http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=101515&cid=8652435
Re:Good odds, keep sharing! (Score:4, Insightful) by panaceaa (205396) on 4:20 24th March, 2004 (#8652435) (http://slashdot.org/) Given your numbers an illegal file sharer can calculate their monthly financial risk from RIAA lawsuits. Your numbers are: Time (T)=8 months Probability (P)=1/25290 Cost (C)=3000 With monthly financial risk = (P*C)/T, if each month you put away 1.483 cents, you would on average have enough money to pay your settlement fees by the time you were sued. Now assume that the RIAA gets more aggressive and settles less, and through the courts gets a $1 million verdict in 100% of the people it sues (1977 people / 8 months). The monthly financial risk then is $4.94 a month. So even if your punishment is $1 million, the financial risk of getting sued is less than any online music service with a monthly fee. It's also less than 5 songs on iTunes a month, which probably isn't nearly as many songs as Kazaa users download. Why does the RIAA think their legal efforts will convince people with such a low financial risk? And here's an interesting twist -- why doesn't an insurance company insure people against RIAA lawsuits for $10/mo so they can download as much as they want on Kazaa? Isn't this similar to what Redhat is doing to protect its customers from SCO? I'd much rather pay $10/mo to download whatever I want without risk of being sued than pay the same money to MusicMatch for their inferior service. And if everyone did the same, peer-to-peer services would blossom again with tons of quality content from all genres imaginable. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
