Andre Yoskowitz
27 May 2008 14:38
The RIAA has declared complete victory over the infamous Russian music download store AllofMP3 which was accused of selling tracks but not giving any of the proceeds to the artists or record labels.
At its peak, the site had 6 million users who legally downloaded songs and full albums for cheaper than 1/3 the price of iTunes or Amazon. The RIAA said however that the record labels and the artists were not seeing any of this money and filed complaints to get the WTO to shut the site down. In 2007, the site was shut down and the RIAA praised the decision. However, in October of that year, the site was acquitted of any charges and a district court in Moscow confirmed the innocent verdict after an appeal by the record industry group. Despite being innocent, the site shut down and no longer offers music.
It now appears that this week the RIAA dropped its copyright infringement lawsuit against AllofMP3 and claimed victory.
“The site is now defunct and out of business, the result of a successful anti-piracy initiative,” Jonathan Lamy, an RIAA spokesman said.
That may be true, but following the media AllofMP3 received, almost a dozen similar sites have sprung up and are currently fully operational. Even funnier, the founders of AllofMP3 have started a new site called Mp3Sparks which operates exactly the same as the now "defunct" AllofMP3 did.
Talking about the dropping of the lawsuit, John Crossman, representative of the site’s owner, MediaServices LLC says, “They [RIAA] never correctly commenced the proceeding in the first place...Maybe it was a rare triumph of good sense.”