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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."
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
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.
Allofmp3 used a provision (loophole?) in the Russian copyright law that basically allows you to distribute music online if you pay the Russian music copyright clearing house a standard (and quite low) charge per song download. The clearing house then distributes the profits back to the artists. My guess is that Russian bureaucracy doesn't make it easy for Western artists to register with the clearing house or get their money from it -- not even considering the fact that any western record company would consider the clearing house charges per download laughably small.
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?
...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.
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.
You're missing the fact that allofmp3 offers encoding of extremely high quality, in a variety of formats. Furthermore, you're guaranteed to get the song you want, not some RIAA-spiked fake. This choice is not typically available through any P2P network. That's why we use allofmp3.
First of all, Russia was never a fascist country. It was totalitarian, but never a fascist.
:)
Current situation is quite an interesting one. Putin has done more liberal reforms in economic, than Eltsin did during his second term, but political situation is getting more and more like in USSR.
It's all very complex for me to explain it in a short message
Oh boy, here we go again...
Yes, here we go again, you've been brainwashed by the music-industry.
If you know that by downloading a work that falls under copyright terms which disallow copying, that you are actually making a copy of that work in the process of downloading it, then you ARE INFRINGING COPYRIGHT and you ARE BREAKING A LAW.
No. You can copy all you want for yourself. You can go to the library and photocopy everything. It's legal. In most of the nations anyway. Copyright isn't actually the right to make copies, but the right to publish them.
If you're so heavy on citing the "LAW", I'd suggest you read it first.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse