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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."
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.
....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
I did find it.
I also found that its not a goverment orginization but part of a company called ZETA corporation. Which is a company of IP lawyers. They also run all the websites related to copyright in russia. roms.ru copyright.ru and several otehrs.
I dont know, that doesnt make them illegitimate, but there are questions.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
Here's a quote from another Russian, frequently renamed download site, which has a link to said organization. Rumor has it that it's just about impossible for foreigners to get money out of them.
"The Audio1 Services are licensed in accordance with the Licensing Agreement and the License # LS-3M-04-164, issued by the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. All respective copyrights owners, including songwriters, authors, composers, artists, music publishers and recording companies are fully compensated through the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society www.roms.ru, which in accordance with the Law of the Russian Federation "On Copyright and Related Rights" is entitled to issue licenses on behalf of different copyright owners and pay them license fees."
Apparently, you just pay them a fee and you're 'licensed' to distribute anything you want.
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"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
My opinion of large companies is that most of them got there by being less than honest. And they haven't turned honest now that they are large.
I think that the average American consumer is far more honest and ethical than the average large company, American or not. And small companies with integrity have little chance of ever being large companies with integrity.
The real difference is that the large companies can afford herds of lawyers who can help them limit their liabilities. There aren't many large companies out there that won't trample all over your rights if they can make money as a result.
The surprising thing is that so many of the large companies find themselves in hot water so often.
Of course, our Congresscritters have recently passed a law to reduce their liabilities (by making it far more difficult and expensive to keep them honest) with the recent anti-class action lawsuit law.
So now we have large record companies that calculate expenses in such a way as to make it nearly impossible for many recording artists to ever come out ahead. Yet, they keep going with recording artists that can't come out ahead so you know the record companies are making money out of them.
Don't the recording companies now routinely require the artists to assign their copyrights to the record companies before they'll even record the music? I seem to remember reading something about that two or three years ago.
However, two problems remain with US law.
First is that downloading is not importation, it is reproduction, and that therefore any exception permitting for importation is inapplicable. Importation only occurs where a work is fixed in a tangible object (such objects are called copies), and the object itself is brought across a border. Where instead a work is transmitted across a border, and is fixed into a new tangible object at the end -- such as RAM or a hard drive -- reproduction (the act of fixing a work into a copy) has occurred.
Second, note that while some importation as described above is allowed -- not that any occurs in conjunction with allofmp3 -- it is still generally illegal unless certain conditions are met. For example, if the copy sought to be imported was made in the US, then it could be re-imported. Or if it is imported with the permission of the US rightsholder. Or if it is imported for personal use AND was made in a way that, had it been made where US law applied, it would not have infringed against the US rightsholder (i.e. making whatever oddities of Russian law it was made under irrelevant).
So actually, obvious bootlegs generally cannot be lawfully imported. They may slip through, US borders not being all that tightly controlled. But again, no one is really importing anything from allofmp3, so this is a moot point.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Most Americans are no longer able to distinguish a Presidential campaign from the latest episode of American Idol. Watch TV and vote for who you like: that's all there is to it.