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Music Site AllofMP3 Under Investigation
Nick Irelan writes "AllofMP3.com, a Russian music site that is famous due to its low prices, has been accused of copyright infringment. Although the site said it bought licenses, some record companies are claiming that the documents it purchased aren't valid. The Moscow Police Computer Crimes Division has investigated AllofMP3 and the Moscow Prosecuter's office must decide what it will do by March 7th."
My whole collection is from there....
So... what's preventing them from opening AllofMp4.com days after the first site is shut down?
Is there a way how an online bussiness revenue can be *fully* tracked?
From Reading the story it sounds to me this is only applying to russian music?
Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes
What does this mean for any of us American citizens that...ahem...may have used Allofmp3s services?
Will there be a price to pay for us? The legality is quite confusing (and yes, ignorance of the law, no matter how stupid, is no defence) and who knows what will happen to us.....
Me? I got rid of my account and waiting to see whats next......
My MythTV HowTo
Hmm, hard to make a judgement on so little information.
:P
I can see it being an oversight by the record companies leaving a loophole that the Russians exploited, that will soon be closed with money.
Kazaa still costs less, so who cares.
Theres also an article on the german newsswite Heise : http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/56678
Babelfish Translation
Spelling mistakes: My is english spoken not tongue of mother.
AllofMP3 bought valid licenses and even got the Brooklyn Bridge for $1 in the same deal.
all the information about the customers (logs, purchase profiles, IP addresses, credit card numbers (if they keep those on file), ...) doesn't eventually end up in the hands of the Moscow police. It's not the most trustworthy police organization. </understatement>
Canadians have enjoyed free downloads because of a tax that we pay on blank media. It will be interesting to see if the customer list of allofmp3.com gets 'acquired' by any law enforcement or copyright holder in North America. If so, I wonder if any Canadian downloader would have broken any laws? I suspect not, but IANAL.
BroadbandPig
You mean... AllOfMp3's insanely cheap, Russian-hosted mp3s aren't entirely legal? I'm shocked!
I, hypothetically speaking, downloaded from AllofMP3. I didn't really care that it's illegal. The important thing to me and many others is that the music was high quality and at a much more reasonable rate than iTunes. It was a reasonable enough rate that paying for AllofMP3 was a better value for me than wasting my time sorting through Kazaa. AllofMP3 gave me good quality OGGs or LAME MP3s with fast downloads, and was probably closer to being legal than Kazaa.
Nooooooooooooo! I can't believe this, they were so good! lol... I used them for years whenever I ran out of credit on the iTunes store, cause well your 2p always went along way there! No wait, have I just incriminated myself?!?
Seriously, I've been using the site for a year or so. Their catalogue covers stuff that is not found in iTunes or other US-based media industry's services. They have even rare stuff that is not on P2P services! This little russian shop enriches culture.
Allofmp3 gives you noncompressed downloads, ogg downloads, mp3 in any bitrate you want. No DRM at all. Quick downloads. Now that's something I call customer choice and quality service. Compare that to the louse bitrate of iTunes - 128.
Why is this innovative shop against the "law?" Is this something analogous to the Sklyarov case where US media laws were extended to russia? Why the hell should we be locked into iTunes et al? Whose law was it anyway?
In soviet Russia , music industry pays you!
also , In soviet Russia MP3 downloads you
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Is anyone even remotely surprised? They had stuff there months before it was released officially. The clues were there, people!
of course, I meant to write "...from russian authorities..."
While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.
the Moscow Prosecuter's office must decide what it will do by March 7th.
Hah!
They'll pick one of the usual courses of action:
1. Do nothing.
2. Have the OMON troops make the site owners "disappear".
I was pondering opening an account there after my friend pointed me to the site. It looked like a great deal.. any format, any bit rate, wide selection of music I like (which is mostly European), and a more than reasonable prices based on bandwidth. Beats the snot out of anything else I've seen, and I'd be more than happy to pay them their prices than sift through p2p or IRC or what-have-you. Guess I should've known it was too good to be true. If they don't make it through this, I sure as hell hope another site comes along and manages to do it legally. Anyone else know of other services with similar prices and selection?
