RIAA’s $1.65 trillion lawsuit

Not a typo - TRILLION.

According to a couple blogs here and here. The Recording Industry Association of America has filed suit in a New York court against allofmp3.com a Russian non-drm file sharing network.

The crux of the story:

The RIAA charges that AllofMP3.com is an illegal service and infringes on their member company's copyrights because they have yet to see any of the fees collected by the Russian music store. AllofMP3.com has quickly become one of the most successful music stores online, namely because of its ability to sell music for less than 10 cents per download.

AllofMP3 countered the music industryš„ôs claim, stating the service is completely legal in Russia as all necessary fees have been forwarded to the Russian royalty collection firm, ROMS. From there, AllofMP3 feels it is the responsibility of ROMS to divvy up the royalties to the copyright holders.

So in what will for ever be known as the text book way to "Kick it up a Notch", RIAA decided to sue AllofMP3.com for 11 million songs pirated at $150,000 per violation or $1.65 Ts. Or as one of the blogs said "slightly less than the GDP of the UK in 2005".

So the total recording sales is around $30 - $40B per year. So RIAA thinks they should get roughly 5x that amount? Right. Way to give allofmp3.com some serious press there RIAA.