The difference, of course, is that this company was making a profit from creating derivative works (under the guise of a service), while an individual in their home is not, and thus is of little concern to copyright holders.
The other difference is that one of the tests used to determine if something is fair use is whether or not the use is commercial.
On a desktop machine, program load time and swap space access speed are much more important than data access. Almost all desktop applications perform relatively little data I/O compared to that involved in loading & executing them. The only exception is probably video capture/editing, which needs a fast disk if you're trying to do real time high definition capture with lossless compression for example.
The one genre where teamwork should seem obvious lacks any sort of teamwork gameplay for more than two players. I wonder why it took an NFL player to bring it to the EA execs' minds.
Why? Because I suspect that EA et al realise that the primary reason people play sports simulators rather than getting off their butts and playing *real* sport is that they don't have enough people around to form a team. Once you've got the team, playing real sport is much better than sitting staring at a screen, and EA know it.
I [...] proposed various safeguards that might reasonably be imposed to protect the public from abusive conditions if EULAs and similar agreements are legally enforceable. Here's hoping someone in government agrees with me!:-)
I think it's quite clear from the history of a variety of decisions that under current UK law, EULAs are enforceable: as the parent pointed out, UK copyright law does not contain an exemption for copying that is necessary to use software (see, e.g., the PS2 modchip case from last year), so you cannot run software in the UK without a valid license, and the EULA is usually the only license that is offered.
There are already a variety of safeguards available: the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 limits the rights of the vendor to disclaim warranties, for example, and the Sale of Goods Act (?) prevents the EULA from excluding warranties of fitness for a particular purpose, I believe. Standard UK method for deciding whether contract terms should be enforced or not includes a consideration of the "relative bargaining power" of the two parties -- I suspect in any case involving MS's terms, if they were even slightly unreasonable, a judge would side with the consumer.
I'm not sure if this is something that should be included in a Copyright bill; a general consumer protection bill with a section relating to licensing would be more appropriate if any additional protection was deemed necessary.
I'd certainly like to see a copyright act that provided a more robust set of exemptions, particularly something analagous to US "fair use" (UK "fair dealing" is, as you point out, much more restrictive).
One of the other posters (who seems to be a law student) pointed in the right direction, but his answer isn't clear enough for my liking, so I'm going to answer again.
The bank did not receive a license. They received an OFFER of a license, but they would have to accept the EULA in order to acquire the license. Licenses are transferrable (unless specifically described otherwise), but offers aren't. You can't resell software (in the UK) without accepting some kind of license to do so. Only MS and people authorised by MS can grant a license to Windows, therefore only authorised sellers can legally sell Windows. The EULA authorises you to sell your copy of Windows, if you accept it.
But, it stipulates conditions on what you must do in order to do this, which weren't followed in this case, therefore any questions as to whether the EULA was or was not accepted are moot: there is only one way you can legally sell a copy of Windows in the UK, which is to accept a license from MS and then sell it according to those terms. If they didn't accept the EULA, they can't sell it (as the judge pointed out); if they did, they have to follow steps which weren't followed in this case to sell it (which the judge didn't bother pointing out again; he'd already outlined these steps in an earlier paragraph of the judgement).
Licenses don't travel with hardware, COA, or even original discs. They follow the combination of COA, discs and printed manuals that the copy was originally supplied with; omit any of these in a transfer, and the license remains with the transferer, not the transferee. The reason they follow this combination is quite clear: it's what MS stipulates in the EULA. Anyone reading the EULA can clearly see that this is what must be transferred, so there's no excuse for not doing it.
I don't think there's any evil at all going on here, unless it is the ever-increasing tendency of OEMs not to supply a Windows disc with the PCs they sell, an act which effectively prevents you from following MS's transfer conditions.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe there is a clause in the current MS Windows EULA that specifically says that you cannot resell the software with the license.
There isn't, but there is one that states that you can only transfer the software and license if you transfer the original media, printed documentation AND certificate of authenticity, whereas the bank in question only transferred the certificates, therefore hadn't correctly transferred their licenses.
Software companies originally tried to use a "you can't use our software without making a copy in RAM, so you need a license!" argument, but in the USA at least that was made explicitly legal in Title 17 a. 1. 117.
