AfterDawn: News

Music Industry wins German case against allofmp3.com

If there's one site that sells music downloads that has really gotten on the nerves of the major music labels, it is allofmp3.com. The site - based in Russia charges users for their download by amount of data that is downloaded, generally 2 cents per MB. In February this year, the site came under criminal investigation in Russia for copyright violations but later on, in March, it emerged that allofmp3.com wasn't breaking any current Russian laws.

The IFPI swore that it would not give up and it didn't. A Court in Munich has now prohibited allofmp3 from making copyrighted data publicly available within Germany. In the same press release that brought this news, the music industry also stated said it's going to take action against sites that support allofmp3, or similar sites, with advertisement or links.



The IFPI claims that the Russian site is illegally distributing its members' music. "We have consistently said that AllofMP3.com is not licensed to distribute our members' repertoire in Russia or anywhere else," said <>Igor Pozhitkov, regional director of IFPI Moscow.

Source:
p2pnet

Written by: James Delahunty @ 9 Jul 2005 16:37

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• 10 comments

• benjers

  hmmm this is really interesting, i thought if you were paying for files as you were downloading them, then it's legal. i know about all of the scam sites that offer 15+billion songs for $.99 a month, but you would have thought that this was ok. hmmmm...
  
  thanks for this.
  
  Peace
  
  -Benjers =)

  9.7.2005 16:45 #1

• lopies

  I love that site. When they bring cd's down to a reasonable price then I'll go legit. I also really like how you can buy the tracks you like and not the ones you don't.

  9.7.2005 19:25 #2

• duckNrun

  benjers, this is the same thought a friend of mine has. If it's not illegal in Russia then by me d/l from that site even though I'm here in (place country here) must be legal. The problem lies in the fact that while in Russia the site is legal, local laws may still prohibit the local person from getting them.
  
  For example... it may be legal in certain countries to show pics of 'almost legal' girls but once those pics 'cross the border' into a different juristiction they become child porn and the d/l'er may face criminal charges in his own country, even though the data originated from a source where it was legal.

  10.7.2005 12:08 #3

• sinistrad

  Quote: In the same press release that brought this news, the music industry also stated said it's going to take action against sites that support allofmp3, or similar sites, with advertisement or links.
  
  Response: Word of Mouth is where it's always been at.
  
  I, of course, will continue to enjoy the fruits of music at 2 cents a megabyte until it is officially illegal for me to do so. Then perhaps I will start borrowing CDs from friends... After all, it seems the RIAA never did figure out how to beat people who copied using casettes :P

  17.7.2005 13:20 #4

• thepcguru

  Thank you RIAA, now I know where to download for real cheap! Where is that $15/month download service?

  21.7.2005 15:59 #5

• Lethal_B

  lol

  21.7.2005 16:14 #6

• fishbulb

  I accidentally ran across this allofmp3.com while searching for ways to capture streaming audio. So naturally I did a search here to find out what I could about it. So are any of you that mentioned using it, still using it? How do you like it? Do you feel "safe" using it (for now). It seems like the next best thing to free music that I can find. I'm not sure I understand exactly how you pay though. Do you register a credit card and pay whatever amount you want and then download songs until the specified amount runs out and just keep adding more money to get more songs? Could someone give me an example of how many songs they got w/ a given amount of money?
  Thanks.

  27.8.2005 17:54 #7

• duckNrun

  well upon further review of copyright law, and further discussion, it appears as if my above statement may be incorrect (although certainly the RIAA would agree with it!) lol. After reading an interview that was conducted with the owner of the allofmp3.com site it seems to appear as if they have a legal right to sell the music that they are selling. It seems from the article that the Russian version of the RIAA has legitimate ability to distribute these titles, per their agreement/contract with the RIAA et al (similiar to the BPI's right to sell the music in the UK). All that has happened is that the Russian counterparts have 'sold'/granted rights to allofmp3.com
  
  in regards to the security of your credit card etc:
  
  they SAY that the transaction is conducted through third party payees using ssl (imagine paypal or another company like them). So if you trust using the processor then you should be ok....

  27.8.2005 20:27 #8

• fishbulb

  I'm not really concerned about the credit card security. If the people here using it haven't complained yet then it must be ok. I was mostly concerned about its users getting "caught." But since this isn't a P2P program, I'm hoping that won't be as much of a concern. So could someone give me an idea of how many songs you can get for, let's say, $20 US? And is the quality of the tracks very good?

  28.8.2005 08:38 #9

• duckNrun

  I haven't actually used it, but I've looked at it. The quality depends on the song/album. They range from 192 bitrate all the way to 'cda' quality. The cost depends on the quality. generally though it seemed like a track would run around 5-15 cents with an album costing a wopping $1.50 range lol.

  28.8.2005 08:55 #10