Iam gonna finish my balance quickly and go back to bittorrent
200GB/2TB $7.95 Coupon: SAVE90DOLLAR
It means...have fun bending over to pick up the soap!
That's where I get most my MP3s from!
On a serious note this is exactly what other online music sites should offer, like hell I'm paying $1 PER TRACK for DRM restricted files, but if they offered albums for $2-$3 each DRM free then, well, I'd probably never use filesharing again.
...since nothing is as simple as it seems in Russia (that early capitalism, you know). There are quite a number of sites which allow downloading music in Russia - another one, which I'm using, is mp3spy.ru - they have a deal with my ADSL provider, tochka.ru, which is the biggest one in Moscow. Tochka.ru is a daughter company of MGTS, Moscow telephone monopolists - that's why mp3spy.ru can be quite certain about its future. This legal move could be just an attempt to shut down a competition - all that allofmp3 needed is just a big guy behind its shoulders.
....the "The Gulag Archipelago", vols. I through III, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to prepare your self for what awaits you after Russian security servcices snatch you off the street and cart you off to recieve your just punishment in a secret Gulag they run in Siberia in cooperation with RIAA. The standard sentence is three years, locked in a rubber room listening to bagpipe music 24/7.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
"Therefore does Allofmp3 MP3-Dateien drive out, without the daf?notwendigen rights with the owners gekl? to have."
"ooh i might have accidentally downloaded an illegal mp3, i'm going to go to jail, it's a serious crime. I feel dirty. I feel evil. I'm going to the police station to turn myself in then I'm going to the RIAA and turn myself in there. boohoo"
for fucks sake:
GET A GRIP.
NO ONE CARES
There are real big problems in the world, this is not one of them.
There are a number of cheap Russian MP3 sites, but AllOfMP3 seemed to be the best one---custom encoding parameters, good-sized catalog (300k+ songs, though lacking in "Mindless Self Indulgence"). And I was going to go legit with my MP3s (but in OGG format), just as soon as I got a job.
And so, today, to-frickin'-day, I get a job (manning phones at a call center, doing Level 1 support, whoopt-de-goddamn-do) and wouldn't you know it, AllOfMP3 is under investigation.
Man, that's ironic. Is it ironic? I keep forgetting. Things in that song aren't actually ironic. Is this?
Well, at least downloading music isn't criminal. (It's the sharing that is.)
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Allofmp3 is really run the way it should be. A minimal fee to cover bandwidth charges and the rest for the songs. There is no media, booklet and so on involved so the cost for those are not there.
But as long as the big labels insist on blowing millions on boosting a few artist and neglecting others it's not going to change.
The music industry is shagged.
Actually it doesn't matter if allofmp3 is illegal in Russia. The loophole in US copyright law that allows for individuals to import copies of art for personal use is a very thorough one: it doens't even matter if the material was legal in its own country. The loophole is designed to make it safe to go to Thailand, buy a music CD, and come back to the US without having to do a bunch of research to make sure you aren't breaking the law. You can import it legally even if it is an obvious bootleg.
American interests (RIAA etc) have paid off the Russian police (usually corrupt) to initate some bullshit investigation with the hope of getting them shut down because greedy US interests feel they are not getting enough of a slice and want a monopoly on cripplewared DRM'ed-to-death 1 bit music from their online stores.
Simple as that.
Fuck you American greed. And fuck you corrupt stupid Russian police.
With regard to the people wondering whether they should close their AllOfMP3.com account, go into hiding, skip the country etc, I have a question for any legal types out there:
If I buy from a real high-street shop that stocks really cheap stuff, and where I suspect, but don't know, that their goods were stolen, am I breaking the law? If they tell me the goods are cheap because of some "legal loophole", am I to blame if I buy their goods?
I suspect not, but then, as they say, IANAL...
