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Huge $75 trillion sum is more than estimated GDP of the entire world.
The music industry has been trying to work out damages owed due to piracy for some time. To say their approach has been somewhat disorganised would be an understatement. Back in 2009, a woman from the USA was ordered to pay $1.92m for downloading 24 tracks from file-sharing site Kazaa - that's $80,000 per song. But it gets far siller.
This is pretty much the definition of 'taking the biscuit'. Law.com reports on a case between a number of record companies and file-sharing website Limewire.
The record companies were asked to estimate the damages they should be paid and came up with anything between $400 billion and $75 trillion. Yes, that's $75,000,000,000,000. To put it another way, the estimated GDP of the entire world is about $60 trillion.
The presiding judge at the Manhattan federal district court, Judge Kimba Wood, didn't agree with the sums. In a 14-page document, Judge Wood labelled the record companies' request for damages as "absurd".
Crunchgear has an excellent image to sum up the madness of the number, taking their queue from Star Trek.
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