Tuesday, June 8, 2010

This week in news

RIAA Sues LimeWire for $1.5 Trillion

In what seems like a sad and ill-timed April Fool's joke, RIAA is asking for $750 for each song downloaded through LimeWire.


RIAA Sues Radio Signal Receivers for $10 Trillion

People who are subjected to radio signals have been getting a free ride, according to RIAA.  "Radio stations are playing music that we own, and whether someone is listening to that song on an album that was purchased in a store, or if radio waves carrying that song pass harmlessly through their head, it makes no difference to us... we are still owed money for that song."  RIAA is asking for $750 for each song that is played on a radio station, for each person within the range of that station.


RIAA Sues Pet-Owners for $250 Trillion

RIAA claims that pet-owners are not living up to their contractual agreements.  "When you purchase an album, you are purchasing a license to listen to that album, as an individual.  Pet-owners tend to have their pets around when they listen to music.  The owners typically don't realize that they are required to purchase an additional copy of an album for each pet that consumes our product."

RIAA has also stated that they may be introducing new licensing agreements that require customers to buy a second copy of an album if they listen to it more than 5 times.


RIAA Sues India, China for $5.5 Quadrillion

RIAA has stated that consumers in India and China are not buying enough albums, which they are calling "Theft of potential profits". By their calculations, each person should be pulling their weight and buying enough albums for a collection of approximately 250 albums each, roughly the average for UK album owners.  At an average of 12 songs per album, and at $750 per song (the magic number that RIAA says each un-purchased potential song costs them), the bill comes to $2.25 million per person.  With around 2.5 billion people in the 2 countries, the total amounts to over $5,545 trillion.  "Luckily, with such large numbers, the theft of our potential profits is a very serious crime in these countries, and may even carry the death penalty as a punishment, which we think will really encourage people to pay up what they owe us."


RIAA Sues Earth for $3.3 Quintillion

"Frankly, we're just used to pulling ridiculously inflated numbers out of our asses and telling people they owe us that.  The number we came up with, and it's an exciting one, is $500,000,000, from each person on the planet.  And, we'd like to have that money, so we think we deserve it."

7 comments:

bobisimo said...

Funny.

But to be fair, the RIAA should only sue India & China for $125 trillion dollars (is that 1/400th of 5.5 quadrillion?).

To expect each person to pay $750 per song is insane when each person is not "pirating" the song to bunches of others.

That is, each person is only responsible for their own lost potential profit -- and so $1.88 per song is closer to "right" than $750.

Of course.

bobisimo said...

In other news, did you hear the one about handheld game piracy? Anyone? Anyone? Stop me if you've heard this.

Basically, the researchers are saying that hand-held game piracy amounts to $41 billion.

I thought you, especially, would like this. You, of all people. You.

Anyway, so the thing is that there are ~about~ 195 million hand-held game consoles out there (between the PSP and the DS) in the world. That means every single one of them is pirating $210 dollars worth of games.

That estimate seems really low to me.

Michael Devine said...

True... I was just using magic RIAA math, and I don't know where they get it from.

I think what it is, is... each time someone downloads a song from LimeWire, they upload it to approximately 400 other people (1.88x399=750.12).

So perhaps they feel that each person whose duty is to buy 250 records in their lifetime, should also be encouraging about 400 people to buy each of those albums too. I know, those numbers seem a little off! RIAA has no money to spend on mathematicians! Their lawyers would probably sue them for lost wages.

The math in the original story doesn't check out. It says $1.5 trillion for 200 million downloads at 750 per. It should be $150 billion, or $2 billion downloads, or $7500 per. Let's just assume they meant $150 billion.

Then you see... for each and every of the 200 M times a song was downloaded by someone on LimeWire, it was UPLOADED 400x that. There have been 200 M downloads with LimeWire, but by RIAA estimates, there have been 80 billion UPLOADS with LimeWire.

I guess everyone's share ratio averages 400.

Michael Devine said...

Notes about the math are here: http://www.p2pnet.net/story/40466
(yes it was supposed to be $150 billion, and I was just being 'lamescream'). :? <-- that's the smiley that means "embarrassed about having been lamescream"

bobisimo said...

Have you seen this un-American BS? I'm sickened. And disgusted.

http://torrentfreak.com/judges-liken-p2p-to-the-ancient-practice-of-lending-books-100608/

bobisimo said...

My share ratio at a private tracker site is only 13.85. I thought that was good but I'm obviously falling well short of the average. That makes me wonder if there are people at the top with half-a-billion ratios and whatnot. I wonder... I wonder if there can be a day where... I guess I want to see an album get released and, ya know, the record label can get just a small fraction of, say, 100x the total population, in terms of sales. Just a small fraction. Like 25%.

bobisimo said...

$750 per song? Try this:

"The music publishers will seek $150,000 for each song distributed on the service illegally, which could bring the total damages to hundreds of millions of dollars, just as the record companies are seeking. "