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.
97 Trillion? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:97 Trillion? (Score:5, Funny)
for that kinda money (Score:4, Funny)
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:for that kinda money (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you really want to open that can of worms?
Re:for that kinda money (Score:4, Funny)
Heh, pretty bad when I' rather have a government agency running things, eh?
Right... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with setting up a tax is that this is exactly what these corrupt, free-loading assholes want you to do. My response is, "Fuck you!". I'll pay their fees as soon as they reduce copyright terms down to 20 years, and give a substantial portion of their money to fostering competition in this corrupt, price-fixed industry. Until then, no thanks.
One million dollars... (Score:3, Funny)
Throw me a frick'n bone, people.
One Billion-Kagillion Dollars (Score:4, Funny)
a little much? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:a little much? (Score:4, Informative)
So the RIAA is suing for an *estimated* (the $98T figure is an estimate, don't forget that) 2x the US's annual GNP.
I wonder if they'll take a check :)
must be right (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Focusing on the wrong thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now they are going after the kids that actually broke the law and everyone is still pissed.
Hell with that. These kids should be the ones being put to trial. Maybe now the laws can be shown for the unmitigated sillyness that they are and either shown unconstitutional or at least have a $97B judgement against some kids show the public how out of control this all is.
This is the right suit. Let's make sure it's the right result by now dwelling on the RIAA and instead dwelling on the law.
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.
Re:Focusing on the wrong thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is STILL the wrong suit for them to be filing. They are not going after these people because they are sharing files, they are going after them for running network search services. Services that have legitimate uses and do not host or provide any copyrighted content. The RIAA STILL doesn't get it. They should be going after the students on the network who were sharing the mp3s from their computers. The search service doesn't allow copyright infringement, it's the people sharing. The files are easily accessible without any search service. Unfortunately, I'm sure the judge won't get it either. These guys are going to get raped by the justice system.
Re:Focusing on the wrong thing? (Score:3, Troll)
Read the Friggin Articles!!!!!!! The RIAA press release is telling. [riaa.org] They are really smoking some hardcore crack! They want to make LANs illegal!?!
These guys made programs which allow you to search a network. The flatlan site seems to be down, but read this FAQ about Phynd [phynd.net]. It is a program which indexes the files available on various protocols (like FTP and Windows Shares). The RIAA could even use it to help find copyright violations. Instead they want to punish anyone who makes networking software. If th
Sure, if you say so (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sure, if you say so (Score:5, Insightful)
They're about to loose the same weight in credibility.
Re:Sure, if you say so (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sure, if you say so (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether or not you agree with existing copyrights, or you feel that the recording companies are colluding to steal your money, the fact of the matter is, based on current laws, distributing copies of copyrighted materials is agsint the law. Instead of complaining about how "the man is trying to screw me" or setting up p2p networks to distribute mp3's, I would suggest that people who are against the RIAA and music copyrights work to get the laws changed.
Instead of spending money on CD's, use that money to start an advocacy group. Donate some money to the EFF or some other organization who might be willing to fight for your cause. Instead of running a server to host your mp3's (bandwidth costs money and the mp3's have to originate from a CD at some point), discontinue these servers and use the money towards advocacy. Spend your effort changing the laws instead of flying the finger at the establishment.
Re:Sure, if you say so (Score:5, Insightful)
And how do you suppose it got into Washington?
Re:Sure, if you say so (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to say that I find this argument disturbing. At one time in U.S. history, slavery was legal. Slaves were property and could be treated in whatever manner the slave owner deemed appropriate - including physical beatings and starvation. Popular sentiment is that this was fine. Was popular sentim
Most likely be thrown out. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sure, if you say so (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like to know how the RIAA expects anyone to believe one college student had that much storage, much less convince anyone that 98 billion is a credible loss figure.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Can any students comment? (Score:2)
Re:Can any students comment? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
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!"
High Prices (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a little more math (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Here's a little more math (Score:3, Informative)
No, they don't have to prove that. All they have to do is prove to the judge that the copyright violation was "willful" and the Copyright Act [copyright.gov] allows for the judge, at his or her discretion, to impose up to $150,000 in statutory, (not compensatory or punitive) damages [riaa.org] per infringement.
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 witho
Re:Go where? (Score:5, Insightful)
And Canada, France, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Sweden all have poor transportation?
You have running water. Reliably. You have indoor plumbing. You have readily available food. You have electricity.
Again, CA, FR, GB, IT, DE, SE don't have these?
You live in a place that has as many cars as families, because cars and gas are just that damned cheap here.
Is this a good thing? Do you know how much O2 a 5-liter Uh-mer-kin muscle car chews up just from driving to and from work on a semi-daily basis? Do you have any idea how many CO2-consuming organisms it takes to support your average Camero or Mustang owner? Why do we have so many cars here? Why aren't they needed in Manhattan or in most of Europe? Because our automotive industry killed our light rail industry in the first half of this century. We produce 3% of the world's oil. We consume nearly 60%. Hence our current predicament with our dependency on foreign oil. No, having that many cars is not something to boast about.
You don't have to fear for your life walking down the street (well, in some places, you do, but it's safer here than much of the rest of the world).
In most Iranian metropolitan areas, women can walk around at 03:00 alone without fear of abduction or harassment. People there don't give it any thought. I can't name one major city where this is true in the United States.
This is a nation in which *anyone* can get a job. Not necessarily a good job, or the job they want, but you can land a job that'll pay well enough for you to eat every day.
Unemployment in Switzerland has not reached more than 6% in over ten years. It averages around 3%-4%. You should read this [henryholt.com] if you want a better handle on what it means to be employed in this country.
I can drink the water anywhere in this nation without fear. Some places it looks a little brown, or have hard water, etc., but you can drink it without *dying*.
Once more, CA, FR, GB, IT, DE, SE don't have these?
You have incredible medical care. I know many places have better systems for covering payment, and it's free in many places, but there's very few places in US where you can't get immediate medical care.
The US has the best doctors in the world. We also have the highest liability. Does this seem odd to you? We are encouraging our doctors to become mediocre because it's not worth it to practice. I've talked with a fair amount of doctors (my family has more than its fair share of people working in medicine). They almost unilaterally have two pieces of advice for people in this country:
1. If you're thinking of becoming a doctor: don't.
2. Don't get sick, because unless you're rich, you'll get shit for care.
It's simply that, the particular set of advantages you get by being an American and living here on American soil is almost impossible to get anywhere else. Many places have worthwhile tradeoffs, but you can't get all the above just about anywhere else.
I realize that many of the above comments don't apply to everywhere in the world, and I apologize to the denizens of any nation that may be that much better, but I think that most of them apply somewhere.
The truth is that many cities outside the US are more livable [mercerhr.com] than those within its borders. Hell, there are 9 countries which rank higher than we do [worldaudit.org] in an audit of world democracies.
Please don't misunderstand. The US is a great place to live...one of the best in the world. I'm just real tired of its citizens thinking that this country's shit
Re:Go where? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow what an odd thing to say. Do you really mean that? On what basis do you form that argument. Let's look at some of your statements.
"You live in a country with an incredibly good road system. "
Well I didn't know this was so important but I have traveled to many countries with real good road systems. Last I checked all of europe had good road systems as did japan, australia, new zealand, and even a few
Trolling? Or just another stupid american? (Score:3, Informative)
Americans wonder why people could hate the US so much they flew airplanes into buildings. Americans can't grasp with their limited intelligence and stunted ability to reason why most of the world despises them. They are so out of touch with reality, they have to repeat your little mantra constantly to try to keep the truth at bay. The complete fiction of your post shows exactly why America is in for a long, rough ride over the next decades, until it once a
Re:Here's a little more math (Score:4, Funny)
Remember (Score:4, Funny)
They did the math? (Score:5, Insightful)
= $97,800,000,000
= $97,800,000 thousand
= $97,800 million
= $97.8 billion
I think they're off by,
Re:They did the math? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure the students are breathing a sigh of relief that it's only $97.8 billion...
Re:They did the math? (Score:5, Funny)
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? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:They did the math? (Score:3, Funny)
The numbers were "fudged" because the student was in possession of 42X CD writers.
Re:They did the math? (Score:3, Insightful)
There you go again with your fuzzy math. There is enough money to save medicare and social security and eliminate all taxes for people who earn $500,000 a year.
Its not 97.8 Billion, it is 97.8 billion EACH, thats almost $400 million, which is more than enough to balance the budget. All we have to do is to seize the assets of the RIAA and imprision Paul Krugman as an Enemy Combattant and we are done.
