Allofmp3.com Wins Court Case

remove writes "Gizmodo is running a story from a reader tip that claims that the russian site Allofmp3.com, popular with slashdotters for their user selectable format which had been reported as being under investigation recently has been let off the hook by the Russian DA, becuase of a loophole in russian law which allows users create copies of songs by request. Basically, even though the courts have found their site operator's behavior to be illegal- they can't prosecute because the user dynamically creates copies of songs to be downloaded themselves."

Comments

RIAA Dream Team Lawyers Fail?

[tabkey12]

Is this only the second time an international foray by the RIAA/MPAA groups has failed (the first being the failed prosecution of DVD Jon)?

Still, very real questions about the legality of this service have to remain...

If it's illegal...

[shamilton]

Then why are people paying to download songs? You can get high quality album rips off ed2k for free, and it's just as legit.

Re:If it's illegal...

[tabkey12]

2 reasons:
Because the RIAA cannot easily monitor who is downloading what from AllofMP3, whereas ed2k is much easier to monitor & pollute
Because not everyone wants FLAC or MP3 - It is handy to be able to download songs in AAC for instance for iPods but without the annoying Apple DRM

The process

[FirienFirien]

Fwict, a clarification of the legality is that 'if you make a copy, it's ok'. ie if you take the original (ie download the file) and DON'T leave a copy behind on the server (!), it's illegal. If you leave the copy on the server, it's legal. Which crazy drunk wrote that law?

good publicity...

[dhbiker]

thank god for the loophole!

But I'm even more grateful for the publicity that Allofmp3 has got, perhaps RIAA and other online music stores will sit up and take note that it is popular because of the freedom it offers and the fair price - its time to give the consumer their freedom back and realise the way to takle the piracy problem is to offer a good service at a resonable cost (and NO $0.99 IS NOT REASONABLE COST, that is the same per track as a CD!)

Re:good publicity...

[janaagaard]

Allofmp3's prices might seem fair to the users, but I'm pretty sure that the artists don't agree on that. I don't know how many royalties pay (my understanding is that they do pay some royalties), but it seems obvious to me that their pricing scheme is solely based on their bandwith cost. My guess is that they just buy one original cd and then makes any number of copies of that cd. Apple has said that at 99 cent per song they don't make any money on selling music, so I don't really see how you can lower that cost.

Do not consider music from Allofmp3 as legal! You're stealing from the artist.

Re:good publicity...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The anti-iTunes site I've seen says that "artists" get about twelve to fifteen cents a track from each sale on iTunes. That's actually pretty good if you compare it with how much of the final sale price a build-to-order manufacturer gets for electronics and auto parts.

Re:This is only round one...

[GigsVT]

Come on, you all can't be that naive. Allofmp3 just paid off the right people. If, someday in the future, they no longer pay off the right people, then it will become illegal and able to be prosecuted.

This is the normal way russian law works.

And this is good because?

[turnstyle]

And this is good beacuse a Russian business is making money by selling copies of US (and Euro, etc.) musicians' work, but paying them nothing in return? Is that about right?

Re:And this is good because?

[Overzeetop]

Yes, the artist is too lazy. I mean that in a businss sense, not a personal one. The last time AllofMP3 came up here, someone from a small label posted about how difficult is was to get registered with the Russian law firm which distributed the payments for the songs. Their complaint was that over half the documents were in Russian, and their US phone calls were not returned.

Why didn't they retain a Russian lawyer? Calling them stuipid seems a bit harsh, so I'll settle for lazy.

See my other posts (grossly incorrect about US organizations and pay schemes, as I'm not inthe business) for my thoughts on why this is no different that the US system, save ease-of-use for natives.

As for your question...let's make it closer to the topic: If I start broadcasting your songs on my new FM station and pay my ASCAP (or whoever) fees, and you don't sign up to receive your share - or you don't pick up your check or provide a current address, I'd say you were too lazy to get paid.

Re:Text from Gizmodo:

[nametaken]

Wait, so that means the downloaders are breaking the law? Last I understood, it was legal to purchase your music from allofmp3.com because they had licenced the music, and you can lawfully import anything that you obtained legally. Well, if we didn't obtain it legally now (?), its not legal for import. Does this mean RIAA could sue downloaders here? This has gotten way too confusing.

Oh the irony

[Anita Coney]

Citizens in Russia have more rights than we do!

Re:Oh the irony

[LetterJ]

What's hilarious is that, if you go back 150 years or so, the United States were the ones flaunting the world's copyright laws. Sheet music was being flagrantly copied in the US and British and other European countries were outraged that this upstart country was regarding the theft of sheet music as some sort of 'right'.

An awful lot of the financial build-up of the US was based on disregarding intellectual property law (from the rest of the world) early on.