But, as far as I can tell, it hasn't in the UK. And I've certainly read legal decisions (e.g. the PS2 modchip sales prosecution that occurred last year) that suggest that a license is required to make transitory copies of software in the UK, even if that is necessary for the functioning of the software.
The real problem here is that this judge, if the quote is truly from a judge, implicitly acknowledges the concept of a license to use software, a right that is not (under US and UK copyright law) the copyright holder's to license.
Actually, that's only true of US copyright law. This is the reason it isn't legal to use a games-console modchip in the UK to run imported titles: you don't have a valid license to make the necessary copy of the game in system RAM.
In the UK, it is generally held that the right to use is passed as an implicit contract term at time of sale, but it isn't enshrined in statute like it is in the US. And note that that right *cannot* be passed by an unauthorised reseller.
If the certificate is not enough proof of your ownership of a license to run a particular piece of software, what is?
If you read the EULA, you can transfer a license for Windows if you have accepted the EULA, and pass on the COA, the original discs (or system restore discs if you're on a softload) and the printed manuals that were supplied with the copy (usually only a little "getting started" pamphlet with Windows XP). To prove you have a valid license, you'll therefore need all of these things.
Like the bank in TFA did. This is all that this BS about COA not proving purchase is: being told that, nope, you're not allowed to sell those unwanted OEM licenses that you were forced to buy.
Actually, I think you're misreading it. Nowhere does it say that you can't transfer an OEM license. It's just that the way of doing it that the defendant in this case was using is not a valid way of doing it, according to MS's EULA, which states:
SOFTWARE TRANSFER. [...] to Third Party. If you are the person who initially licensed the Software, you may make a one-time permanent transfer of this EULA, Software and Certificate of Authenticity (if applicable) to another end user, provided that you do not retain any copies of the Software. This transfer must include all of the Software (including all component parts, the media and printed materials, any upgrades, this EULA, and, if applicable, the Certificate of Authenticity). The transfer may not be an indirect transfer, such as a consignment. Prior to the transfer, the end user receiving the Software must agree to all the EULA terms.
Whereas the guy in this case was just transferring the COAs and claiming that that was enough. It isn't. You have to transfer the manuals and any discs (e.g. system restore disc) that were provided with the original PC also, and get a statement of acceptance of the EULA. The license thus transferred is probably only legally usable with a copy of the OS made from the system restore disc, so you can't take (e.g.) a Dell OEM license and use it with a copy of a retail XP disc. But if you had a Dell machine (or any other way of making the system restore disc function), you could then install the system on that machine. Subsequently, you could transfer the hard disc to other machines if necessary.
It makes dealing in OEM Windows licenses a pain in the ass, but it doesn't prevent it entirely.
I guess first sale law doesn't apply to software in the UK any more.
Yep. The judge even quotes the statute which means it doesn't: Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Section 56 (Transfers of copies of works in electronic form). It's phrased like a grant of a right to transfer copies unless the copyright holder includes a term preventing it. But if you read between the lines, it clearly grants the copyright holder the right to include a term in the EULA which will effectively prevent transfers.
The other theory which might apply is that software is useless without something that will enable you to copy it onto your hard disk / load it into the memory of your computer. The US has a law that specifically enables this. The UK doesn't, so over here, we have to rely on an implied term of the contract of sale that is a grant of this right (it would usually be held to exist unless you were specifically told at point of sale that you weren't being granted such a right, I suspect). An unauthorised reseller would not have authority to make such a grant, so couldn't legally sell the software (except with explicit instructions that it should not, under any circumstance, be used). Microsoft grants a limited right to resell in their EULA, but if you haven't accepted the EULA you can't rely on that. There has to be a chain of sellers, all of whom have accepted the EULA, leading back to MS, in order for a sale of MS's software to be legal.
It's ridiculous, but it does seem to be the law of this country.
The CD is utterly unimportant if all you bought was a license to use the software; you have a license, so you have a legal right to make backup copies.
That, also, is a specific provision of US copyright law that doesn't apply in the UK. We don't have right to make backup copies, except as explicitly granted by the copyright holder. The Windows XP EULA doesn't mention backups.
Also, quoting from MS's documentation on what the COA is:
The Certificate of Authenticity (COA) is not a license to use the Microsoft software. The COA is a security device that accompanies legally licensed Microsoft software.
