I hope you don't expect to save money when your son goes to college.:) If you're giving your son a credit card, or a cash line, expect that electricity saving to be strongly offset by beer and other such college things.
I guess the setup I have here consists of 3 monitors in addition to 4 systems and a laptop; 2 of the monitors are always on. Other than that there's just a fridge. For a month this past spring, my bill was at 90$; I rarely used lighting (being as I like the dark) and pretty much the only power drain came from the computers. The heat was off, being as I layer clothing, etc.
Since then I've tried to keep the systems off when not in direct use, so there's generally 2 on at most now. Still, the bill is around 60$/month. I suspect that the landlord is subsidizing the neighbors, somehow. (During the month I mentioned above, it was fairly cool, but since I'm on the top floor I didn't have to heat the appartment (which uses electric heat)... and I was still charged, it seems.
Four?! Misterhouse can easily run on one - and one that's quite a few years old, too. Granted, I'm sure MisterHouse isn't as fully scaling as this is, but just imagine the power consumption of 4 modern x86 systems running constantly (especially in addition to whatever systems you already have).
We're talking about an extra 100$/month, or more, for power (depending on where you live).
It made my blood boil as I read the comments made by the RIAA guy about compensation of artists. Terms like, "as due their contract" both completely ignore the intent of the question while answering the question verbatim to the meaning of words.
I the impending change of business practice as a good thing.
No longer would we have corporations providing unique things for money at huge markup, we'd have companies competing with very similar products and services. We would go back to the economy of service and utility, instead an economy of things. Back in the day, people would make a chair, and sell it for the amount that its worth: that is, their time, plus the cost of the supplies and other operational costs.
I can see this as being nothing but good for the small-business type. He doesn't have a large heirchy of useless suits, it's just him, a couple employees, and the bookkeeper. Certainly small businesses could provide a better and more economical product in this fashion, when operational costs are negligated.
Nobody is really "sharing" as we traditionally think of the term. Sharing involves lending something to somebody, and while it is on loan, the owner no longer has it. "Sharing" in the P2P context has become a euphemism for "copying." That copying is neither legal nor ethical. The RIAA Guy
v. shared, sharÂing, shares v. tr. To divide and parcel out in shares; apportion. To participate in, use, enjoy, or experience jointly or in turns. To relate (a secret or experience, for example) to another or others. To accord a share in (something) to another or others: shared her chocolate bar with a friend.
It speaks for itself and makes all other arguement on his part useless, being as he has already contradicted reality. It's like not allowing Kevin Mitnick to use a calculator, microwave, digital clock, or car because it's a "computing device" - I'm fairly certain he has.
If you're having attendees donate their system time as game servers, make sure you get them into DNS so that people can access the servers by just going to (say) dod.lanparty or ut2k3.lanparty.
See if those same people would be willing to run a small web server mirroring the requisite patches for the game.
Preferably, you'd want to get people to host games they don't plan on playing, and then have them run a dedicated server.
It's a very good way to cut costs, but you'll certainly have to be a good planner.
Make sure you have them sign a disclosure before they attend/participate that they will not hold you liable for any theft, damage, or their personal enjoyment of the event! Additionally, have them sign that they will not conduct any illigal (and if you wish morally objectable, offensive, etc.) activities at the event and that they alone are responsible for their actions - CYA. Don't explicitly disallow mp3/divx sharing - they'll obviously want to. Just let them know that it's "not allowed" and that any breach in contract "may" result in expulsion from the event.
Additionally, this gives you legal room to kick them out after an hour, with no refund, for ripping someone's kidneys out through their ass.
Provide them with paper documentation telling them -exactly- what they will get for the entrance fee: free soda (if you offer that), a seat, a 2'x2.5' square of table space, 1 power jack, 1 ethernet jack, limitted HTTP, AIM, etc. access, a plush toy Gazoo, and entrance in the LAN competitions.
Also make sure that they are fully aware that a working computer is their responsibility and their's alone. You can provide cables, services, etc. (charge for official tech support?), but ultimately, they are simply paying for a seat to sit in, a jack to plug into, and somewhere to put their computer.
Limit the size of the monitor allowed. You don't want some jackass bringing a 100lb monitor (21"+) and taking up all the table real estate, and you don't want some fool thinking it'd be cool to have his own LCD projector.
