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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."
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.
...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.