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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.
It's ridiculous. You're not trying to complain about the rosy colour of the litigation. For god's sake people, if you failed English in high school then at least use a spell checker. We haven't yet devolved to the point where we need Hooked On Phonics for written language. Or have we?
I understood the original poster. Though I didn't think he'd said anything worth a response. However some spelling errors are just too "rediculuous" to ignore. So for example, I wouldn't normally comment on your own grammatical error ("the" instead of "that") because it is trivial. Everybody makes mistakes and tolerance is a virtue; but nobody should be expected to have infinite tolerance. I literally cringed when I saw "rediculuous". Nobody should have to read English written that poorly.
Or du I need tu start speeking in foniks tu pruv de point?
(apologies for the US-centric nature of this post)
We live in the best place in world. Sure, there's some dumb copyright laws, some dumb surveillance laws, some dumb drug laws ad nauseum, but as of right now (forgoing the orwellian near future, for a moment), there is simply no better place to be.
You live in a country with an incredibly good road system. You can get *anywhere* in the continental US by road. You can't get more than 15 miles away from a road in the continetal US.
You have running water. Reliably. You have indoor plumbing. You have readily available food. You have electricity. You live in a place that has as many cars as families, because cars and gas are just that damned cheap here.
You have the best military in the world. 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).
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.
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*.
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.
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.
And I hate our government as much as the next guy; more probably. I think we've made some very, very bad decisions, but I see every day how much worse it could be, and I'm happy for what we have.