Have a list of the 'official' games that will be played, as well as when the official play time will be for those specific games. Only schedule 'official' games for the first day or so, and then decide from there on an hour-to-hour basis (if you see it as prudent) using a web forum or such. People are free to do whatever they want, of course, but best to provide for those that do.
If you don't have an official hardware server available to host these games, then I suggest you talk to people upon registration to find out if they'd be interested in hosting games (provided they have the hardware). Give them a discount for agreeing to host the "official" BF1942 server, etc. - and make sure it advertises as the official server.
If you're going to provide outside-world internet access, throttle it down to nothing (unless they're paying for a big pipe too). Allow only the most basic things through: http, AIM, non-DCC IRC, etc. If they want to swap files, let them do it locally. Pretty much any file they could want would likely be on a lan with 120 people (with reason), and if not, they should get it at home.
You will want to have at least one 'server' on the network that is your's. It should provide DHCP, DNS, IRC, and HTTP services. Possibly have a second/backup one running another OS, depending on how many people you have and how much you trust them, as well as your relative administration ability.
Set up a web server! Put every piece of information they could possibly need on the web server, including everything that was in your initial handout. If they question something, point them to the page and tell them to RTFM.:P Have information about games, a database of real names/nicks, a listing of available nearby restraunts w/ phone numbers, etc.
Possibly provide a landline for people to call from, but restrict the line to local calls only. Set it in a public area and restrict calls to 5 minutes.
Financial issues will all depend on whether your goal is to host a LAN party, or whether it's to make money by hosting a lan party. If its the latter, stop right now and give up. If you had to 'ask slashdot', you have nowhere near the mettle to undertake it. Keep in mind that this =is= a business endeavor, whether that is your intent or not. A lot of the same things need to be done if you want to protect your own interests - especially in the lawsuit-crazy American culture. There is a reasonable degree of risk involved: it isn't a
I'm unable to write in cursive any longer. My cursive is about as legible as your average signature - partially in fault to the fact that my signature is all I've used cursive for in the last 8 years.
I stopped taking notes in college when I was no longer able to read my own handwriting. Instead, I would find a fairly attractive girl in the class and get her to give me notes routinely, and then I'd just sleep in for the class.
Yeah, it looks like you had better professors. I have a feeling that the professors I had used the '4 pages' (or whatever) guideline as a quick way to grade the papers. Probably something crazy like, "Proper length - check. No outrageous mark-outs with a pen - check. No running into page boundries - check. Used a nice color of ink - check. No big words - check." Etc. It's not my fault that I had thuroughly exhaused the topic he specified for the essay to be on though conceiseness.
I have no doubt in my mind that the professor I speak of used such an approach (in a 2nd level composition course). Many of the people in that class that I know to be quite lacking in the literary field aced the course, while I - someone who has always excelled at such things - got a low B.
Granted, it could have something to do with the stellar educational institution that I was attending at the time. Damn them.
The only beautiful cursive I remember was the bubbly script with the hearts or circles used to dot the i's that girls in high school used. Other than that, most cursive was cramped, indescript, jagged, etc.
That's what pisses me off about college - you don't get any reward for conceiseness or clearly thought-out answers. So what if you can answer an essay question better than everyone else, in half as much space - the exam is to write a 2 page essay, in class, with a pen/pencil, on X or Y topic or idea.
I have a feeling that this is the doing of governmental regulation agencies.
Cursive writing was invented, to the best of my knowledge, in order to speed up the ordeal of getting things on paper; for most people, writing out each letter is tediously slow. "Lettering" (such as that found in fancy documents, ala The Declaration of Independence) was relegated to more formal tasks, while today's "text" was for labeling things, ease of use understanding, and every-day use (such as on signs and notes on the washboard for Mom).
Now, with a nearly universal advent of computers, there's little need for 'cursive', as you can type many, many times faster and more legibly than you can write in cursive. Cursive is an anachronism.
Personally, I'm glad cursive is on its way out. In grade school, I always hated it - I could write faster with my handwriting (which was more of a script anyway, but it wasn't "cursive"), and would cramp my hand like a mofo. As soon as they stopped forcing us to use it, I was done and through with it. Now I use it for is my name, relegating any handwriting to either palm grafiti (on paper, yes - at least something closely approximating it) for my own personal scribblings, or simple engineer's lettering (those of you that don't know what that is, it's basically blocky, all-capital letters).
