A while ago we reported you that the RIAA had sued four university students who were operating file-search services on their school's internal networks. Thanks to scum1 we can read a follow-up story on this news, over at The Freep.com.
It seems that the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has gone mad this time since they've sued one of the students for the astronomical figure of $ 150.000 per song, the maximum allowed by law:
Lawsuits against four college students accused of trading copyrighted songs are the biggest punch yet by the recording industry against its core audience, and has experts worried that the next step will be suing the colleges themselves.
The damages sought by the suits are astronomical: $ 150,000 per song, the maximum allowed by law. Multiply that by the 652,000 or so songs the RIAA alleges student Joseph Nievelt offered to other Michigan Tech students on his service, and the scope of the suit is clear.
That 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. And that's just Nievelt's case.
RIAA senior vice president for business and legal affairs Matthew Oppenheim said the suits are intended to send a clear message to anyone running these types of services that punishment will be swift and severe.
According to the article the RIAA's purpose of these ridiculous suits is to intimidate future and current file-sharers.
Are they ****ing out of their minds? The RIAA can burn in hell for these lawsuits, let alone suing for an amount of money that probably isn't even equal to all the money in circulation right now!
Yeah, that's not going through. And a $150,000 per track is an unjustified amount for the students, as well as the RIAA.
This will be an intresting lawsuit, which may be even taken to the supreme court.
If you look closely at the source, this is OLD news, back from 2003. Why is this being reported now? The RIAA lawsuit is And if you do the math, you end up with 97.8 Billion dollars, a thousandth of the astronomical figure reported in the article. Even Bill Gates would have trouble paying off that reduced figure.
Just becase they are suing for that much does not mean they even get.0000000000000000000000000000001 of a portion of it if any. My law teacher tried a case where they where getting sued for like 10 million. I think and the jury did not find it fitting and reduced it to like 500 hundered thousand.
Songs are worth like $1 pretty much anywhere, so that's ridiculous. An entire decently produced album could be made for less than $150,000, let alone one song.
This is stupid, nobody has that much money and there is no imprisonment for debt, if you don't have any money there isn't a darn thing the RIAA can do.
It has nothing to do with the money to the RIAA. It's a fear tactic they have been using since they started. While they hardly ever get all the money they sue for, when people read about the amount they sue they will think twice about pirating.
Oh well, life goes on. Some people can't afford 10-15 dollar cds every week. They should be considered an exception. Whatever, they can't stop everyone.
