joegratz.net

Before the D.C. Circuit and Second circuit have a chance to rule on the challenge to the last round of subpoenas, the RIAA has filed another round, this time in the Third and Eleventh Circuits, targeting mostly Comcast and Earthlink subscribers.

This brings the grand total to 1,445 lawsuits. So they’d need 2,577 times as many lawsuits just to hit everyone on Kazaa right now.

Some more stats:

• If they continue filing at their current rate (532 per month), it would take until August of the year 2587 to sue everyone on Kazaa right now.
• Barring any unforeseen advances in medical technology, if they continue filing steadily at their current rate, someone using Kazaa right now will be dead before it becomes more likely than not that they’ve been sued (in January of the year 2296).
• For a current Kazaa user, assuming a generous life expectancy of an additional 100 years, and assuming that the user keeps on file-sharing egregiously every day until her death, the chances are about one in six that she’ll be sued in her lifetime.

So even if I was a frequent user of P2P apps like Kazaa (which I’m not; I pay for my music when the copyright holder decides to take my money), I wouldn’t be worried.

Enforcement difficulties like this are the reason compulsory and collective licenses exist for other kinds of uses of copyrighted material. A flat fee, coupled with some way to measure the popularity of files, is the only effective way to get out of this mess.