RIAA Trivia Fun Facts!
February 15, 08 by sharky 755 views
Unless you were recently found frozen in the arctic tundra and scientists managed to miraculously thaw you out, you’re probably already aware of the legal pressures the RIAA has been putting on file sharers. So instead of yackin’ our fool heads off about lawsuits & litigation, we thought it’d be more fun to share some interesting facts & stats that aren’t so well known. So test your trivia knowledge with these factoids - who knows, maybe they’ll come in handy if they ever put out a Trivial Pursuit “RIAA” Edition! (proceeds from sales not going to artists anytime soon).
— The RIAA represents hundreds of recording labels, of which the big 4 (Warner, Song BMG, Vivendi Universal and EMI) holds the rights to over 85% of all the music.
— The first “wave” of lawsuits began in 2003 against 261 U.S. file sharers. By January 20th, 2004, the number of active or settled cases reached almost 1,500. Of these, 333 had already been settled for an average judgment of $3,000 for each case.
— Up until March 24, 2004, you had a 1 in 25,290 chance of being sued by the RIAA if you lived in the U.S (and you actively shared music). Keep rolling those dice, Limewire users! Read on; this dramatically increases…
— By February 23, 2007, it had been estimated that 60 million Americans (1 in 5) actively share music files or did so in the past. By this time there had been roughly 20,000 litigations (active or settled) which leads to a 1 in 3,000 chance of being on the sued list. We believe that 60 million is quite high (c’mon, that’s almost everyone who has a computer) - a more conservative figure such as 20 million (overall) users would increase your chances of getting sued to 1 in 1,000. And it gets worse…
2008 •