Obtaining a COA does not in itself grant you a license to use Windows. You have to get the license transferred, which requires (according to MS's EULA) a transfer of everything, including source media and manuals. Tough luck if you're on an OEM softload.
What Microsoft is doing here is taking legitimate software (they made it and they sold it) and by fiat converting it into pirated/counterfeit software solely by stint of how they have their EULA structured. The software hasn't been reproduced, isn't being used by multiple people, in fact the core of the argument rests on the fact that the software has been completely unused prior to the sale.
Not quite. If you read the judgement, what the defendant was doing was:
Taking legitimate COAs from machines where the installation had never been used because the purchaser had reinstalled a different OS from the one supplied by the OEM
Supplying these COAs for use to supposedly validate multiple installations where only one original disc was in posession of the installer.
MS's argument is that a license is only present if both the COA and the original source media and documentation bundle are transferred together, and that the COA is only valid for an installation from that source media. Of course, if your OS is an OEM softload package you're out of luck... due to these restrictions, you can't sell it.
The judgement quotes a rather nasty piece of law:
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
56. Transfers of copies of works in electronic form
(1) This section applies where a copy of a work in electronic form has been purchased on terms which, expressly or impliedly or by virtue of any rule of law, allow the purchaser to copy the work, or to adapt it or make copies of an adaptation, in connection with his use of it.
(2) If there are no express terms--
(a) Prohibiting the transfer of the copy by the purchaser, imposing obligations which continue after a transfer, prohibiting the assignment of any licence or terminating any licence on a transfer, or
(b) Providing for the terms on which a transferee may do the things which the purchaser was permitted to do,
anything which the purchaser was allowed to do may also be done without infringement of copyright by a transferee; but any copy, adaptation or copy of an adaptation made by the purchaser which is not also transferred shall be treated as an infringing copy for all purposes after the transfer.
The effect of this law is to enable copyright holders to block or impose arbitrary conditions on the resale of their copyrighted works. I didn't know this existed, but it does look bad for the defendant. It basically means that he has to abide by MS's restrictions, which he didn't. Hence the judgement against him.
The network pipe has to be well in excess of a gigabit per second to be faster than the hardware.
To be fair, 1 Gib/s is probably faster than most of your local peripherals will be able to manage, unless you're using a striped RAID array for storage (even the fastest current-generation hard disks are unlikely to exceed 700Mib/s, except when transferring from cache). It's pretty close to the throughput that a PCIe x1 slot can manage (2.5 Gib/s), so chances are only your processor, memory and graphics card are faster in a modern PC.
But, then, who has that speed access to the Internet dedicated to their own use? How many people have it at all? How long will it take before people can have it? 5 years? 10 years? How fast will PCs be by then?
So you believe it's easier for a server farm to crash than your personal/work computer?
Well, you'd struggle to slashdot my desktop PC, but YouOS is crawling along at a snail's pace right now. It took 2 minutes to load up on my machine, and it's been "loading rich text editor" for the last 5.
Why would I write a piece of malware that would only target a small segment of the market?
Because that small segment, accustomed to not being targeted by malware authors, might be less likely to take precautions that would prevent you achieving your goal than the larger segment. You may therefore get a higher penetration for lower effort.
Note: malware does exist for non-Windows systems. I had a Linux box owned by a BIND-worm a few years back. The worm failed to propogate onto my machine properly because it was badly written, but it managed to break down the door at least.
That's actually a standard procedure that anybody who has a court order saying somebody should pay them money can ask for. I have a friend who did it over a tenant who was refusing to pay him rent. I don't suspect the courts would think twice about doing it for the BPI.
Particularly not when that press has a picture in the top corner of the article with the caption "the website offers Keane's number one album for less than a pound". That sounds almost like an advert to me.
If they weren't able to take down PirateBay **in the EU**, what chance have they got to take down Allofmp3 in Russia?
I'm not sure they're aiming for a takedown. I suspect they're aiming to seize assets, which is much easier.
Or get orders that would allow them to seize any money that is owed to AllOfMp3.com from third parties (E.g. credit card providers) rather than sending it to the original destination.
You can be sued (or criminally prosecuted) in any country that has a law that says that you can be. For instance, it is entirely possible to break the US computer security laws without ever setting foot on US soil or even targetting a US victim... it is only necessary that the packets you send pass through a network operated in the US.
