I am still trying to figure out if the $1000 means $1000 worth of the same file, $1000 worth of files held by a single copyright holder, or single files totalling $1000.

I also have no idea how the worth of a file is determined. As an example, though:

A standard CD is roughly $15, contains 10 songs, and lasts an hour ($1.50 per song, $0.25 per minute of music). If the $1000 is a total of all shared files, and this is the method of determining worth, you can download/upload around 667 songs in a six month period.

You can do all sorts of math on this of course -- is a compressed song with less data worth less than the CD quality song? If so, a 128 bitrate MP3 song costs around $0.13 ($0.02/minute). That's 7,692 shared songs in six months!

This changes significantly if we are talking about other media, but I think it's still a lot of leeway.


As to the quality issue:

As a test I took a 14:15 minute song from a CD.

The song on the CD was 144 megabytes.
The 320 bitrate, 44.100 kHz. MP3 version was 32.7 megs..
The 128 bitrate, 44.100 kHz. MP3 version was 13.1 megs..


For the 320 bitrate MP3 that is 1/4 the data. For the 128 it's 1/11th. Of course the sound quality of the MP3 is not 75% or 91% worse, but I would say that these are significant amounts of data loss.

Obviously we are a ways away from being able to quickly download and affordably store lots of CD quality music (40 megabytes for a "standard" 4 minute songs is hefty).

Interesting thoughts, in any case.

-gratis