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RIAA Members Sue Allofmp3.com Over Infringement
fair_n_hite_451 writes "To the surprise of no one, several members of the RIAA have filed suit against MediaServices, the operators of Allofmp3.com. The suit was filed for Wednesday, primarily by Arista Records LLC, Warner Bros. Records Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and UMG Recordings. The language of the litigation was very confrontational; The companies claim the site sells millions of songs without paying them 'a dime'. 'The defendant's entire business ... amounts to nothing more than a massive infringement of plaintiffs' exclusive rights under the Copyright Act and New York law.' AllofMp3 has always maintained that a Russian licensing group makes their business legitimate, while the RIAA here claims the organization has no authority to make such a deal."
Check the organization that allofmp3.com claims has given them the right to do what they are doing. If the organization is legitimate, and has doucmented everything correctly, then the RIAA hasn't a leg to stand on.
If the organization is not legitimate or doesn't have the proper paperwork, the RIAA wins.
Instead of litigating this to death, just show the damn paperwork and prove your point.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
... because AllofMP3 does what Napster and Rhapsody and iTunes cannot: offer a comprehensive music catalog at reasonable rates. To wit: if you really like jazz, this is the only place to find nontrivial Art (or Chet!) Baker, Charlie Parker, Buddy Rich, Charles Mingus, or Dave Brubeck.
Is it illegal according to US law? Sure. Do I care? No. This is the modern equivalent of civil disobedience. Call it corporate disobedience: the ad infinitum extensions of copyright protection for works of long-dead artists, as a benefit to corporate parents, says the balance of power is most assuredly in the hands of the sociopathic corporate citizenry and not the voting public. The weapons I have against Big Business are economic, and this is just the first of many conflicts to come, all along the same lines.
Just mull it over. Corporate disobedience might be the only option now.
-BA
So....shouldn't RIAA being suing the licensing organization, instead? Oh, right, the American philosophy is to file a suit shotgun style and see how many people to whom you can get it to stick.
Bearded Dragon
Why is the RIAA trying to sue someone in another country. The US has no jurisdiction.
Does the site have a presence in the US? Well? If it doesn't then they can get bent. Now they can go after all the people who paid the site to download songs, but not the site in Russia.
Please America, don't try to bring your horrible legal system to the rest of the world. We don't want it.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
In other words, between the Hollywood mafia and the Russian mafia?
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
Now this is, admittedly, hearsay, and I've not gone to look for collaboration:
What I'd heard is that allofmp3 PAYS royalties, but the American firms refuse them, as they're "not enough". So when they accuse them of not paying a dime, it's because they won't accept the payments, more than anything else... Can anyone confirm/deny this?
My ruble is on the Russuan mafia.
My nickel is on the *AA mafia because we have a government that will do ANYTHING for corporations.
Except that basically disenfranchises the poor who could never sue the rich again for fear that they would lose the case. It would also allow the rich to get even better legal counsel for the same amount of money, since they would have to pay said counsel much less often.
If I understood the AllofMP3.com situation correctly, they are paying the Russian equivalent of the RIAA licensing and royalty fees for the songs they sell, under some obscure loophole of Russian law that allows them to classify their website alongside radio stations and use the much cheaper fees for broadcast licenses. If this is true, then they are violating no Russian law.
But, I also thought that it is illegal for people to import into the United States products that are illegal here, even if said products are legal in the originating country (like bringing weed back from Amsterdam with you... they won't let it in the country, and you'll probably be arrested for possession). If that's the case, then wouldn't the US customers of AllofMP3.com be in violation of these importation laws by buying the songs in Russia (where it's legal) and then importing them to the United States (where it's illegal)? Why would the RIAA not use this vector for attack on AllofMP3, and bring down Capone on tax evasion?
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"(Russian Organization for Multimedia and Digital Systems a.k.a. similar to the RIAA in Russia)."
Not really. A much closer analogy would be our BMI or ASCAP. Allofmp3 is working their magic by paying the licensing rate for broadcasts. Here in the US, it is BMI and ASCAP who collect money for broadcast licensing. BMI and ASCAP represent artists and are unaffiliated with the RIAA.
FWIW, despite the fact that ASCAP and BMI are run by and for artists, they are often just as hated by Slashdotters as is the RIAA; particularly when it makes the news that they are suing a business owner for unlicensed public performance. It seems that around here we love and respect the artists, except when they get a little too uppity about being paid.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
BTW, any metaphors comparing made-up, fictional, so-called intellectual property to real, defendable, actual property will fail. Every time.
I don't like the RIAA much, so I try to avoid buying new CDs as much as I can (I believe I have only purchased one brand-new CD this year, from Target). Rather than settle for what iTunes Store offers (or doesn't offer as the case may be), I just purchase all my CDs used from the Amazon marketplace. I'm buying used CDs so I'm not supporting the RIAA (and not pirating at the same time), and I've never paid more than $10 for a CD I've wanted, including shipping... which makes the tracks less than $1/song. I just rip it into iTunes in AAC format and throw the CD onto my shelf for storage if I need it at a later time.
Seems like a simple solution to me... no pirating and music in any format I want.
Good luck getting your bank to handle transactions with a company that loses that case in a US court.
If VISA and MasterCard and AmEx pay anything to AllOfMP3, they suddenly get to look down the barrel of a really expensive lawsuit.
Ditto for PayPal and the rest.
When AOMP3 loses this one (and they will), a huge chunk of their revenue stream goes away, and not just in the US. Anyone, anywhere, using a major financial institution to pay for those songs will be shutting down, fast.
Your example is like me mail ordering an ounce from Amsterdam and the US government busting the guy in Amsterdam.