1. Incite foreign agency to prosecute price-undercutting music site.
2. Receive bonus from RIAA.
3. Profit!
Yeah, too simple.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Here's what I've never figured out: why anyone from any copyright alignment would use allofmp3.com.
If you either don't care about copyright or do not believe in the current copyright regime, your most important goal is just to download music. In that case, why would you use allofmp3.com when you could get the same music off filesharing networks for free?
If you believe that, regardless of the pleasantness of the current system, the artists (or the company the artists have chosen to represent them) should still be compensated for their work, then allofmp3.com should not be compatible with your stance. You know that they exist because of a quirk in copyright law and that they are not paying anybody anything, except perhaps some Russian licensing board.
So the way I see it, either you are wasting money by not downloading the mp3 yourself, or you are wasting money by paying allofmp3.com instead of the record company. The only audience who should be ok with this, therefore, are those for whom legality is more important than convenience or morality. Am I missing something big here?
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
for those people interested in a russian music service, club.mp3search.ru is another one you might consider, I've used it for a while and while it doesn't offer you the format/bitrate of your choice it does have high quality mp3s </shameless plug>
" No, the real question is: Why are you afraid? Downloading music is never illegal.
Sharing copyrighted music is copyright infringement. Downloading music is not."
THAT my friend depends on where you live.
...there's currently some litigation going on against one of the big US labels because they illegally continued to collect royalties for a fairly extensive back catalogue of tunes by the same songwriter. They currently owe hundreds of thousands of dollars to one of the said songwriters and are refusing to pay up.
Can anyone else say "first against the wall when the revolution comes"?.
Posted A. Nony Mously for obvious reasons.
So as IFPI Russia's legal adviser, Vladimir Dragunov, concedes: "Because of these loopholes we don't have much chance of succeeding if we attack these companies who are using music files on the Internet under current Russian laws."
AFAIK you can only be prosecuted under another country's copyright laws if the country you are in signed a particular convention (can't recall the name right now). Not that that would stop the RIAA from having a go. Bastards.
These people seriously need to look at their business model. Having said that, if I had the choice between sueing for thousands of dollars per track, thus being paid for something that never would have been bought anyway, or getting $20 a CD (or whatever they cost over there), I know which I'd choose.
If ignorance is bliss, knock the smile off my face.
And my point is why isn't it this easy for everyone to offer a similary effective and useful service ?
'Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it. -- Andrew Young'
Thank you slashdot, that's a gorgoeus quote to put at the bottom of the page.
The law in this area is broken - copyright was created to provide an incentive to create, but the law has been twisted by the rich to rob the poor.
Until the law is fixed to protect the comman man, those of us who attempt to adhere to the law can protest the corruption by using this legal download service which does not support the rich and corrupt. Without it, there is no way to protest except to boycott or break the law.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
It doesn't seem that this article is about p2p at all. Rather, it's about a Russian pay music site being attacked because their methods for licensing their music are unacceptable.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Okay I'm not even going to claim this place is legal cuz honestly, its clearly not. There is no way that the record industry would allow someone to sell non-DRM'd music.
But its a shame its not legal. This is the chaos I went through trying out Virgin Digital's subscription service. Since it was the cheapest with the best selection I figured I'd try the free trial. First I couldn't log in. After half a day of trying a bunch of different things I finally got it to work. Then I looked for a band I wanted (Pennywise). Musicnet said it was in their catalog which is what Virgin Digital uses but it never came up. Okay I'll get past that. Then I want to download a song from a new album.... Hmmmm track 2 is missing. I check on the non-subscription catalog and lo and behold there is the song. So I pay 7.99 a month for some music that is completely decided arbitrarily.
You'd think this would be the end of my problems but I could only be so lucky. Next I downloaded a song and when I played it, it cut out half way through. So I downloaed it again and it worked perfectly. Next I downloaded another song and I had all of these loud crackling sounds. I can only assume it was a bad download or its a compression artifact. Oh but wait there's more! I wanted to play the song outside of Virgin Digital's player and instead in Windows Media Player. Hmmmm WMP says the song is corrupt. Well lets try another. That one is too!!! For god sakes, they're linked to the player!
