Odds of being sued by RIAA (see my earlier post below). I've given some more thought to the problem. 53 million Americans use file-sharing services. Assume, rather arbitrarily, that 1 in 10 users actively shares significant material (these are the people the RIAA is targetting). If the RIAA has the resources and interest to pursue 10,000 lawsuits, then the odds of being sued (if you are in their target category) are one in 530. This is roughly equal to the odds that you will die from being hit by a car (evaluated over your expected lifetime). If the RIAA mounts 1000 lawsuits, the odds go to one in 5,300. This is only slighly more likely than dying in some transportation accident over the next year (one in 5877). Of course we all know a few people who died in transportation accidents in recent years. Your odds of being sued no doubt increase according to how many files you share and how often you make them available. The RIAA has probably already evaluated these numbers. If they are planning to use this as a meaningful deterrent, they will have to bring a lot of suits. They will probably gain little, in financial terms, from these suits. I expect they will try to use a few demo cases as examples to scare people. Perhaps I am naive about the cost of mounting lawsuits, and the resources available to RIAA, but I don't see how they can sustain lawsuits as a viable deterrent without going broke. If that's the consequence, then maybe they should proceed at full pace.