-peace
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
From what I understand what they are doing in Russia is legal. It obeys Russian copyright law. Now by US law if I buy a CD in Russia and then bring it back to the US I am legally permitted to do so provided I do it for personal use and not to resell it. That is in fact what happens. You get a place on their server and then download what you own onto your own computer for personal use. What is happening is actually quite legal.
_ Term_Extension_Act
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The RIAA hates this because it allows US customers to in effect pay much lower royalties and is determined to stop it. They are used to getting their way. The congress passed DMCA for them and other parties and has consistently passed more and more legislation widening intellectual property rights. The US patent office now grants crazy patents (like one click shopping) and even let Disney extend their copyright of Mickey mouse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright
There was a story today on slashdot showing how patents in drugs end up suppressing innovation due to abuse to patent law.
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/12/21/0530228.shtm
When we create intellectual property we create something that is not obvious. We take away the right of some people to disseminate, display and use certain information and make them pay other for the right to do so. Whenever we extend it we take more from everyone else. So when Congress adds on another 50 years of copyright (or Trademark) they are actually stealing from you. Did they pay you for it? They may have eminent domain power but no-one paid you when they took property from you and gave it to the copyright holder.
Given that the massive extensions in intellectual property no longer yield the promised positive results, perhaps it is time for the community to take back what was previously theirs. I am not advocating an end to intellectual property but rather sensible limitations.
Eg
1. Copyright would last for 30 years. That's it. No more. After 30 years its public domain. That would include text, movies, audio, video...you name it.
2. No shenanigans with selling music. Ie you can't sell music that only works on an ipod and cant be transferred to another machine if ipods aren't around any more.
3. Only real patents are allowed. It becomes much easier to throw out patents. Eg no one click shopping and if someone else comes up with the same idea independently then it's really not patentable.
4. No patents of genes or parts of the human body.
5. No more draconian punishments of 5 or 10 or 15 years in jail for breaking IP law. Its not rape or murder or assault. Its theft and should be viewed in perspective. Ie max prison term of 1 year.
6. Extending fair use to making personal backup copies.
7. No laws against breaking encryption. Those laws are so Orwellian.
8. Rigourous enforcement of antitrust laws against big media companies with loss of IP protection if they break them. IE if you are Microsoft and you violate them then you lose your IP on windows ect.
9. No awarding money from sales of MP3 players or blank CDs to media companies. IF they get money from them because of piracy they cant then also so users when they catch them. That is double dipping
10. IF you want a piece of the public airwaves - eg you're a TV station ect then we the public are going to charge you for that privilege and that means we can record whatever we want off those public airwaves for free (for personal use.)
11. No extreme IP laws where you are scared of drawing a picture of someone because even if its your picture it might be their likeness ect. Basically keep IP as a concept LIMITED.
12. Since IP laws are supposedly for the good of the community then we let educational intuitions have a lot more freedom in using material in the course of teaching.
None of this changes the fact that using allofmp3.com is actually quite legal.
Because the RIAA thinks their legal rights are being violated.
The US, as do most soveriegn nations, exercises jurisdiction over violations of its laws wherever in the universe they may occur. It may, by its own law, restrict the territorial applicability of its laws, and, of course, successful litigants may have trouble executing judgements against foreign actors, but that's a different issue.
Anyhow, Americans didn't start this, we're just copying the British (not the last paragraph of the article.)
allofmp3 pays royalties. The RIAA will receive royalties from the organization that allofmp3 pays if they ask. They refuse to ask because they do not like the compulsory licensing laws in Russia. To ask for the money will imply consent, so they sue the law abiding citizens (allofmp3) because they do not like the Russian laws. There is nothing wrong with compulsory licensing. There is compulsory licensing in the US as well, but the terms are favorable to the RIAA so they accept it and take their money when it is paid. So the problem isn't that they object to how things are handled. They object to the level of payment they receive. And they are suing a lawfully operating company because of a complaint about a government's actions.
Regardless of what one things about anything else they do, suing a company that is not in violation of any law because of annoyance over a government's policies is just wrong.
Learn to love Alaska
Because Apple is an incredibly wealthy corporation which will probably never be called to account and you are just a consumer who can easily be threatened with expensive legal action.
> Getting sued for P2P only costs a screenshot of an IP address. Getting sued for buying from allofmp3.com likely requires probably cause and a subpoena of financial transaction records.
Even better, the prosecution has to proove that you bought them, and knew that was illegal! I mean, it is not that easy to be sued for buying something illegaly, without proving you did it on purpose.
> What I never understood is why anybody would use this service. I mean you can find high quality songs in multiple formats and of questionable legality for free on p2p.
Hypothetically, maybe you already have a pretty large collection of iTunes-purchased songs, then your ipod breaks, and you have replace it, then all your purchased songs don't play on the new iPod, then you spend hours on the phone with Apple trying to get retarded iTunes to work, and you get tired of their crap and DRM in general so you figure you can get a pre-paid Visa and simply pay AllofMp3 a "burning" fee to get all the stuff YOU ALREADY OWN in a DRM-free format so you can start playing your tunes again, w/o wasting anymore HOURS using some p2p site trying to find all your songs.
Hypothetically, of course.
It's a very convenient service for the price.
The price is a reasonable price and closer to what I feel a "fair" price for songs.
The service is excellent, very quick.
Legally- you are ONLY downloading (none of that p2p uploading while you download stuff) so you are not infringing copyright.
It has a great selection compared to p2p.
I can SELECT the quality level I want and the price I want to pay from a 3meg mp3 to a 27 meg wav file.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.