At this point I couldn't take anymore and canceled my 14 day trial membership after less than 8 hours. I never was so unhappy with a service. Its sad because its was a good idea but no one wants to pay money for half of a product. At least these illegal sites have what I want: music that can be free of compression artifacts that can be played in any player I want and isn't limited by the RIAA.
Record label exploiters know their days are counted and are trying to hold on to the remains of whatever profit they can make until the market collapses and is re-structured in a way which could benefit artists. Future wars will be fought on cyberspace I tell ya!
HAD
Why is this innovative shop against the "law?" Is this something analogous to the Sklyarov case where US media laws were extended to russia? Why the hell should we be locked into iTunes et al? Whose law was it anyway?
That's a really good question. The point of democracy is that the majority decides what the laws should be. So, how many of you think file sharing should be illegal? Come on, don't be shy, raise your hands.... I think I've made my point.
"People are too wrapped up with what the law says..."
... statements such as this only prove it. A little money here and a little money here are equal to a little crime here, and a little crime there - they both add up over time.
Yes lawlessness has overwhelmed us
People who feel they can break the law in one way - will start to desensitise themselves to any law.
In the case of P2P - I am for file sharing - but I am not for sites that run paid services illegally or sites like SuperNOva who's main content was illegal downloaded software, illegally obtained and filmed movies, and other questionable content.
This said, people who think all downloads of everything its ok to rob people of their property and property rights are the same people who agree with imminent domain. You have to. You feel that property should be shared and that private property is yours for the plundering.
So, those who are often worried about their 1st ammendment rights - should take a look at the 4th ammendment. Seizure of private property by governments is happening everywhere - my thoughts - your robbing from someone because they are wealthy mentality.
"Opressed people throughout history..."
This is a good statement - but NO ONE is being opressed by not being able to listen to music in a certain way = digital download! Please don't compare our forefather's struggle death for civil rights to Napster - which acurately or not - is compared to Communism!
By the way - call people wealthy - not rich. Call people low income instead of poor. Poverty is a cliche - at least in the US.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
...to demand music and information should be free, then pay someone else who wasn't even involved in the creative process behind something money to get it?
It's like paying the kid next door for stealing a car. The ultimate in moroncy.
The RIAA can suck a diseased hairy yellow piece of crap and die.
Can't I just have one thing to myself!
"I didn't really care that it's illegal"
So you thought, "well instead of getting my illegal things for free and risking a fine later, I'll pay some guy for the files instead, and still risk the fine later"?
before they are shut down.
I hope the stay around...I love allofmp3 - i've bought so much music from them it's not even funny.
So even though you seriously questioned the legality of the files, you continued to pay for them?
"Hey great!! I can pay for illegal files once now, and then I can pay again when the RIAA comes-a-knocking!!"
Maybe if mr. Kevin Rose hadn't gone and demonstrated the site TWICE on national television (The Screen Savers-G4TechTV).
('tard! The first rule of too good to be true things like this is shut the F up about it! Popularity is NEVER a good thing for anything like this)
Buying music on the internet is always a bad idea. I even know several people who got their credit card info stolen on iTunes. Music is there to share!
2005-02-22 18:20:11 Russian police probes AllofMP3.com (Index,Music) (rejected)
Gee, I wonder how I pissed that editor off, that he has nothing better to do - apart from not giving me Mod-points in almost 3 years. Or that strange down-modding incident.Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I think we can safely say that there are a lot of people out there that want legal music. While you may be ok with downloading illegal music there are other people that might not either for moral or legal reasons. Many colleges outright block filesharing apps so students need some way to get music. So it is often less about compensating the artist as it is getting the music, that otherwise might not be available. (Also my girlfriend is a Russian Language major and its the only way she can get Russian music)
So taking it as a given that there are people that want to download "legal" music why would anyone use anything but allofmp3.com? It makes no sense to pay more money to Apple or Napster for songs loaded with DRM. Even with Napster's new pay per month service the music apparently deactivates after you stop buying a subscription (at least this is whatI hear). Allofmp3.com provides cheap as hell "legal' downloads, because you can sue the company for breaking the law but not the consumers that bought from the company. The same way that customers wouldn't be liable if Best Buy was selling stolen goods claiming them to be new.
