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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.
Well that explains the lawyers with frickin' lasers mounted on their frickin' heads...
Right, like the RIAA really lost $97.8 trillion worth of potential income from STUDENTS.
That could buy a really large Beowulf Cluster.
"RIAA starts funding US military actions in countries with highest piracy rates"... you can buy many missiles with $97.8 trillion.
The problem in the world today is communication. Too much communication - Homer Simpson
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?
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The United States of America(R) (A Wholely Owned Subsidiary of A Consortium of Multinational Corporations)
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...
Assume an average 3-minute 128kbps MP3 - about 3 MB. 3 MB * 652000 = 1956000 MB. About 2 TERABYTES.
Did this guy have a 20-disk RAID in his box, or am I missing something?
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.
The size 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 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.
Linux : Mac
That's Trillion with a "B"
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
Here is an idea:
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.
Copyright laws were never meant to be abused in this way. Its a shame that our society has let this situation progress to the horrible condition that it is presently in. Reading this article reminds me of Thoreau's Civil Disobedience, I really feel like never paying for a CD again. The thing that really boils my blood is that its a giant corporation that is sueing these poor college students, not the artists - the ones who should really own the music that they produce. The artists get ripped on their own works of art, and the consumer gets ripped off paying for it. The only people that win are the recording labels. I'll "steal" all the stinking music I want. Copyright laws were intended to protect someone from claiming that they produced an original work or idea, not to give mega-corporations the right to rip everyone off. Thomas Jefferson wrote about copyright laws and he said that the right of owning property is something that a society grants its citizens and it is not a natural right. The society can change how it looks upon property (copyright laws) at any minute. I think its time that we change the way our copyright laws work. If Congress won't listen to its citizens and only to corporations that pad their pockets, they it is time that we rebel! We have a right to rebel and change our government when they listen to corporations over citizens. This is something that our founding fathers, and many intellectuals throught history would support. Why are we letting ourselves get walked all over, when our country is supposed to be one of "freedom", "democracy", and "rule by the people"? We need to change this now before it is too late!
SIGFAULT
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.
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 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 than those within its borders. Hell, there are 9 countries which rank higher than we do 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
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