If you need something fancy, that's what laserjets are for. Sure, there's still room for things like caligraphy, but that sure as hell isn't cursive.
Yes and no. You pay for a linux distro for support. That is, to support those that made it. Any support you receive is secondary. That's what IRC/howtos/faqs/usenet/message boards are for.
This isn't an issue, because anyone that installs commericial software (typically) forfits any right to protest, copy, refund, etc. before they even install it through the court-proven click-through EULA.
I suspect it would mostly apply to more of the custom-application market (banks, hospitals, restraunts, etc.)
And in the specific case of a computer or video game, there's little chance of the consumer being ripped off, since there's systems in place like reviews, Internet commentary, demos, etc
What about reviewers that are paid off? What about 'studies' done about software feasability that have been paid off? (There seems to be a certain company I recall that used this tactic fairly prolificly in the past (present?)) These things hit many a person in the wallet, especially involving games.
Would software reviewers that fraudulently boister the quality of a game get the same legal treatment, I wonder?
I wonder if this will result in a regulation board similar to what the EPA has done for (to?) engineers?
For those that do not know, in order to claim something in engineering, it has to meet certain requirements as set by the EPA. If those guidelines are not met, it is not a certifiable plan, design, or implimentation. Basically, the EPA has page upon page of redundant guidelines that have to be met which engineers have to comply with in order to work. These guidelines are excessively wordy and require a large degree of decemination in order to understand.
I wonder if this sort of thing being instigated as a software requirement would cripple the industry, or provide a stimulus for better software (which means more consumer interest, it would seem).
I s'pose there could simply be a software claims board that reviews software to make sure they have the features they claim, but I'd rather there be some sort of quality-assured guideline in addition.
This is indicative of people being pissed already, I think. Take into consideration that $12,000 is a LOT of CDs. That is, it's approximately 668.52 worth of full-length albums.
Everyone take a look at your music collections right now - exactly how many pirated music albums do you have? One or two hundred, at the max? Several dozen? How many of those are independent artists? If you're anything like me, most of your digital music isn't even mainstream, and just about as much of it is even on major labels. Most of the hardcore music collectors I know of have similar situations. The largest collector I know of has around 12G of music (he's an avid show/scene person, and has all the CDs for what he's got, too).
Consider that a 13G music collection is roughly 325 albums worth of 10-song albums composed of 4Mb songs (with fairly lossy compression). That's not even half of what those albums would have cost at full RIAA retail.
Now, let's guesstimate how many CDs your average college campus would buy, were there not such things as P2P and MP3s, and the Internet. Consider: that I, as well as most of the people I know, can not afford CDs, that most music on the radio is claptrap, that all of the music I listen to I would not even know about if it were not for P2P (and would likely have never made it were it not for a large fanbase in the p2p community).
Also consider that prior to any of these new-fangled CDs (that is, in the 70's and 80's), many people in college would use high-fidelity turntables to dub records to metal-oxide or normal audio cassettes - saving many dollars by not buying the official album release.
My guess is that, over the course of a year, a college campus of around 2,000 students would purchase -maybe- 2,000 albums, most of those being pollarized in a select group of people - the music enthusiasts. Everyone else would just listen to the auditory rot on the radio (as they do now, in addition to the same songs in MP3 form). Of those 2,000 albums, multiple copies would be made. Easily half of those albums purchased would not be mainstream bands, and those that were mainstream albums would likely be in the more peripheral parts of mainstream.
This postulation leads me to conclude that these lawsuits are a feeble attempt to recoup money for their failing industry monopoly. People have caught on, and are tired of paying up the wazoo for a couple songs that most likely are tiresome by the 3rd time they listen to them.
All in all, this kid got raped. He took one 'for the team'. Very foolish of him to do so: he should have used that 12k to go to court. Of course, the RIAA would have appealed, and appealed any counter-suit, so really, he couldn't have done it on his own.
Slashdot Mirror
ouch
well, in that case I take it back
the high cost will be in the inflated tuition and mission trips
Oh yeah, well... I've got a ballpoint pen! So THERE.
I hope you don't expect to save money when your son goes to college. :) If you're giving your son a credit card, or a cash line, expect that electricity saving to be strongly offset by beer and other such college things.
wow, what kind of rate do you have?
