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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.
Read the Friggin Articles!!!!!!! The RIAA press release is telling. 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. 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 they knew about the internet 20 years ago, it wouldn't exist--except in their offices.
Repeat after me. "The RIAA is doing this for anticompetitive reasons. The RIAA are a bunch of facist pigs. The RIAA are the real thieves. They want to steal the internet and computers away from the public. They want to establish a DRM censorship system where they can block anything they want--especially independent competitors."