Re:They did the math? (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Reporter does the math wrong. This is usually a minor point, but happens way to much. But the reporter puts so much emphasis on how much it is, that it's inexecsuable. Take a friggin' math class!
2) Their editor missed it. I knew within 1 second of looking at the numbers that their math was wrong. Someone should have caught it.
3) Slashdot reader makes the same mistake. Cripes, does anyone know how to use a calculator?
4) The
Flight Risk (Score:5, Funny)
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)
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].
"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,
Re:"Stealing is stealing" (Score:5, Insightful)
Trust me, they know this. Decades ago, they realized that they could make much more money by pushing LPs (Long Play) instead of 2-4 song 7" records. Early recordings were generally the artists' best songs, those which the record companies knew you'd gobble up. But for a few a little more investment on their part, they could throw in 10 or more songs on one record at double (or more!) the cost. Now you were being hooked into buying a whole LP just to hear your favorite songs. The record companies have had us by the cajones since then, it's either buy the single for $6, or buy the whole shebang for ~$12.
There are VERY few mainstream artists today who can pull off a full cd of killer material, but a few are actually out there.
Cajones (Score:4, Funny)
They've had us by the large boxes?
Or did you mean cojones?
And $12? Where are you getting CDs so cheap?
Re:"Stealing is stealing" (Score:5, Informative)
you know what? they didn't care. thegist of their reply was "you know what they mean, now shut up and sod off"
I was not very impressed.
dave
Re:"Stealing is stealing" (Score:4, Insightful)
Distribution control.
A CD/DVD is something physical to which they control the production of, and can therefore control the sale of, but most imporantly: they have the resources that allow them to create and maintain the production of CDs/DVDs, in massive quantities. If you want worldwide distribution, you go to "The Industry" because they have the best resources.
Now: take away the need for said resources in order to get your music heard. Charge by the song rather than disc, and remove the need for discs to be manufactured and distributed. Make up a site, advertise on the web, and buy the bandwidth you'll need to serve the song for a limited amount of time (because you will run into diminishing returns as time goes on and the song gets pirated into oblivion soon after).
Plain and simple: that will get you money still, just lots LESS of it. Also, it will lose you control because now that the cost of production is gone, anyone can do it.
This is why the industry will never (1) go along with the net for distribution and (2) why they will use their resources now to STIFLE this technology - they won't be the first to jump off the cliff, and if anyone else jumps, they're the 800lb gorilla holding the rope around their necks.
Re:"Stealing is stealing" (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, when you listen to songs on the radio, the RIAA has already been pa
Heck yeah! You have to ask for that much... (Score:4, Funny)
That kind of money could buy a lot of laws.
Brilliant!!!
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.
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 indivi
Re:Stealing is Stealing (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I don't know exactly what they're thinking. Are they going to continue to go after students? OK, ultimately they'll get the cash value of a futon and an old stereo....$15...and the student declares bankruptcy. Are they attempting a deterrent (they are, I believe)? If so, good luck - college students know they don't have anything to fear, being poor, and probably don't care anyway. Are they going to go after the colleges, eventually?
IANAL... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like a cosmic (and late) April Fools' joke.
Again, IANAL, but I would have guessed that RIAA would have gone after multiple deep pockets in a "joint and several liability" mode. At least then, the numbers would be outrageously high by only about 3 orders of magnitude.
And just when I thought the pigopolists had lost their ability to amaze and disgust...
Eighth Amendment Problem? (Score:3, Informative)
The Eighth Amendment says: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Are we talking about a claim of actual damages? If so, the RIAA is claiming that it and its members would have made up about 99% of the U.S. economy had this one person not pirated that music. Or are we talking about statuatory damages? In that case I think the eighth amendment would come into play -- that part about excessive fines in particular.
Re:Eighth Amendment Problem? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Eighth Amendment Problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure the students would be happier (Score:3, Insightful)
If the students were being fined for the VALUE of their "theft", they would be much better off. They are aledged to have denied the RIAA income on some 650,000 songs. At 50 cents a song, they would only be down som $300,000 and mearly ruined insead of owning the RIAA the assets of a small oil rich country. Actually proving the value of
Boy, that's a lot of money.... (Score:3, Funny)
The legal fees... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, after all of the lawyers take their cut, the appropriate RIAA officials remove their share and court costs are assessed, I calculate the net gain for the actual artists to be somewhere in the neighborhood of about $20 bucks and smack on the ass!
