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By Richard Menta 7/3/06 The British High Court gave UK recording lobby the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) permission to sue the Russian music website AllofMP3.com. The OK was given last week and BPI says that it will begin the process this week. "This is an important step forwards in our battle," BPI general counsel Roz Groome told the BBC. "We have maintained all along that this site is illegal and that the operator of the site is breaking UK law by making sound recordings available to UK-based customers without the permission of copyright owners.Now we will have the opportunity to demonstrate in the UK courts the illegality of this site." |
For its part, AllofMP3.com has denied any wrong doing saying that the site is perfectly legal under Russian Copyright laws. Indeed, after an investigation Russian authorities refused record industry demands to shut down the site validating AllofMP3.com's claims that they did nothing illegal in the country. The basis for this stems from a loophole in the copyright laws of the country. Nontheless, the international Federation of Phonograhic Industry (IFPI) has mounted an agressive lobby campaing to force Russia to close this loophole. Most recently the US record industry prodded the US government to threaten Russia's impending entrance into the World Trade Organization over poor intellectual property laws, specifically citing AllofMP3.com.
Founded in 2000, AllofMP3.com has been around almost as long as Napster. It was only recently, after a poll by XTN Data revealed that AllofMP3.com had 14% of the British paid downloads market, that the record industry focused their attacks on the site. Music is available in several formats, none of them encumbered with any form of digital rights management. Tracks are also sold by file size rather than by individual track, meaning lower quality downloads cost less. Presently, a 192Kbps download in the MP3 format costs just slightly over a dime in US currency, much lower than the $0.99 charged per track by other services. The reasonable pricing and lack of DRM restrictions made this site very appealing to online record consumers.
The record industry claims that the licences AllofMP3.com acquired are insufficient and called the service unlawful. They claim that none of the money AllofMP3.com generates ever goes to artists. Of course a number or popular artists, like Weird Al Yankovic, claim they are not getting a dime from their music when it is sold through iTunes so the record labels are probably not getting a lot of sympathy from aware consumers on that point.
Even if the BPI obtains a verdict in their favor in the UK, getting the Russian government to respect it is another matter. This is an issue MP3 Newswire wrote about four years ago in February of 2002:
Copyright law gets very interesting when we add foreign nations to the mix. If you think US laws like the DMCA are vague, convoluted, or just plain misguided, remember that there are hundreds of countries out their with their own complex array of laws. All of them arguably trying to do the right thing, but subject to the various political processes and internal pressure unique to each.
That's just a long-winded way of saying you want to find consensus in the world - good luck. What makes the Internet truly amazing and powerful to date is the way it transcends all of this, creating its own space - an ether if you like - that runs by its own rules. It not only clearly avoids the trappings of traditional international communication and commerce, it sometimes feeds off of it, using favorable states as safe harbors.
In the end this lawsuit will most likely achieve one thing successfully. To be a worldwide advertisement for AllofMP3.com just like the Napster lawsuits advertised Napster. A peek on Alexa shows that AllofMP3.com has already seen a significant jump in traffic since the record industry began its sabre rattling.
If their WTO aims clearly become in jeopardy, the Russian goverment will probably back down and close AllofMP3.com. If that happens it still may not be for a while. With all the free press and growing anti-DRM sentiment, in a short time AllofMP3.com could grow so fast it very well might challenge iTunes for the number one paid download site.
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