In the UK, you can sue anybody who breaks a UK law in a way which harms you. Of course, if they aren't in the UK, and their own government doesn't agree, enforcement can be tricky. You'd probably be looking for a way of using a third-party debt order -- you'd find somebody who is in the UK and owes money to AllOfMP3.com, and issue them with an order to pay that money to you rather than them.
So, basically, following the laws of any country you do business in is good sense.
As far as I understand it, AllOfMP3.com pay for a redistribution license that's similar to what a radio station requires in most of the world -- i.e., it's ludicrously cheap, not much money goes to the artist, and you're not supposed to be able to legally make a permanent copy of the resulting "broadcast" -- but due to a loophole in Russian law are allowed to effectively sell a permanent license. So the artist probably gets a little money, but nothing like as much as they would if a copy of the record was purchased through more traditional means.
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The difference, of course, is that this company was making a profit from creating derivative works (under the guise of a service), while an individual in their home is not, and thus is of little concern to copyright holders.
The other difference is that one of the tests used to determine if something is fair use is whether or not the use is commercial.
How much of a myth is it when you use least common denominator, portable file systems like FAT?
A decent flash disk will have write-spreading as a layer on top of the filesystem, so it will remap sectors on the fly to avoid wearout.
On a desktop machine, program load time and swap space access speed are much more important than data access. Almost all desktop applications perform relatively little data I/O compared to that involved in loading & executing them. The only exception is probably video capture/editing, which needs a fast disk if you're trying to do real time high definition capture with lossless compression for example.
The one genre where teamwork should seem obvious lacks any sort of teamwork gameplay for more than two players. I wonder why it took an NFL player to bring it to the EA execs' minds.
Why? Because I suspect that EA et al realise that the primary reason people play sports simulators rather than getting off their butts and playing *real* sport is that they don't have enough people around to form a team. Once you've got the team, playing real sport is much better than sitting staring at a screen, and EA know it.
I [...] proposed various safeguards that might reasonably be imposed to protect the public from abusive conditions if EULAs and similar agreements are legally enforceable. Here's hoping someone in government agrees with me! :-)
I think it's quite clear from the history of a variety of decisions that under current UK law, EULAs are enforceable: as the parent pointed out, UK copyright law does not contain an exemption for copying that is necessary to use software (see, e.g., the PS2 modchip case from last year), so you cannot run software in the UK without a valid license, and the EULA is usually the only license that is offered.
There are already a variety of safeguards available: the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 limits the rights of the vendor to disclaim warranties, for example, and the Sale of Goods Act (?) prevents the EULA from excluding warranties of fitness for a particular purpose, I believe. Standard UK method for deciding whether contract terms should be enforced or not includes a consideration of the "relative bargaining power" of the two parties -- I suspect in any case involving MS's terms, if they were even slightly unreasonable, a judge would side with the consumer.
I'm not sure if this is something that should be included in a Copyright bill; a general consumer protection bill with a section relating to licensing would be more appropriate if any additional protection was deemed necessary.
I'd certainly like to see a copyright act that provided a more robust set of exemptions, particularly something analagous to US "fair use" (UK "fair dealing" is, as you point out, much more restrictive).
Thoughts?
One of the other posters (who seems to be a law student) pointed in the right direction, but his answer isn't clear enough for my liking, so I'm going to answer again.
The bank did not receive a license. They received an OFFER of a license, but they would have to accept the EULA in order to acquire the license. Licenses are transferrable (unless specifically described otherwise), but offers aren't. You can't resell software (in the UK) without accepting some kind of license to do so. Only MS and people authorised by MS can grant a license to Windows, therefore only authorised sellers can legally sell Windows. The EULA authorises you to sell your copy of Windows, if you accept it.
But, it stipulates conditions on what you must do in order to do this, which weren't followed in this case, therefore any questions as to whether the EULA was or was not accepted are moot: there is only one way you can legally sell a copy of Windows in the UK, which is to accept a license from MS and then sell it according to those terms. If they didn't accept the EULA, they can't sell it (as the judge pointed out); if they did, they have to follow steps which weren't followed in this case to sell it (which the judge didn't bother pointing out again; he'd already outlined these steps in an earlier paragraph of the judgement).