Re:Oh the irony

[LetterJ]

Sorry, I forgot I was on Slashdot. I'll explain more slowly. Sheet music is 1, as in a singular, example of early American disregard of international standards of intellectual property laws. That 1 example sits inside a trend that took place of things like turning a blind eye toward patent infringement (if the patent was elsewhere), etc.

I used sheet music as my example, because (get this), it was actually relevant to the discussion at hand. Before the advent of recorded music, sheet music and player piano rolls were BIG business and the businesses involved were the RIAA of their time. There was a great uproar about the US just flaunting the rules.

Today (I'm drawing a parallel and wanted to warn you), countries like China, Russia and others that aren't recognizing US and other major IP holding countries' patents, trademarks and copyright are growing very quickly, unfettered by the legal constraints that those systems put in place, *much like the US did*. History is repeating.

At some point, it's likely that, in those countries, the protections will start showing up as one Russian wants protection from another Russian "stealing" his work. Then, eventually, some other countries will step into the "abuser" role.

Re:Oh the irony

[LetterJ]

Just because you want to read "An awful lot" as "the bedrock of" doesn't mean that's what I said. An awful lot of money is spent on crappy exercise gadgets. Are they the "bedrock" of the modern economy? Of course not.

I'm not sure where you're reading me as "rewriting the history of the US", but I was citing a singular relevant example in history, explaining it in context and drawing the parallels: all within a few paragraphs.

I was unaware that for my point to be valid, I also needed to place it within the entirety of the socioeconomic context of 19th century, the Industrial Revolution, slavery and intercontinental transportation. Apparently, rather than taking 2 minutes to make a post, I was supposed to do full research and cite numbers, including percentages of GDP. I used the term "an awful lot" as a loose, abstract term. I'm sorry we're assigning different values to that amount, but don't paint me as some idiot out to rewrite history for my own political agenda.

I'm not writing my thesis; I'm posting in a discussion of music copyright and other countries "stealing" on a website. And, in that context, the fact that something similar has happened before, where a lot of money was at stake, where the roles were reversed, and where the stuff in question was *also* music was relevant.

You're apparently seeing an entirely different "whole point" than I was actually making or stating. I'm not here to stand on a soapbox with my propaganda in my hand, redfaced. I've been on this site for a long time, and have a history of posting pretty carefully, without trying to distort anything to fit my decidedly moderate approach to life.

hmm

[ywwg]

sounds like someone did their research before putting up this service.

Re:Text from Gizmodo:

[Have Blue]

This defense doesn't make any sense. There is always a copying process involved in a download, because the song data is being copied in RAM by the HTTP server in order to transmit it to you. The process of deriving the copy from the original media takes place on AllOfMp3's servers, so they could still be held responsible for it if it was illegal.

It just sounds like the article summary is incorrect- the loophole has more to do with the fact that the Russian law in question specifically enumerates the types of media it applies to, and "mp3" is not on the list.

Re:Text from Gizmodo:

[shutdown -p now]

I will repeat that again and again:

The "apparent" low cost is low because prices are in general much lower in Russia than they are in Europe or US (but so are the salaries). You can legally buy an audio CD for about $5. If you consider that, the "cheap" price might no longer seem that cheap. Yes, it does allow foreign users to exploit the price difference - but doing so is not illegal.

Not Ilegal != Ethical

[jcromartie]

I was hoping that the ruling would come back and say that this was legal and not just not quite illegal. A loophole in Russian law still doesn't make the site or downloading from it ethical.

Re:Payment methods

[grandmofftarkin]

You have never heard of Diners Club!? Diners club is a charge card (similar to American Express). In fact it was the first of its kind accepted in a small number of resturants as far back as 1950. Granted it is not the presence it once was but it is still accepted in just about every major hotel and restaurant in the world (in addition to numerous shops, both on and off line). I don't think that it is dodgy that they accept Diners Club cards. (Oh and if I recall correctly Diners are now owned by Citibank, who certainly aren't a small banking group).

Here read this for a quick background:
http://www.dinersclubnewsroom.com/anniversary.cfm

I wonder

[guru42101]

If this is basically the same loophole in a sense that makes it more or less legal to borrow a CD and burn a copy, but illegal to recieve a burned copy from the same source.

Re:Is this considered "Fair Use" ?

[squiggleslash]

Well, I don't think that's what the article says. In any case, it would be fair turnabout if that were the case - most downloaders have NEVER allowed the fact it's illegal to stop them from downloading... ;-)

Re:It's an easy choice..

[squiggleslash]

I'm not saying allofmp3 are doing something good, but they are putting one in the eye of those who claim $.99 is the minimum a company can provide downloadable tracks for.