- n2q
Great quote from the article (Score:4, Insightful)
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*
Better alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)
This whole music suit thing brings up another interesting exchange I had last week. One of the campus network guys was asking if I had any music on my workstation. I said yes, about thirty gigs or so, to which he replied, I had to take it off as the RIAA was "querying" systems on the network to determine if they contained music files. I replied as every song on there was purchased, paid for, and personally ripped from CD via iTunes, and I had every CD for which there was music for, I was not going to remove the music. Additionally, while my workstation was on the network, it was not open, the songs were not available to the outside world and anyone wanting those songs would have to hack into my system. So, no. I would not remove them. Even if the RIAA does somehow "query" my system, (Is this somehow possible if the system is "secure"?) they would be barking up the wrong tree.
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.
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?
Questions, and more questions .... (Score:4, Insightful)
From an artist's point of view, does this help the artist? I'm not a musician and have never seen any of the contracts that the RIAA makes with its musical talent, but from a select few artists that have spoken out against the RIAA, I get the impression that file sharing is definately not the thing that's keeping money out of the pocket of the musician.
So, if this kind of action isn't for the good of the artist, then is it for the good of the company? I don't run a business of my own, so perhaps I'm under some false impressions, but it seems to me that the number one goal of business is to keep your existing customers excited and to constantly be trying to pull in new customers. This action as far as I can tell does exactly the opposite on both counts.
And what about file sharing in the first place. I still don't understand why the people involved in this debate keep talking like a 128k bitrate encoded mp3 is just as good as the original wav. Now this is something that I've personally investigated and analyzed, and can concretly say they are definately not of the same quality.
And what about the statistics. Which do you believe? I've looked at the RIAA's statistics showing how much revenue they lose because of file sharing. I'm not a statistician, but I really don't understand how they can claim that every traded song would have equaled an album sale. I've also looked at the statistics of the number of album sales during the years of Napster. While Napster was running full tilt, albums sales were hitting record numbers. Napster gets shut down, and the sales plunge. Once again, I'm not a statistician, but it seems to me that if I'm to be asked to believe that every song download == a missed sale, then I must also believe that Napster _created_ song sales instead of decreasing them.
So, once again, I'm back to wondering why the RIAA is taking such a hard line. I think that until we understand the motivations of the RIAA that things will certainly continue to get worse instead of better. Of course there's always the possibility that the RIAA doesn't really understand themselves what kind of road they're choosing for themselves.
In a sense I hope things get much much worse. Perhaps when a school teacher gets thrown in jail because he/she played a copyrighted song in class the public at large will finally wake up, realize what they've lost, and take it back. I'm a firm believer that Freedom can never be truly lost, just temporarily suspended.
Anyway, that's my little rant on the subject. I appologize if it came off as a confusing diatribe, but unfortunately I don't see anything but confusion when I think about the current state of copyright.
Obligatory Simpsons quote (Score:5, Funny)
652,000 MP3s?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did this guy have a 20-disk RAID in his box, or am I missing something?
Re:652,000 MP3s?!? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:652,000 MP3s?!? (Score:3, Funny)
Peter
Re:652,000 MP3s?!? (Score:5, Informative)
These are statutory damages (Score:4, Informative)
Statutory damages do not require that they show any actual loss or that the infringer made any money. They only need to show that they owned the copyright and that infringment occured.
Also, this would be a civil case so the money is for damages, not fines.
652,000 Songs? (Score:5, Informative)
Just to pick on a different number for a while:
652,000 songs that the student was allegedly serving? Even at 15 tracks per CD, that's more than 43,000 CDs. Assuming they're just 3 minute long pop songs (no symphonic movement long tracks), it would take over 11 years to listen to them once, if you worked at it 8 hours a day.
I did a search on Amazon's "Popular Music" section for "CD" and got 4117 hits. 11023 hits on "All Products", which includes computer books with CDs, books about CDs, and whatnot.
Just how many music CDs are in print in the first place? No matter how dedicated a pirate, I doubt this guy has a collection of every track ever laid down on any medium by any musician.
And if the music industry really is churning out this many tracks: no wonder they're crap.
