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Allofmp3 Restarts Business
An anonymous reader writes "With a pretty short message on their blog, Allofmp3 announced that they will resume their music store soon. According to a Russian court, their music store did not violate any copyright law in Russia, so there was no reason for them to keep it closed."
...just changed names for a bit (to MP3sparks.com). I had a balance on AllofMP3, heard that 'sparks was a front, so I logged on using my 'MP3 ID and, sure enough, they'd "transferred" my balance. And guess what? Alltunes (their download tool) never stopped working either, and without me having to change a single setting.
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
I give each company I deal with a different email address so I know when they have sold my address to spammers. Shortly after allofmp3.com was being shut down for the first time, I started getting spam to the email address that I had given to allofmp3.com. Remember, that address was never given to anyone except allofmp3.com.
I guess they figured if they can't make money selling music that they don't have any rights to, then the would supplement their income by selling out their customers' email addresses to worthless spammers.
Pretty sad actually.
p.s. funny, but true coincidence... The capcha word for me to post this anonymously is "poacher"
Except, of course, that the "one guy" is a sovereign nation enforcing its laws (specifically, as regards compulsory licensing). And in truth the situation isn't all that different from what pertains in the US. ROMS is essentially equivalent to an organization called SoundExchange, which collects those compulsory-license royalties you've heard about on webcasts, and is a division... you guessed it... of the RIAA. Russians just happen to enjoy a slightly broader license grant under their system than do Americans under theirs. So this is a case of "your laws are different from ours... OMG IP terrists!"
The big problem is that the amount paid to ROMS is incredibly small and has not been negotiated with the rights holders or artists.
Well that's an amusing argument, considering that the US *ALSO* has a statutory licensing law and that rate has also not been been negotiated with the rights holders or artists.
Oh wait, I forgot to echo back to you the the part about the amount paid being incredibly small. Oops, my bad. Well lets see, the royalty rate under US law for a company sending the identical MP3 file to someone, compared to the Russian rate is... accrding to my calculator.... hmmm lets see line up the decimal point there....
Ah there we go! It's a multiplier of about TWENTY difference in royalty rate!
WOW! That's a frigin huge difference in royalty rate!
Under Russian law AllOfMP3.com has to pay TWENTY TIMES MORE in royalty rate than Pandora.com had to pay in royalty rate under US law when they sent me the exact same MP3 file. Yep, that's right, the Russian royalty rate is vastly higher than the US royalty rate.
You are absolutely welcome to say that Russian royalty rates should be higher, but you cannot argue that there is anything wrong or illegitimate about the principle or general operation of that law. In legal principle and in fundamental aspects the Russian law is effectively identical to US law. There are differences in some details, but absolutely not in anything altering the basic legitamacy of that law.
Russian law is absolutely legitimate
The "we pay royalties to ROMS" claim is a smokescreen to hide the fact that allofmp3.com is not paying enough money to the creators to actually sustain their work.
Two points. First of all the RIAA refusing to accept the money and refusing to pass that money on to their artists... and prohibiting their artists from directly collecting their money themselves is a public relations and political ploy. It is a small price to pay for the wonderful chant that RIAA artists are not getting paid at all, and to back up their bogus claim that the law itself is illegitimate.
Secondly, I would fully welcome increasing the royalty rate in Russian law. It is fundamentally a legitamate and GOOD law, and yes it should direct more money to the artists. And the US law royalty should also be massivly increased to match the Russian rate... provided that some defective-by-design arbitrary clauses in US law were removed to match Russian law... for example the US law prohibits sending more than three songs from a single artist or more than two songs from a single album within a single hour. Crank up the royalty rates to pay artists more and get rid of the (US) arbitrary restrictions on the timing of sending songs.
Of course that is the LAST thing the RIAA wants. They don't care squat about how well their artists get paid. And in fact they aren't particularly thinking about what rate they are getting paid on it either. What they are in a frenzy over is that fact that the broader market effect would be to more open opportunities to INDIE musicians. The RIAA's very existence is founded upon artists *NEEDING* to sign their soul away in an RIAA Label contract. If new artists find a broader marketplace more conducive to indie survival, the RIAA's influx of new lifeblood starts drying up. It doesn't matter what royalty rate the RIAA picks up in the short term if they lose control and indie artists are no longer forced to sign up with the RIAA middleman.
A good statutory license means that the RIAA (and their artists) get paid their due, but that the RIAA lose their VETO power to shut down any music enterprise at will, lose the power to extort other companies into compliance.
It's easy to dismiss the rights holders as "a bunch of rich musicians" who aren't earning a few extra million
Actually I'm thinking more in terms of "lots of the poor musicians should be making more tens of thousands each... a living wage.
An indie artist could be reasonably pleas
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.