I guess the setup I have here consists of 3 monitors in addition to 4 systems and a laptop; 2 of the monitors are always on. Other than that there's just a fridge. For a month this past spring, my bill was at 90$; I rarely used lighting (being as I like the dark) and pretty much the only power drain came from the computers. The heat was off, being as I layer clothing, etc.
Since then I've tried to keep the systems off when not in direct use, so there's generally 2 on at most now. Still, the bill is around 60$/month. I suspect that the landlord is subsidizing the neighbors, somehow. (During the month I mentioned above, it was fairly cool, but since I'm on the top floor I didn't have to heat the appartment (which uses electric heat)... and I was still charged, it seems.
Powered by four PCs running Windows XP
Four?! Misterhouse can easily run on one - and one that's quite a few years old, too. Granted, I'm sure MisterHouse isn't as fully scaling as this is, but just imagine the power consumption of 4 modern x86 systems running constantly (especially in addition to whatever systems you already have).
We're talking about an extra 100$/month, or more, for power (depending on where you live).
ok, so... "nizzle" is slang for "nigger" which is slange itself?
Um, besides, "nizzle" is more akin to "nipple" than "nigger" and makes a F-load more sense. Not that snoop dog makes sense, I'm just sayin', yo.
It made my blood boil as I read the comments made by the RIAA guy about compensation of artists. Terms like, "as due their contract" both completely ignore the intent of the question while answering the question verbatim to the meaning of words.
I the impending change of business practice as a good thing.
No longer would we have corporations providing unique things for money at huge markup, we'd have companies competing with very similar products and services. We would go back to the economy of service and utility, instead an economy of things. Back in the day, people would make a chair, and sell it for the amount that its worth: that is, their time, plus the cost of the supplies and other operational costs.
I can see this as being nothing but good for the small-business type. He doesn't have a large heirchy of useless suits, it's just him, a couple employees, and the bookkeeper. Certainly small businesses could provide a better and more economical product in this fashion, when operational costs are negligated.
Nobody is really "sharing" as we traditionally think of the term. Sharing involves lending something to somebody, and while it is on loan, the owner no longer has it. "Sharing" in the P2P context has become a euphemism for "copying." That copying is neither legal nor ethical. The RIAA Guy
v. shared, sharÂing, shares
v. tr.
To divide and parcel out in shares; apportion.
To participate in, use, enjoy, or experience jointly or in turns.
To relate (a secret or experience, for example) to another or others.
To accord a share in (something) to another or others: shared her chocolate bar with a friend.
It speaks for itself and makes all other arguement on his part useless, being as he has already contradicted reality. It's like not allowing Kevin Mitnick to use a calculator, microwave, digital clock, or car because it's a "computing device" - I'm fairly certain he has.
Something I forgot to recommend:
If you're having attendees donate their system time as game servers, make sure you get them into DNS so that people can access the servers by just going to (say) dod.lanparty or ut2k3.lanparty.
See if those same people would be willing to run a small web server mirroring the requisite patches for the game.
Preferably, you'd want to get people to host games they don't plan on playing, and then have them run a dedicated server.
It's a very good way to cut costs, but you'll certainly have to be a good planner.
Make sure you have them sign a disclosure before they attend/participate that they will not hold you liable for any theft, damage, or their personal enjoyment of the event! Additionally, have them sign that they will not conduct any illigal (and if you wish morally objectable, offensive, etc.) activities at the event and that they alone are responsible for their actions - CYA. Don't explicitly disallow mp3/divx sharing - they'll obviously want to. Just let them know that it's "not allowed" and that any breach in contract "may" result in expulsion from the event.
:P Have information about games, a database of real names/nicks, a listing of available nearby restraunts w/ phone numbers, etc.
Additionally, this gives you legal room to kick them out after an hour, with no refund, for ripping someone's kidneys out through their ass.
Provide them with paper documentation telling them -exactly- what they will get for the entrance fee: free soda (if you offer that), a seat, a 2'x2.5' square of table space, 1 power jack, 1 ethernet jack, limitted HTTP, AIM, etc. access, a plush toy Gazoo, and entrance in the LAN competitions.
Also make sure that they are fully aware that a working computer is their responsibility and their's alone. You can provide cables, services, etc. (charge for official tech support?), but ultimately, they are simply paying for a seat to sit in, a jack to plug into, and somewhere to put their computer.