Incidentally, 652,000 * 150,000 = 97.8 billion, not trillion. But it's still a silly number.
so.... (Score:5, Funny)
Unique Choice - Michigan Tech (Score:5, Interesting)
Redundant, maybe, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
The student should call AmeriDebt and get those (Score:5, Funny)
And the payments may even qualify as tax deductable.
that's a lot of music (Score:3, Insightful)
If we assume there are 20 tracks on an album (that's a large number, but we'll give them the benefit of the doubt), that gives us 32,600 albums. Now, let's assume that every artist puts out an average of 5 albums.
Using these numbers, we'd find that this ONE guy has successfully collected the entire repertoire of 6,520 different artists.
The storage space required for all those songs (stored as mp3s) would easily be in excess of 2TB.
I seriously doubt the RIAA looked at every single file to verify it was in fact a complete, *unique* song within the collection, and that the copyright to every song belonged to them. For them to do so remotely would require them to download continuously for ~23 days at 1MB/s.
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
2. Sue student for $97 Billion
3. PROFIT!!!
Holy shit, it works!
Further than Pluto (Score:5, Funny)
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 ... (Score:5, Funny)
Well shite.... (Score:5, Funny)
The best idea ever! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't you all just sod off and NOT BUY ANY MORE CD'S!!!!!!!
Then, the RIAA constituent companies will lose money and be forced to deal with the issue.
Listen to the radio, got to concerts, gad, get out from in front of the computer(yes I see the irony), put down the porn and go out and do something. Read a book. A real book. Not some Piers Anthony sexual romp.
Go to the library, sit, where it is free, and read book, for free. Grahm Greene's "The Power and the Glory" is good. Maybe "Heart of Darknes" by Conrad. Edmund Morris's "Theodore Rex" and "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" are good choices.
In further news . . . (Score:3, Funny)
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!
The point is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yawn... (Score:3, Insightful)
The RIAA is just out to prove a point.
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
Kjella
Reciprocity failure (Score:5, Insightful)
File trading is so easy and so desirable on the small scale, that it's impossible to deter it using the courts. You can't haul in everyone who trades files -- so you have to increase the deterrence by really walloping the few that you can. The problem is that there's little difference (to a student) between having to pay 97,000 dollars, or 97,000,000 dollars. Upping the ante by another factor of a million, to 97,000,000,000,000 dollars, isn't any more of a deterrent -- at that point it devolves to abstract numbers.
Another millieu that shows the same kind of saturation deterrence is the drug war (spit). It's easy, cheap, and desirable enough for many folks to smoke pot, that the courts literally could not handle them all. Stiffer penalties don't work so well, because the penalties are already so unreasonably stiff that they don't affect most peoples' risk assessment.
When this phenomenon occurs in photography, it's called "reciprocity failure" normally, each additional photon hitting a piece of film exposes the film the same amount, regardless of the actual intensity -- so you can photograph a dim object, with a longer exposure time. But for very long exposure times, that picture breaks down: the partially-exposed silver halide grains repair themselves in between photon strikes, so exposing film to a weak light source for a very long time doesn't have the effect you'd expect. It makes sense to think of file trading and the drug war as examples of deterrence reciprocity failure.
Re:Perception (Score:3, Funny)
Huh? How is UNIX more fascist than Windows?
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)
Lessig has weighed in... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lawrence Lessig has a good response on his blog [stanford.edu]...
Time to write my Congressman again...
questions (Score:4, Insightful)
2) Speaking of bands, where are "the talent" in all this? why don't we hear from the bands beyond the occasional (apparent) nutcase voicing his opinion then going back to the label lounge? We keep hearing about how the big nasty RIAA is pimping their work and buying out their right to their creative work (if I have to hear Tom Petty's sob story one more time I'm going to puke), but why aren't so many top label bands coming out in favor for/against the RIAA behavior? Many of the A-list acts can certainly get along just fine no matter what label they're on, so if they can extricate themselves from the labels, why don't they? If Fred Durst really thinks mp3's should be free, why doesn't he just jump ship and release his band's own stuff on his own terms? Oh wait, he's VP of Interscope. Nevermind....
Actually they should plead Guilty (Score:3)
Seems like a fair amount...
Actually, if I were one of them - I would seriously consider pleading guilty to all charges, accepting full responsibility for all fines, and then tell the system and the RIAA to fuck off! What are they going go do about it? Answer: nothing that they aren't going to do allready, so why not. Why not force them to take their piece of shit beliefs to its logical conclusion, the more we push it the harder it will be for the RIAA to hide from the world the type of criminals they re