AllofMp3 maybe 5cents per song.
Napster/itunes 99 cents per song.
p2p Free!
AllofMp3 payment to artists = 0.00
itunes payment to artists 0.05 (estimate).
p2p payment to artists 0.00
Lets see, if I like a band should I purchase music from a quasi-legal place that doesn't pay the artist anything or should I buy my music legally.
For all the complaining about RIAA etc. They do pay artist something (which is significantly better than nothing)
There were some interesting music industry facts in the NewYorker. The RIAA labels make money on about 300 album of to 10000 or so they put out a year. Almost all bands major label albums are money loosing investments, and the money fronted to artist to make an album is lost.(pro recording / mixing isn't cheap, although we'll see the first apple/garageband recorded album this year)
I opened this thread expecting to find a bunch of great "in soviet russia..." jokes. WTF?
Not anymore they don't. That service has been disabled.
/i'm ashamed.
No Blondie Autoamerica? No Joan Jeat I Love Rock 'N Roll? No BW Stevenson?
Just wondering if there are any *definately* legal services selling mp3/wma/ogg/etc *without* DRM. I doubt it but I thought I had heard of a few. -Ares
If they tell me the goods are cheap because of some "legal loophole", I ask back: "What loophole exactly?"
If the price is too good to be true, it probably is. "Legal loopholes" are dangerous business. Like stock market strategies or tax shelters. Unless you really know what you are doing and you are willing to take the risk if the trick does not work, you should not touch an offer like this.
There were some interesting music industry facts in the NewYorker. The RIAA labels make money on about 300 album of to 10000 or so they put out a year. Almost all bands major label albums are money loosing investments, and the money fronted to artist to make an album is lost.(pro recording / mixing isn't cheap, although we'll see the first apple/garageband recorded album this year)
Like most "interesting facts" in the world, those are wrong. If it wasn't profitable to make an album, then those albums wouldn't be made. Simple as that. They make money on the vast majority of albums and then screw the artist by use of creative accounting practices.
My suggestion if you really want artists to make money:
1. Go find the artist's webpage and look for some kind of mailing address. Might be a fan club, might be the address of their webmaster, but it'll very likely be someone that can forward your letter to them. Email them to make sure if you're uncertain.
2. Write a letter explaining that you downloaded their music online because you felt that paying whatever the hell the price was for it when you knew they'd only see a few cents from that price was unfair. Wrap the letter around a $10 bill, or whatever you feel the album is worth.
3. Mail it.
4. The artists profit.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Yeah, we in Mexico still remember Trotsky and the KGB assasins that got him... His house is now a museum, and his story here is quite interesting, as he was friends with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, amongst others...
No sig for the moment.
First of all, I would not want to let my liability for criminal copyright infringement rest on some judge's interpretation of what "obvious" means. Secondly, downloading copyrighted material without the copyright holder's permission is a violation of copyright laws in the USA. In the USA, copyright holders have total control over the means of distribution (with some very limited exceptions for blanket licenses, etc.) Total control. All means of distribution. Not much room for interpretation there. I would say that if an American is sued for infringement in the USA, his best defense is to try to claim that it was unintentional copying in order to avoid criminal prosecution.
I wish the article was online. They have references to there statitistics.
think its pretty common knowledge that most music albums released don't sell a heck of a lot of copies. Only a few albums released any year make money for the record companies. And record companies release a stagering number of albums. How and where they spend there promotional $ is another story.
I know of 2 musicians that are on small labels. People aren't sending them checks, although they did get their music on itunes which gives them a little extra cash.
Come on. Popular songs with no DRM being served out of Russia. Does anything about that statement sound legal?
