Up until now, a Russian based music store Allofmp3.com has been selling a 300,000 music library at a cost of 1c per megabyte in a user choice of audio codec and bitrate. The music includes many labels that neither Napster nor iTunes contains such as the Beatles. However while their content is licensed from the Russian Organisation for Multimedia and Digital Systems, they don't pay anything to the artists or labels by claiming there is a loophole in the Russian law.
With a formal complaint from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and preliminary investigation from the Moscow City Police on the 8th of February, Moscow prosecutors are now considering on whether to proceed with a criminal case against Allofmp3.com accusing them of offering music for sale without permission from the rights holders locally in Russia or internationally.
The regional director of the IFPI Igor Pozhitkov is determined to have this case go ahead. Russia currently has a 64% piracy rate and is also one of ten in the IFPI's top priority for targeting against commercial piracy. Going by a copyright legislation issue previously, recordings could be broadcast without authorisation from the copyright holder, so Allofmp3 consider the Internet as a form of broadcasting.
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Moscow prosecutors are considering whether to proceed with a criminal case against Allofmp3.com after Moscow City Police turned over results of a preliminary investigation on 8 February. In a move calculated to add extra pressure, the London-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) said Tuesday that it had submitted a formal complaint to the prosecutor's office on behalf of its members alleging "large-scale copyright infringement". Moscow City Prosecutor's office has until 10 March to decide whether to proceed with a criminal prosecution. Allofmp3.com offers music in the popular MP3 format without copyright protection at prices of around 5c per track compared to the 99c charged by most online music stores. The Russian site charges by the megabyte, offering 1MB of downloads for just one cent. Allofmp3.com claims to be legal, having licensed its content from the Russian Organisation for Multimedia and Digital Systems, an organisation that represents songwriters. It claims a loophole in Russian law means it doesn't have to pay artists and labels, a contention disputed by representatives of the music industry. |
Allofmp3.com is probably the closest to the ideal music shop in my opinion. For example, the user can choose almost any audio codec they prefer, including the popular MP3, WMA and MP4 codec's, the high quality open source OGG Vorbis codec and the Audiophile's codec MPC. So far they are the only store to offer music in original CD quality with both FLAC and Monkey's Audio codec (both lossless encoding). The user can also choose their preferred bitrate and once they have downloaded their music, there is no compatibility or DRM issues to worry about.
While Allofmp3's pricing is very reasonable, unfortunately they do not compensate the artists, thus likely the main reason why the IFPI and the labels are getting very upset.
Feel free to discuss and find out more about Allofmp3 and other online music services on our Music Downloads, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) & Legal Issues Forum.
Source: The Register
