We're all rich! Or so says the RIAA, according to Cracked.

[unixronin]

The continuing operation of The Pirate Bay is chiefly a triumph for enemies of the RIAA, which, by our last count, is everyone who isn't the RIAA.

Cracked does the (sardonically humorous) math on the RIAA vs. The Pirate Bay, discovering that if you believe the RIAA's math, The Pirate Bay "has stolen about 46 times more [US] dollars than actually exist on Earth".

Using the RIAA's numbers, my on-disk music catalog — ripped from legally purchased CDs, I will note — is worth somewhere around $3 billion.  Damn, I'm rich!

The cartoon at the bottom of the page is worth clicking on and reading full-size, too, just as a reminder about the stealing-work-from-artists er, entertainment industry and its endless Chicken Little the-sky-is-falling claims.  In the fantasy world of the RIAA and MPAA, there is no entertainment industry, because radio destroyed the record industry, TV killed cinema, home taping killed music, and VHS destroyed Hollywood.

Oh, wait ... in the real world, none of those things actually happened.

Comments

[lebo-superman.livejournal.com]

So, if I'm to understand the RIAA's logic, technology should have stopped at the point where the only way to hear an artist perform was to witness it live - aka traveling minstrels. Is that right? Or should it have stopped with the Edison phonograph? Or are we honestly expected to believe that their businesses should be protected from failure without the necessity of adapting to technological change over time?

Meh, they stink. Pull the plug and let them go under.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think the RIAA's actual logic is "Nobody except us should be allowed to make money off music, and nobody should be allowed to perform or listen to music without giving us money first, preferably every time."

Meh, they stink. Pull the plug and let them go under.

That. Adapt or die.

those who don't learn from history...

[rosencrantz23.livejournal.com]

....are doomed to shriek that the sky is falling every single time things change.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18513_5-insane-file-sharing-panics-from-before-internet.html

VCRs killed broadcast TV!
Player Pianos killed live concerts!
BASIC killed software development!

&c.