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The $8 billion iPod | Rob Reid

TED · 953.6K views · 2012-03-15 · 5:12

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Overview

A five-minute TED talk by Rob Reid, who introduces Copyright Math, applying entertainment-industry piracy loss claims to produce absurd totals such as an $8 billion iPod.

On Hacker News

HN links it in piracy and copyright-lawsuit threads as a funny short demonstration of how inflated industry damage figures are.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2012–2026

Topics

Law, policing & justiceStand-up & sketch comedyTech industry & business models
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copyrightpiracyted talkhumorindustry lobbying

What people said

omoikane · 2023-02 · Recommendation

Related: "The 8 billion iPod" by Rob Reid - [VIDEO] It's a funny TED talk on "copyright math".

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DavidNielsen · 2018-03 · Recommendation

Rob Reid did a funny 5min TED Talk on this called the 8 Billion dollar iPod: [VIDEO] He used the same premise when he wrote the comedy sci-fi book Year Zero, the story of naive aliens accidentally pirating all of Earths music and the legal consequences thereof, i.e. owning the citizens of Earth literally all the money in the universe leading to the ruination of their delightfully hedonistic utopia. A quick and hilarious read.

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ShroudedNight · 2026-01 · Reference

Also worth remembering that around 2010, the music and film industry associations of America were claiming entitlement to $50 billion dollars annually in piracy-related losses beyond what could be accounted for in direct lost revenue (which _might_ have been as much as 10 billion, or 1/6th of their claim): [VIDEO] These guys pathologically have had a chip on their shoulder since Napster.

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Sources

Video by TED, played through YouTube.

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