Licenses don't travel with hardware, COA, or even original discs. They follow the combination of COA, discs and printed manuals that the copy was originally supplied with; omit any of these in a transfer, and the license remains with the transferer, not the transferee. The reason they follow this combination is quite clear: it's what MS stipulates in the EULA. Anyone reading the EULA can clearly see that this is what must be transferred, so there's no excuse for not doing it.
I don't think there's any evil at all going on here, unless it is the ever-increasing tendency of OEMs not to supply a Windows disc with the PCs they sell, an act which effectively prevents you from following MS's transfer conditions.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe there is a clause in the current MS Windows EULA that specifically says that you cannot resell the software with the license.
There isn't, but there is one that states that you can only transfer the software and license if you transfer the original media, printed documentation AND certificate of authenticity, whereas the bank in question only transferred the certificates, therefore hadn't correctly transferred their licenses.
Can you provide a reference please? I believe you are mistaken.
Software companies originally tried to use a "you can't use our software without making a copy in RAM, so you need a license!" argument, but in the USA at least that was made explicitly legal in Title 17 a. 1. 117.
But, as far as I can tell, it hasn't in the UK. And I've certainly read legal decisions (e.g. the PS2 modchip sales prosecution that occurred last year) that suggest that a license is required to make transitory copies of software in the UK, even if that is necessary for the functioning of the software.
The real problem here is that this judge, if the quote is truly from a judge, implicitly acknowledges the concept of a license to use software, a right that is not (under US and UK copyright law) the copyright holder's to license.
Actually, that's only true of US copyright law. This is the reason it isn't legal to use a games-console modchip in the UK to run imported titles: you don't have a valid license to make the necessary copy of the game in system RAM.
In the UK, it is generally held that the right to use is passed as an implicit contract term at time of sale, but it isn't enshrined in statute like it is in the US. And note that that right *cannot* be passed by an unauthorised reseller.
If the certificate is not enough proof of your ownership of a license to run a particular piece of software, what is?
If you read the EULA, you can transfer a license for Windows if you have accepted the EULA, and pass on the COA, the original discs (or system restore discs if you're on a softload) and the printed manuals that were supplied with the copy (usually only a little "getting started" pamphlet with Windows XP). To prove you have a valid license, you'll therefore need all of these things.
Actually, I think you're misreading it. Nowhere does it say that you can't transfer an OEM license. It's just that the way of doing it that the defendant in this case was using is not a valid way of doing it, according to MS's EULA, which states:
Whereas the guy in this case was just transferring the COAs and claiming that that was enough. It isn't. You have to transfer the manuals and any discs (e.g. system restore disc) that were provided with the original PC also, and get a statement of acceptance of the EULA. The license thus transferred is probably only legally usable with a copy of the OS made from the system restore disc, so you can't take (e.g.) a Dell OEM license and use it with a copy of a retail XP disc. But if you had a Dell machine (or any other way of making the system restore disc function), you could then install the system on that machine. Subsequently, you could transfer the hard disc to other machines if necessary.
It makes dealing in OEM Windows licenses a pain in the ass, but it doesn't prevent it entirely.
Yep. The judge even quotes the statute which means it doesn't: Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Section 56 (Transfers of copies of works in electronic form). It's phrased like a grant of a right to transfer copies unless the copyright holder includes a term preventing it. But if you read between the lines, it clearly grants the copyright holder the right to include a term in the EULA which will effectively prevent transfers.
The other theory which might apply is that software is useless without something that will enable you to copy it onto your hard disk / load it into the memory of your computer. The US has a law that specifically enables this. The UK doesn't, so over here, we have to rely on an implied term of the contract of sale that is a grant of this right (it would usually be held to exist unless you were specifically told at point of sale that you weren't being granted such a right, I suspect). An unauthorised reseller would not have authority to make such a grant, so couldn't legally sell the software (except with explicit instructions that it should not, under any circumstance, be used). Microsoft grants a limited right to resell in their EULA, but if you haven't accepted the EULA you can't rely on that. There has to be a chain of sellers, all of whom have accepted the EULA, leading back to MS, in order for a sale of MS's software to be legal.
It's ridiculous, but it does seem to be the law of this country.
The CD is utterly unimportant if all you bought was a license to use the software; you have a license, so you have a legal right to make backup copies.
That, also, is a specific provision of US copyright law that doesn't apply in the UK. We don't have right to make backup copies, except as explicitly granted by the copyright holder. The Windows XP EULA doesn't mention backups.
