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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.
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.
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?
No, the real question is: Why are you afraid? Downloading music is never illegal.
Sharing copyrighted music is copyright infringement. Downloading music is not.
In addition, they are only investigating allofmp3.com. That does not mean that a judge will actually convict them of a crime.
I will continue to buy from them.
Do not be alarmed. This is only a test.
...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.
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.
Be careful with your words.
You don't live in Russia (I do). And from my point of view its America who is becoming a fascist country.
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.
This is why it's a good idea to only use stolen credit cards online.
My whole collection is from there....
STFU album parasite!
Even if AllOfMp3 is legal, by buying our albums offshore, we take away the jobs of hard-working Americans in the recording industry, little people who toil for as little as 70 or 100 thousand dollars a year.
It's willful moral blindness to rationalize this kind of assault on the American worker as "watching the bottom line" or "getting lean and mean" or as "fiduciary responsibility" to your shareholders -- especially when almost all of the your savings on albums (as much as $15 per CD) goes into your own pocket and the pockets of your close cronies in the form of 'executive benefits', 'bonuses' and 'golden parachutes'.
Can you imagine the hue and cry if an American company did the sort of thing you're doing by buying from AllOfMp3.com? If an American company did business overseas just because that was cheaper, and put most of the savings into top executives" salaries and benefits, while at the same time causing American jobs to be lost?
Why that sort of thing wouldn't be tolerated for an instant, not by anyone who truly loves America! Congress would pass all sorts of new "Intellectual Property" laws to put an end to it, and the FCC would mandate that all TVs sold to the American public be modified to include hardware to prevent such theft. Because our leaders truly care about the little guy!
So for shame! Stop your overseas out sourcing of your entertainment budget, and remember we don't do that sort of things to our fellow Americans!
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