That is how much the RIAA is going after four college students for...
http://www.freep.com/money/tech/newman5_20030405.htm
(The article is off. I did the math, it's billion, not trillion)
Now tell me, what in the world are they trying to accomplish here? Suing someone for THAT MUCH MONEY, over music?
I'm not saying what the guy did was right in the first place (I personally have quit listening to 90% of the music put out by RIAA, favoring artists on MP3.com, forigen music, and the like). But does 97 billion sound like an amount of money that any college student would be able to pay off. Hell, does ANYONE have that amount of money? The thing is, the kids probably wont pay it because of lack of funds and then the RIAA is going to blow it out of their asses as 'unrecoverable damages' or some other bullshit.
And that amount of money might just let the average citizen know how out of control the RIAA is. These kids will become martyrs, not deterents like the RIAA is hoping they will become.
The RIAA is going into serious shit here. And the more they do, the more people they are going to piss off. Their days are numbered.