Vote for Pedro
Gee, maybe people don't give a shit about copyright, but don't want to get busted? This, then, is the outcome of the RIAA's barrage of suits---they've created the climate of fear they wanted and intimidated a lot of people against scoring music from p2p. But, ah, it seems that this hasn't caused people to flock to throw $10 or $20 an album at them. Rather, they went overseas to import cheap, Russian, MP3s.
The choices, then, were (prior to any lawsuit) (a) buy expensive tunes, legally, at iTMS or the like. (b) Buy cheap tunes, which may not be legal, but don't involve uploading, which means no getting gouged out of your life savings by the RIAA. (c) Download off p2p, which is cheap, but runs the risk of financial ruin if the industry makes an example of you.
Make more sense now?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
In Soviet Russia, the artists pay YOU.
What we really need is a ten day waiting period and a background check before you can buy a congressman.
While not the true Fascista party of Italy, it was Fascist in nature. My boss is fascist, for example.
2 80 83&dict=CALD
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=
The USSR is often called Communist. While the USSR was never Communist, that was the ideal that they were striving for (sortof.)
The USSR was truely a totalitarian as Cyberax states. (He actually talks of Russia.)
why would you want to pay except to support the artists?
Fear, silly.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Bzz, try again.
(US) If you purchase something abroad, you are allowed to bring it back into the country with you (import) without license provided that you are not importing it for redistribution. Technically the point of sale is in Russia, not the US.
Now, if it turns out that you purchase an album that you reasonably believe that they do not have the license to distribute, then, IMO, you would have to be brought to justice under the court which has jurisdiction over the point of sale, not your location. I don't believe the RIAA can sue you in the US for an action that took place outside of the jurisdiction of the US courts (except in exceptional circumstances).
"1) The site claimed they paid the appropriate fees for the copyrighted material in Russia."
I don't know that much about international copyright laws except that if it seems too cheap I should probably be careful.
I know that you pay money for broadcasting music to a local copyright fund that redistributes the funds in some manner (which seems to me to be what they said they did), but when it comes packaged in the same manner as a CD (digital sound in files) I figure you'd need to pay the original copyright holder (or its representative in that region) directly regardless of the broadcasting legislation. Or did I get brainwashed by the entertainment industry again?
Never seen any pre-release stuff on there, personally.
What is fixed, and what is transitory?
Music in speaker wire is transitory. It can be precieved, and reproduced from there, but only for a short duration.
Information in RAM is similarly transitory, it only lasts milliseconds before it fades away. RAM is a transitory medium.
A computer can keep information in RAM a lot longer than that by continually refreshing it. A computer can be a non-transitory medium.
A computer can also load information in RAM and let it fade away immediately. A computer can thus also be a transitory medium.
How long the work is retained determines if the computer is a fixed medium, or transitory, and thus if the work is "fixed", and thus is the behavior is infringing.
How long can a work be retained before is considered non-transitory? Speaker wire retains a work for milliseconds, it is clear that that is transitory. CD players with ASP (Advanced Skip Protection) retain a copy of a work for up to 120 seconds. If that is not transitory, anyone listening to a protected work in one of those CD players is infringing.
Many computer files are intended to be permanant, and thus with regards to them the computer is a fixed medium. But web caches only last a few hours or days. They are temporary, transitory. The same can be said of a /tmp partion. Files there are generally deleted after seven days. They are temporary, transitory.
If I set up a cron job to delete the protected works after three score years, I could then claim that my copies were transitory, and thus not fixed in the medium. It's a stretch, but maybe I could get it in front of the same judge who decided ninety-five years was a "limited time"
Setting aside the legal issues, I see this as the flipside of globalization. The big corps are thrilled to tout the benefits of globalization when they want to exploit third world workers for pennies on the dollar. Now they can get hit with the other side of the equation, we can choose to BUY things from other countries for less than we can here for the same reasons. Oh wait, now that it's THIER wallet being hit, it's "wrong". Poor, poor billionaires. I feel soooo bad for them.
I'm tired of the corps having thier cake and eating it too. And I consider myself libertarian, so that should tell you something. Corporations, like Copyrights, are SUPPOSED to be part of a balance of power between them and the rest of us. We are supposed to benefit as well. The balance has been lost.
