The 13 record companies currently suing peer-to-peer filesharing service Limewire have estimated that the company owes them between $400 billion and $75 trillion.

That top amount is comes in at £46,650,361,440,306.00 but hey, it's such an unfathomable amount of money that it barely warrants converting.

We can't help but picture Dr Evil proudly demanding "One hundred billion dollars!" of in order not to blast the world with his "lay-ser" from his "death star" (air quotes).


Dr Evil was laughed out of town and so, thankfully, were the record companies – Judge Kimba Wood, who is hearing the case, called the request "absurd".

"As defendants note, plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is 'more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877'," she wrote.

The outlandish figure was reached because the record companies want compensation for each time a song was shared and re-shared by Limewire users; Judge Wood has now concluded that Limewire can only be fined a single statutory fee per work infringed.

Via CrunchGear