Limit the size of the monitor allowed. You don't want some jackass bringing a 100lb monitor (21"+) and taking up all the table real estate, and you don't want some fool thinking it'd be cool to have his own LCD projector.
Have a list of the 'official' games that will be played, as well as when the official play time will be for those specific games. Only schedule 'official' games for the first day or so, and then decide from there on an hour-to-hour basis (if you see it as prudent) using a web forum or such. People are free to do whatever they want, of course, but best to provide for those that do.
If you don't have an official hardware server available to host these games, then I suggest you talk to people upon registration to find out if they'd be interested in hosting games (provided they have the hardware). Give them a discount for agreeing to host the "official" BF1942 server, etc. - and make sure it advertises as the official server.
If you're going to provide outside-world internet access, throttle it down to nothing (unless they're paying for a big pipe too). Allow only the most basic things through: http, AIM, non-DCC IRC, etc. If they want to swap files, let them do it locally. Pretty much any file they could want would likely be on a lan with 120 people (with reason), and if not, they should get it at home.
You will want to have at least one 'server' on the network that is your's. It should provide DHCP, DNS, IRC, and HTTP services. Possibly have a second/backup one running another OS, depending on how many people you have and how much you trust them, as well as your relative administration ability.
Set up a web server! Put every piece of information they could possibly need on the web server, including everything that was in your initial handout. If they question something, point them to the page and tell them to RTFM.
Possibly provide a landline for people to call from, but restrict the line to local calls only. Set it in a public area and restrict calls to 5 minutes.
Financial issues will all depend on whether your goal is to host a LAN party, or whether it's to make money by hosting a lan party. If its the latter, stop right now and give up. If you had to 'ask slashdot', you have nowhere near the mettle to undertake it. Keep in mind that this =is= a business endeavor, whether that is your intent or not. A lot of the same things need to be done if you want to protect your own interests - especially in the lawsuit-crazy American culture. There is a reasonable degree of risk involved: it isn't a
I'm unable to write in cursive any longer. My cursive is about as legible as your average signature - partially in fault to the fact that my signature is all I've used cursive for in the last 8 years.
I stopped taking notes in college when I was no longer able to read my own handwriting. Instead, I would find a fairly attractive girl in the class and get her to give me notes routinely, and then I'd just sleep in for the class.
Yeah, it looks like you had better professors. I have a feeling that the professors I had used the '4 pages' (or whatever) guideline as a quick way to grade the papers. Probably something crazy like, "Proper length - check. No outrageous mark-outs with a pen - check. No running into page boundries - check. Used a nice color of ink - check. No big words - check." Etc. It's not my fault that I had thuroughly exhaused the topic he specified for the essay to be on though conceiseness.
I have no doubt in my mind that the professor I speak of used such an approach (in a 2nd level composition course). Many of the people in that class that I know to be quite lacking in the literary field aced the course, while I - someone who has always excelled at such things - got a low B.
Granted, it could have something to do with the stellar educational institution that I was attending at the time. Damn them.
The only beautiful cursive I remember was the bubbly script with the hearts or circles used to dot the i's that girls in high school used. Other than that, most cursive was cramped, indescript, jagged, etc.
What in the world did you sign 500 copies a day of, for several -years-? Sweet baby Moses.
That's what pisses me off about college - you don't get any reward for conceiseness or clearly thought-out answers. So what if you can answer an essay question better than everyone else, in half as much space - the exam is to write a 2 page essay, in class, with a pen/pencil, on X or Y topic or idea.
I have a feeling that this is the doing of governmental regulation agencies.
Cursive writing was invented, to the best of my knowledge, in order to speed up the ordeal of getting things on paper; for most people, writing out each letter is tediously slow. "Lettering" (such as that found in fancy documents, ala The Declaration of Independence) was relegated to more formal tasks, while today's "text" was for labeling things, ease of use understanding, and every-day use (such as on signs and notes on the washboard for Mom).
Now, with a nearly universal advent of computers, there's little need for 'cursive', as you can type many, many times faster and more legibly than you can write in cursive. Cursive is an anachronism.
Personally, I'm glad cursive is on its way out. In grade school, I always hated it - I could write faster with my handwriting (which was more of a script anyway, but it wasn't "cursive"), and would cramp my hand like a mofo. As soon as they stopped forcing us to use it, I was done and through with it. Now I use it for is my name, relegating any handwriting to either palm grafiti (on paper, yes - at least something closely approximating it) for my own personal scribblings, or simple engineer's lettering (those of you that don't know what that is, it's basically blocky, all-capital letters).