Also, quoting from MS's documentation on what the COA is:
Obtaining a COA does not in itself grant you a license to use Windows. You have to get the license transferred, which requires (according to MS's EULA) a transfer of everything, including source media and manuals. Tough luck if you're on an OEM softload.
Not quite. If you read the judgement, what the defendant was doing was:
MS's argument is that a license is only present if both the COA and the original source media and documentation bundle are transferred together, and that the COA is only valid for an installation from that source media. Of course, if your OS is an OEM softload package you're out of luck... due to these restrictions, you can't sell it.
The judgement quotes a rather nasty piece of law:
The effect of this law is to enable copyright holders to block or impose arbitrary conditions on the resale of their copyrighted works. I didn't know this existed, but it does look bad for the defendant. It basically means that he has to abide by MS's restrictions, which he didn't. Hence the judgement against him.
The network pipe has to be well in excess of a gigabit per second to be faster than the hardware.
To be fair, 1 Gib/s is probably faster than most of your local peripherals will be able to manage, unless you're using a striped RAID array for storage (even the fastest current-generation hard disks are unlikely to exceed 700Mib/s, except when transferring from cache). It's pretty close to the throughput that a PCIe x1 slot can manage (2.5 Gib/s), so chances are only your processor, memory and graphics card are faster in a modern PC.
But, then, who has that speed access to the Internet dedicated to their own use? How many people have it at all? How long will it take before people can have it? 5 years? 10 years? How fast will PCs be by then?
So you believe it's easier for a server farm to crash than your personal/work computer?
Well, you'd struggle to slashdot my desktop PC, but YouOS is crawling along at a snail's pace right now. It took 2 minutes to load up on my machine, and it's been "loading rich text editor" for the last 5.
Why would I write a piece of malware that would only target a small segment of the market?
Because that small segment, accustomed to not being targeted by malware authors, might be less likely to take precautions that would prevent you achieving your goal than the larger segment. You may therefore get a higher penetration for lower effort.
Note: malware does exist for non-Windows systems. I had a Linux box owned by a BIND-worm a few years back. The worm failed to propogate onto my machine properly because it was badly written, but it managed to break down the door at least.
I'm just going to keep all my important stuff on a TI-99/4a from now on. Let's see the botnets get hold of that!
They probably can, but only if you have Extended BASIC and the dual floppy drive add-on.
That's actually a standard procedure that anybody who has a court order saying somebody should pay them money can ask for. I have a friend who did it over a tenant who was refusing to pay him rent. I don't suspect the courts would think twice about doing it for the BPI.
Particularly not when that press has a picture in the top corner of the article with the caption "the website offers Keane's number one album for less than a pound". That sounds almost like an advert to me.
I'm not sure they're aiming for a takedown. I suspect they're aiming to seize assets, which is much easier.
Or get orders that would allow them to seize any money that is owed to AllOfMp3.com from third parties (E.g. credit card providers) rather than sending it to the original destination.
There's something in the European attitude today that makes them think that they can control the world by passing laws and making "judgements".
Presumably there's something different between when Europeans do this and when Americans do it?
JUDGE: "Speak to the government if you want that legislation."
Actually, that legislation already exists. Importing a copyright protected item into the UK is illegal if it would be illegal to produce it in the UK.
You can be sued (or criminally prosecuted) in any country that has a law that says that you can be. For instance, it is entirely possible to break the US computer security laws without ever setting foot on US soil or even targetting a US victim... it is only necessary that the packets you send pass through a network operated in the US.
In the UK, you can sue anybody who breaks a UK law in a way which harms you. Of course, if they aren't in the UK, and their own government doesn't agree, enforcement can be tricky. You'd probably be looking for a way of using a third-party debt order -- you'd find somebody who is in the UK and owes money to AllOfMP3.com, and issue them with an order to pay that money to you rather than them.
So, basically, following the laws of any country you do business in is good sense.
As far as I understand it, AllOfMP3.com pay for a redistribution license that's similar to what a radio station requires in most of the world -- i.e., it's ludicrously cheap, not much money goes to the artist, and you're not supposed to be able to legally make a permanent copy of the resulting "broadcast" -- but due to a loophole in Russian law are allowed to effectively sell a permanent license. So the artist probably gets a little money, but nothing like as much as they would if a copy of the record was purchased through more traditional means.