Well, in fairness, that's because allofmp3 isn't paying anything (that'd make a difference) to the artist, anything to offset the costs of recording the music, producing it, mastering it, etc. It's essentially a CD ripping, storage, and download service.

A legitimate operation has real costs to cover. Artists need to eat. Equipment costs money. Sound engineers need to eat. Producers need to eat. The people overseeing all of this need to eat. Anyone can reduce the prices to close to zero if they just "forget" about paying for all of these overheads. But the long term consequences of doing so is that the amount of new works will be drastically reduced, or that models none of us like in practice will come into force - every song funded by product placement, or enforced taxation, or sponsored by some opinionated millionaire whose idea of music is far from your's.

Re:Text from Gizmodo:

[jkabbe]

Sure, the RIAA can sue. But that does not mean they would win.

Your analysis seems to result in this conclusion:

If a Russian person bought songs at AllOfMp3 and carried them into this country on a laptop - the next time they played those songs (thereby making a copy in RAM) they would be violating US copyright law.

Here's the problem: often the company that has the right to distribute something in the US is not the company that has the right to distribute that work overseas. So does that mean no one can bring any copyrighted works into the US unless they pay the US copyright holders? Or do they only need to have a "valid" copyright from overseas? If so, WHO decides whether that overseas copyright is valid? If the other government decides whether it is valid, then why am I breaking the law if I pay for a license overseas but don't pay the US license-holder.

Now, of course, this probably won't apply to AllOfMp3.com because you're not actually purchasing a license under Russian law. It's worth thinking about, though.

Re:RIAA has never sued downloaders

[MrNovember]

Might this be because it's not cost effective?

IANAL, but I think you can only be sued for "actual damages" which means if you only download, you can only be sued for the total retail price of the albums you download.

So unless you've got some kind of compulsive album download behavior, you can only be sued for what you'd normally have purchased at the record store anyway. So what, like they'll sue you for $450? They're going to fly lawyers to Podunk, Wyoming to litigate in small-claims court for your $450? I think not.

Hurray! for allofmp3

[xtracto]

Sincerely, I have bought some albums from allofmp3, I downloaded iTunes but, well, they do not have the music i like (stratovarius, symphony x, children of boddom, etc etc) and he music is really expensive.

But I would like to make an experiment, what do you do when you buy a CD and you do not like it?? I usually sell it, dont you?

Is it possible to make the same thing with a music from iTunes? it must be, because I am paying for the right of the song no? after I pay for them, they are my bytes! and only mine! does anyone know anything behind this?

well, I posted another other interesint thoughts here but well, i guess my karma is not good so people does not hear me in this soup opera called slashdot...

Re:RIAA has never sued downloaders

[anethema]

Downloading is definately legal in canada. Without a doubt. So is copying your friends cds for personal use.

Basic problem of media cost vs content cost.

[Maxo-Texas]

Content cost was related to media cost. A cassette tape or vinyl record factory and materials cost a certain amount of money and held a small amount of content. But consider the new BluRay/HD-DVD dvd's coming out in terms of cost and capacity. They will start at or above $20 per disk but after a couple years will cost 10 cents a piece. But in terms of capacity they will be able to hold huge amounts of material. They could sell a disk with ALL of the music of the 50's in lossless format for $10 bucks. But they want to charge the same price they have always charged (or even more seeing the recent push to raise prices above .99 per song). There is no technical reason we haven't been able to purchase a DVD with 4.6 gigabytes of mp3's which would pretty much cover any entire genre. Every version of every song the beatles or rolling stones ever recorded would easily fit on a dvd. The problem is they would want to charge $110 for a dvd like that and people are not going to pay that much for one disk which won't be replaced when they go bad. There is so much content out there that the value of content is dropping. When you add things like magnatune.com (some darn good music there by the way and ALL legal) into the mix, I cannot see how they will be able to sustain their prices. In my view, allofmp3.com is charging a fair price for the content. I hope they stay up as long as possible.

Re:Text from Gizmodo:

[cpt kangarooski]

What if person A owns the copyright in country A, and person B owns the copyright in country B? Still okay for B to undercut A?

What if the copyright expires or otherwise doesn't apply for our purposes in country C, and ordinary person C starts making copies there, lawfully. Okay for him to undercut A and B?

If you're treating them differently, why? Remember that in each case, only person A can lawfully make copies in A, only person B can lawfully make copies in B, and anyone can make copies in C.

It's certainly an issue worth considering carefully, but I don't think the answer is necessarily as clear cut as you'd like.

Re:Text from Gizmodo:

[Yartrebo]

Big difference there.

If real child porn could be made without harming kids, then it would have to be legal because of the first amendment.

There's no way virtual child porn can hurt kids, so it's legal.

Wise decision if you ask me, since a lot of Anime could easily be considered child porn by US standards.