If you work for the RIAA and honestly believe in your cause, this makes perfect sense. Send a message!

Of course, out here in the real world, it seems kind of nuts.

They are, of course, assuming that people were definitely going to buy these CDs to begin with - a completely erroneous assumption. As much as I agree that artists should be compensated for their music, I have downloaded many things just to check out, or for a laugh, and then gotten rid of. It's really too bad the RIAA is so busy watching its back to realize that file-sharing could be a powerful tool to garner more sales. I have often wondered if people wouldn't mind downloading something that has an audio 'watermark' of sorts - a point in the song where there would be an announcement that this song is provided by the record company, blah blah blah. That way, people can hear their free music and if they get sick of hearing the ad, they can go buy it. But maybe I'm too optimistic about it resulting in sales.

The calculation is off, by I believe, two decimal points, but that changes very little other than the size of the country with an equivalent GNP.