After years of music industries from the US and UK filing one lawsuit after another against allofmp3.com and trying to bring it down, it looks like they have finally got their victory. So far, the website has been down for the past week, with the allofmp3.ru site showing nothing more than a maintenance message. With the Russian government facing fierce criticism over its apparent lack of action against the site and a US Trade Representative saying that the site must be closed before Russia can get membership of the World Trade Organisation, Moscow had signed an agreement last October to shut down the site.
The website originally ran into problems last year when the credit card companies MasterCard and Visa both withdrew their services from the website. Loopholes where consumers could purchase vouchers for the website through 3rd parties were also quickly closed off. At the website's peak, it claimed to be the second biggest seller of music downloads after the legal music service iTunes. Despite all the lawsuits filed against allofmp3, the site owner's MediaServices insisted that the site was legal under Russian law and also had warnings for international customers to obey their own government's laws before downloading.
Unfortunately for the music industry, MediaServices which owned allofmp3 has set up a new music service mp3sparks.com offering much the same service as what allofmp3 offered, again claiming that it is authorised to distribute music under the Russian law and that it pays license fees. There are also numerous other Russian music services that operate similar to allofmp3.
Despite the legal issues of allofmp3, it has already proven that a music download service can operate very successfully despite no DRM locks on the music. I'm sure that if it was legal around the world and backed by the music industry, it would have long blown away the iTunes store. It was probably the only online music service that offered a wide variety of audio formats and bitrates. It also offered a choice of lossless compression, which no legal music service currently offers.
Thanks to GristyMcFisty and DamnedIfIknow for letting us know about this news. Further info can be read in this BBC News report and this Times Online Report.
