Jeez. I can even conceive of having that much money at some point in the future. To be able to buy out a company? Gawd.
Is that only for people who had the foresight to get a MetaFilter account some years back when they were accepting new members? Also, do they have any plans for what to do with the rights they acquire? Release them under a Creative Commons licence, perhaps, or start selling Warp-style uncrippled MP3s?
I think it would be a good chance to experiment with alternative means of distribution - try making the songs available to anyone in an uncrippled format, charge reasonable rates, and send half the profits to the artists. Although, it might be more realistic if the music involved was new, rather than 5 years old.
The people over at metafilter want to put together a group big - 17,000 members (allegedly) * $5 each would be in with a chance, although how you split master tapes between that many people is still to be worked out. Probably no Beastie Boys master tapes in the stash either.