"Like most "interesting facts" in the world, those are wrong. If it wasn't profitable to make an album, then those albums wouldn't be made. Simple as that. They make money on the vast majority of albums and then screw the artist by use of creative accounting practices"
No, the GP is correct. The recording industry is what's called a "speculative" business. It's a bit like playing the stock market, or investing VC money. Nine investments may lose money for you, but that tenth one just might pay for all the rest. In the recording industry, one gold or platinum record can keep a company afloat for a year.
I certainly understand that this isn't intuitive to somebody who hasn't been in a speculative business, but nonetheless, that's how it works. This is why you seldom see record companies on the Fortune 500 (except for those that are part of some conglomerate), and why you seldom see analysts issue "buy" ratings for record companies. It's also why small record labels go out of business all the time (but new ones seem to pop up at an equal rate).
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Wasn't it Slashdot and it's readers, who made allofmp3.com well known in the USA?
Before the big article here, I'd never met a soul who'd heard of that site. It was a nice secret.
Not anymore though. Good work!
If you're wondering about mail order, again the physical product is moving across a border, so the exemption still applies, provided you're not importing goods beyond a certain value (note that this also doesn't apply for CDs imported by record stores for re-sale, which is why imports are often more expensive).
And for legal download services, the situation is this: you can purchase from iTMS (for example) US, and use those files anywhere you take them. You could in theory legally download from iTMS UK if you are in the US, but iTMS UK is prevented from distributing outside their territory (this is part of their distribution license deal). If you go to the UK, you can legally buy from iTMS UK, then take those files back to the US, but you can't legally download from iTMS US while in the UK (legal for iTMS US, that is). This may seem petty, but it stems from the fact that different countries have different royalty rates, and each site has to comply with the local laws in order to trade there. US laws don't apply everywhere just yet.
In the case of AllofMP3, since they were in the highly unusual position of selling to the entire world with seemingly no regard for local fee structures, it is a pretty good guess that they're operating illicitly. So if you've downloaded from them, ask yourself: what would an outfit, having been almost busted for illegal distribution, do with your personal information? I hope nobody paid by credit card, because it strikes me that this could really be a very subtle phishing operation: get 'em in, make it look legit, and when people get used to seeing that account number on their statements, hit 'em hard and grab the cash before anyone wises up. Or better still, overcharge in small increments, a few cents*1,000,000 downloads per day adds up. Just remember: the more legitimate a scam looks, the better it works...
Wait, people still watch The Screen Savers? Who are these wannabe gamers/geeks ?
All the sob stories you here about artists not making any money are usually on their 1st record contract, where their worth is around $0. If they make it big, when their contract expires, they can negotiate with a great deal of leverage because they have shown that they can sell albums. The original post is correct. If you think a band like U2 is not making a ton of money, you've been totally mislead
Vote for Pedro
You just got served.
I live in Jacksonville. If you are familiar with the place, I live in St. Nicholas, behind "The Old Bookshop".
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Why are so many people pointing out that AllofMp3 is "obviously" illegal? What's so obvious about it? I mean, what makes us think Apple or MSN Music is so perfectly legal? Because they've told us so, that's why. So what's the difference? AllofMP3 says they're legal and goes to great length to explain how.
Now, it's true - the American music industry has set the standard of ridiculous prices and substandard service. Even the online stores are only slightly cheaper than CDs, and they don't offer a variety of encoding options, just their proprietary 128k crappola.
I've bought from MSN, which is okay, but the quality is pretty bad on my portable MP3 player, not to mention that the MSN file format crashes the player ever other time. I'd go with Apple, but I don't think theirs works at all on my player, and if it did, they only offer 128k (right?). The record-industry-shill response has been unhelpful - get an IPod, buy from Apple, or else don't buy music. Well, I'm supposed to have a choice. That is not a choice. It is an illusion of choice.
