AfterDawn: Tech news

AllofMP3.com responded to RIAA lawsuit

Written by James Delahunty @ 01 Jan 2007 3:58 User comments (8)

AllofMP3.com responded to RIAA lawsuit Russian-based AllofMP3.com has chosen to be defiant after a lawsuit was filed against the service in New York. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claims that the service is illegal and infringes on its members' copyright by failing to pay fees to record companies while selling music at prices less than 10c per DRM-free download. The RIAA claims that 11 million songs have been pirated and wants to be compensated.
Considering that the RIAA expects $150,000 per "infringement", that brings the lawsuit to a figure of $1.65 trillion, just under the Gross Domestic Product for the United Kingdom in 2005. The lawsuit was filed against Media Services (which owns AllofMP3) on December 21st in New York. AllofMP3 denies that it is an illegal service and claims it complies with Russian laws - making it a legal site.

The company pays fees to the Russian royalty collection society, ROMS. Therefore, it believes the responsibility to compensate copyright holders properly lies with ROMS. Despite the ridiculously large figure provided by the RIAA in the complaint, AllofMP3.com has kept up its defiant attitude.



"AllofMP3 understands that several U.S. record label companies filed a lawsuit against Media Services in New York," an unnamed senior company official stated. "This suit is unjustified as AllofMP3 does not operate in New York. Certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish, despite knowing full well that AllofMP3 operates legally in Russia. In the mean time, AllofMP3 plans to continue to operate legally and comply with all Russian laws."

The RIAA can be seen as a victim of its own tactics, displaying that morality has no place in litigation, targeting the young, old, rich and poor in copyright infringement lawsuits for sharing music. With this word-for-word use of the DMCA in the United States, the RIAA should understand that if on paper, AllofMP3.com complies with Russian laws, then it is effectively a legal service in Russia where it operates from.

With that being said, you cannot argue that artists and copyright holders do not deserve their cut from the sale of their work by an online service. The AllofMP3 situation will continue to be an interesting one to follow.

Source:
Ars Tecnhica

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8 user comments

11.1.2007 04:25

true, i believe all artist should be fully compensated from cd sales. however, the record companies take a big chunk of the money they make from the cds and if the bands need money, the record companies give the bands a tab and lots of times the band ends up in owing money they don't have. this has been going on for years b4 the invention of p2p or bootlegging a cd.

21.1.2007 09:08

I love corperations....HAIL HAIL MP3 fuhrer HAIL! the 3rd riaa(pronocused ria/rye) shall conquer the world hail! *rolls eyes*

31.1.2007 20:10
duckNrun
Inactive

Zieg Heil!! **kneels at the feet of Da Fuhrer and kisses his ring...while waiting for his new CD purchase to finish downloading from Allof...** ;-)

42.1.2007 04:23
tabletpc
Inactive

they have no right to say this becuase thye follow russian law they are not based in the u.s and even if this suite goes through the courts here in the u.s.a will most likley say try this case in russia and the RIAA will not because they know they will lose

57.1.2007 10:23

If I was in charge at AllofMP3 I wouldnt even send a lawyer to New York. The lawsuit is a joke. You cant sue a Russian company in New York because even if you win, nothing can be inforced. What is going to happen, make the ISPs block the website? That would be so easy to get around it would be the joke of this site and all similar sites.

67.1.2007 11:59

The giant Marketing arm of the RIAA that exists to protect the oligopoly of the largest Record Companies by stealing from artists, actively price fixing by illegally removing competition from the market place and and having all of their represented Record Companies not compete with each other and forcing stores NOT to tell any of their 80% of the music at non-discounted prices. What is so sick about the article above is that it is lazy reporting, where only a memo sent by the RIAA is noted. <b>WHO SAIDTHAT THE ARTISTS ARE NOT BE PAID FOR SALES ON ALLofMP3 WHAT DOES ROMS DO WITH THE MONEY ? </b> <b>What the RIAA hates about ROMS is that Russian law is way more respectful to the artists. ROMS is oriented on playing artists DIRECTLY !! Not record Companies !!<b> AfterDawn, do some research about ROMS and how the money is distributed. I encourage all to use AllofMP3. It is how it should be for online sales. What is so great is that there are NO subscriptions fees, you pay as you go. But the BEST is that it is the customers choice on THE FORMAT/QUALITY OF THE AUDIO FILE. They have about every audio format you can choose fromand not only that, It does a GREAT job of allowing the customer to preview the the music before buying. I love that I can choose my format. I am not stuck with mediocre, DRM infected garbage or mediocre Windows formats. I CHOOSE. It must be understood that the RIAA are the bas guys here and AllOFMP3 are the good guys. They are the ones whose system is designed around customer demand and paying ARTISTS, not getting billion dollar oligopolies steal more from Artists and you and I.

77.1.2007 20:52
duckNrun
Inactive

And while we're talking about Allof let us not forget.. The cost of a Zune music store unlimited listening subscription: $13 The cost of a Yahoo Music unlimited listening subscription: $9 The cost of an Allofmp3.com unlimited listening subscription: FREE The cost of watching the RIAA turn red over this fact: PRICELESS And for everything else there is NOT Mastercard or Visa since they BOTH gave in to become the 'moral' police for the RIAA and no longer allow transfers to Allof. SERIOUSLY guys, you can listen to all the music you want to, whenever you want to, whatever you want to FOR FREE courtesy of Allofmp3.com and their streaming music service!

812.7.2007 07:05

There will always be alternatives, even if AllTunes (the last bit of AllOfMP3 to still be around) closes down too: there is a huge list of sites similar to AllOfMP3 at www.songboom.com that explains the differences between them all with a side-by-side comparison. Although it was sad to see AllOfMP3 go, it's certainly not the end of cheap music!

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