RIAA Paid $16M+ in Legal Fees to Collect $391K

"In the end, it seems the true victor are the lawyers."

You think? Hasn't this always been the case? No pun intended.

That'll teach them...to download a law for dummies book.

Oh so this is why Americans have to pay through their nose with taxes on an everything, the money for the Lawyers has to come from somewhere. At least I'm pretty sure the RIAA/MPAA are financed by the tax-payers

they probably think they are actually acomplishing their goal by scaring people into not pirating.

it'd be hard to prove if they are or are not mkaing this goal. but if they spent that much on legal fees and it somehow resulted in more revenue from fear of being caught then they are successful and mademoney despite losing money

inversly if those people who usually pirate would have never paid for thier media in the first place and they spent more on legal fees than they would have in sold media to people persuaded to buy instead of download then it is in fact a fiscal loss

and to think, if they only had common sense they'd see this is a waste of time and resources, shame they don't have any

American Taxes are nothing compared to other first world countries.

I don't think the RIAA's true intent was monetary restitution as much as discouraging future pirates (which can't be calculated monetarily). Although in the end they just end up looking like the greedy assholes they really are.

O_o they aren't.

Great ROI! Well it is for the lawyers. I guess RIAA likes capitalizing on the economies of scale.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_7p4cvBURk

I think Steve Jobs should pick up the legal tab because he got quite a windfall from all this legal activity through Itunes.

Epic FFF-FAIL!!!!!

Yeah, but think about how many people aren't downloading music because they are afraid they'll get sued.

You can't be serious.

There you go making assumptions, what makes you think that the taxpayers are financing the MPAA, it's not a government institution therefore has no ties to taxpayers?!?!

Its a futile battle that RIAA is waging. People will continue to resist buying music when a CD is 20 dollars with one track on there that is good. Sell the music at a lower cost and people wouldn't be pirating.

The numbers look dumb but the impact is much greater than just the amount of money they collect. Imagine how much money is being "not lost" when people buy a cd instead of pirating because they're afraid of being caught.

(17.6-0.391) / $13 = roughly 1.3 million CDs.

Considering that a single popular album can sell in the millions of CDs, it's actually not that bad.

Obamaconics, spend money to make money.

Pun intended as he is also a lawyer.

Take that RIAA says this "little guy".

Now excuse me i need to find stuff to download.

Some countries such as Canada do directly fund their equivalents of the RIAA with actual taxes on goods like blank CDs, but AFAIK the U.S. is not one of those countries. Lawyers do levy a "tax" on everything, but it's not a tax like a sales tax or income tax that is mandated by the government. The lawyer tax is that the price of everything is higher because of the cost of employing legal staff to try to prevent and defend against lawsuits or pay for liability insurance is passed on to the customers.

RIAA = IDIOTS
I will use that money to lower prices and make music available even in a grocery store.

... go figure...

RIAA should be disbanded. It represents the word 'fail' no truer than any others.

10 years ago~they wanted a tax per gig on everything. I rarely even use disks anymore and when I did it was mostly for backup which pissed the hell out of me when they started taxing me for disks. As far as I am concerned I paid more than a lifetime worth of the music I "May" download, which is pretty much nothing considering what is out there now.

it's like a traffic cop who is out there to remain crazy drivers like me that i cannot drive like hell and that there are traffic laws to obey. and please don't tell him he's supposed to issue traffic fines to cover his payroll and his bosses' too. Not at my expense!

If youre going to make such a massive loss the only logical conlusion is that its being done out of pure spite.

While this might reduce piracy, I guarantee you this won't end piracy. Even if you sell CDs at 1 cent each, there will still be pirates. They will sell more copies at the lower price but the volume gained may not make up for the margin lost.

proof the RIAA has to much money to know what do with...

and we say: wtf?!
possibly some sort of laundering via the law firm,
no1's that inefficient.

LOL! You AMerican have to pay nothing Taxes in Canada are way higher

Ya