If you need something fancy, that's what laserjets are for. Sure, there's still room for things like caligraphy, but that sure as hell isn't cursive.
Yes and no. You pay for a linux distro for support. That is, to support those that made it. Any support you receive is secondary. That's what IRC/howtos/faqs/usenet/message boards are for.
This isn't an issue, because anyone that installs commericial software (typically) forfits any right to protest, copy, refund, etc. before they even install it through the court-proven click-through EULA.
I suspect it would mostly apply to more of the custom-application market (banks, hospitals, restraunts, etc.)
And in the specific case of a computer or video game, there's little chance of the consumer being ripped off, since there's systems in place like reviews, Internet commentary, demos, etc
What about reviewers that are paid off? What about 'studies' done about software feasability that have been paid off? (There seems to be a certain company I recall that used this tactic fairly prolificly in the past (present?)) These things hit many a person in the wallet, especially involving games.
Would software reviewers that fraudulently boister the quality of a game get the same legal treatment, I wonder?
I wonder if this will result in a regulation board similar to what the EPA has done for (to?) engineers?
For those that do not know, in order to claim something in engineering, it has to meet certain requirements as set by the EPA. If those guidelines are not met, it is not a certifiable plan, design, or implimentation. Basically, the EPA has page upon page of redundant guidelines that have to be met which engineers have to comply with in order to work. These guidelines are excessively wordy and require a large degree of decemination in order to understand.
I wonder if this sort of thing being instigated as a software requirement would cripple the industry, or provide a stimulus for better software (which means more consumer interest, it would seem).
I s'pose there could simply be a software claims board that reviews software to make sure they have the features they claim, but I'd rather there be some sort of quality-assured guideline in addition.
I'd like to bring to your oblivious attention that FreeBSD (nor OpenBSD, etc) is not a distro at all, but in fact, a BSD variant.
So how would you know anything about how easy anything is on *BSD, exactly? You obviously don't use it.
This is indicative of people being pissed already, I think. Take into consideration that $12,000 is a LOT of CDs. That is, it's approximately 668.52 worth of full-length albums.
Everyone take a look at your music collections right now - exactly how many pirated music albums do you have? One or two hundred, at the max? Several dozen? How many of those are independent artists? If you're anything like me, most of your digital music isn't even mainstream, and just about as much of it is even on major labels. Most of the hardcore music collectors I know of have similar situations. The largest collector I know of has around 12G of music (he's an avid show/scene person, and has all the CDs for what he's got, too).
Consider that a 13G music collection is roughly 325 albums worth of 10-song albums composed of 4Mb songs (with fairly lossy compression). That's not even half of what those albums would have cost at full RIAA retail.
Now, let's guesstimate how many CDs your average college campus would buy, were there not such things as P2P and MP3s, and the Internet. Consider: that I, as well as most of the people I know, can not afford CDs, that most music on the radio is claptrap, that all of the music I listen to I would not even know about if it were not for P2P (and would likely have never made it were it not for a large fanbase in the p2p community).
Also consider that prior to any of these new-fangled CDs (that is, in the 70's and 80's), many people in college would use high-fidelity turntables to dub records to metal-oxide or normal audio cassettes - saving many dollars by not buying the official album release.
My guess is that, over the course of a year, a college campus of around 2,000 students would purchase -maybe- 2,000 albums, most of those being pollarized in a select group of people - the music enthusiasts. Everyone else would just listen to the auditory rot on the radio (as they do now, in addition to the same songs in MP3 form). Of those 2,000 albums, multiple copies would be made. Easily half of those albums purchased would not be mainstream bands, and those that were mainstream albums would likely be in the more peripheral parts of mainstream.
This postulation leads me to conclude that these lawsuits are a feeble attempt to recoup money for their failing industry monopoly. People have caught on, and are tired of paying up the wazoo for a couple songs that most likely are tiresome by the 3rd time they listen to them.
All in all, this kid got raped. He took one 'for the team'. Very foolish of him to do so: he should have used that 12k to go to court. Of course, the RIAA would have appealed, and appealed any counter-suit, so really, he couldn't have done it on his own.
Erm, it happened to me. So yes, if my personal experience is magical, then so be it.