So recently I started using AllofMP3, and I love it. There's no silly DRM. I don't plan on sharing my files, but I like that I can actually f-ing play the files. I download 192k, which sounds infinitely better on my portable player. The prices - well, they're incredible, but I'd be willing to pay double the price, maybe even triple, for this kind of service. Needless to say, it's nice to deal with a business that doesn't seem to be ringing as much money from me as it can possibly get while providing me with as little. Respect is refreshing.
Those who say AllOfMP3 SHOULD obviously be illegal are just shilling for the industry that literally gets together and decides how to screw the customers. Not only that, these users have been conditioned to think that ridiculous prices and crappy service is not only the norm but should always be.
Furthermore, this is not a moral argument; it is only a legal one. There is no need to always tie the two together, as they are seperate things. Who gets his morality from the law of the land? That's worse than backward thinking - it's fascist.
AllOfMP3 is a bit like a clearance sale to me. I've bought plenty of CDs for two bucks before, used and new, without a pang of guilt that the artist was being hurt or the law kicking down my door. I'm just a lowly consumer of music. If you're selling it for cheap, cool.
P.S.: All the article says is that Russians are investigating Russians. Unless they shut down the site, nothing has changed.
From Mussolini:
i sm.html
"...Fascism [is] the complete opposite of...Marxian Socialism"
taken from: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fasc
So, the USSR strived for a communist ideal (like the US strived for some democratic ideal), which is on the *opposite* end of the political spectrum from fascism.
In other words, no, the USSR was not only not fascist, it was about as far from fascism as you can get.
Put another (simplistic) way communism == extreme left wing, fascism == extreme right wing.
Or yet another simplification: in communism the state manufactures everything in lieu of companies, in fascism companies *are* the government.
They're both totalitarian.
BTW, your example is a figure of speech and perhaps appropriate for a dictionary, but it's not a political definition nor relevant here.
You're not writing textbooks, so if you have a point to make, you need to make it clear.
Worse, you don't know how to spell "independent." Use a dictionary, genius.
Worst of all, you mislead all of us when you bury the word "independent" in an otherwise inflamatory screed about how the artists get paid by iTunes and how we should all shut the fuck up.
Shut the fuck up.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Am I getting the hang of it?
d =11768557
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=140452&ci
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
If US-made drugs are cheaper to buy from Canada, why is it illogical that US-made music might be cheaper to buy from Russia? I don't think it is so "obvious" as some people claim that this is at all illegal.
And with regard to that copying vs. importing argument: try to argue to some federal judge that you weren't "exporting" encryption technology to Iran, you were only copying it, so the laws against exporting this technology weren't broken... See my point?
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How did CEOs and buying laws come into it? My point was that AllofMP3 gives nothing back to the musicians*, despite charging for downloads. They don't subsidise recordings, they don't pay royalties, they simply leech of the work of others and give nothing back at all. Which, to me, makes them worse than the existing record companies.
*I made some enquiries with Universal Music - no, AllofMP3 is not authorized to sell any of their catalog. My contact at Sony/BMG is currently overseas, and I don't know anyone at Warner these days, so I can't say for sure about the those companies, but I'd guess that if this site felt safe selling Universal's music without permission, they probably wouldn't baulk at the others.
I have spoken to some contacts at Universal Music, and they have confirmed that no distribution agreement exists between them and AllofMP3. So by the look of things, they are not paying the artists at all.
See recent story New Round of Lawsuits in Preparation for Oscars, from the linked article:
...but practically impossible. Just having a license isn't enough to permit you to resell the licensed material. Knowing the labels and the RIAA, I doubt Russia has any means of obtaining adequate resale rights unless it was some kind of legislative or executive action at the highest levels of the Russian government. Seems pretty implausable to me, especially since the US government is likely to side with its homegrown music industry.
I payed in 25 dollars to my allofmp3 account and subsequently hundreds were withdrawn from my account , spending on the internet. Luckily my insurance was my safeguard. To say this site ii denying the fact that credit card fraud is illegal, which is riduculous. If this site doesnt go down, then the Russian police are hopless.