considering the problems that this has caused recently (viz., "Operation Iraqi Freedom," and the many indirect links to Israelis in Palestine and the West Bank.)
You name me one advantage which life in America has over life in, say, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, England or even friggin France.
The only advantage of America's which used to be bandied about was 'Freedom' (note the capital F and the 's.) This is increasingly under fire from fascist groups such as the RIAA. This, I think, is what the original poster was saying.
I'll admit to obvious bias, in this instance, because I live in Australia. The Victorian state and federal highway system is better than pretty much anywhere else in the world (save maybe Germany,) and the water here is soft and not overly chlorinated. Admittedly, I do pay about
I don't hate America, but there are places that are as good, if not better.
Re:"Stealing is stealing" (Score:2, Interesting)
No, its just copying. Taking involves removing whatever it is from your posession and placing it in mine. With copying you have the origional and I have a copy. What part of this distinction is not sinking in?
In a digital world where copies can be digitally perfect, what you do when you 'take' an unauthorized copy is you dilute the value of the original, and authorized copies.
Thats why we have a term that describes exactly that to differentiate it from theft. It's called...drum roll...copyright infringement! Thats why we have some 700,000 words in the English language, so we can have different words for things that are, well, different.
Wave your hand around some more.
Too bad I missed out on other fun stuff, like when your teachers must have beaten you over the head with a board to drill in similarly simple concepts, like how 1 + 1 = 2.
Re:for that kinda money (Score:2, Interesting)
I would. Of all of the things I don't want my tax dollars spent on, subsidizing Britney Spears, Linkin' Park, The Backstreet Boys, P.O.D., Eminem, your poverty-stricken friend, and whatever the other current "real talent" happens to be, ranks pretty high up there. I'm sure the people that get slammed with the high end of the progressive income tax is really looking forward to subsidizing musicians so college students can feel better about downloading music off of the 'net.
If you're content with the results of socialized art, consider taking up residence where that is the cultural norm. That way you can pay the regressive tax on sales that always seems to accompany artist welfare, and the rest of us can stick with simply purchasing that music we actually value (definitely a luxury), and not what you want to hear.
Re:Sure, if you say so (Score:1, Interesting)