AllofMp3.com Breaks Silence 666
An anonymous reader writes "The controversial Russian music site AllofMp3.com has fired back a return salvo on legality, royalties, and the WTO." From the article: "The entertainment industry however claims the service is flat out illegal. According to the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), AllofMp3.com fails to pay artist royalties - contrary to AllofMp3.com's assertions."
The British BPI say its illegal (Score:5, Informative)
and you will be breaking the law by downloading from there
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5051826.
Re:This is scary. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Pirates: Think about the people you're hurting (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The RIAA's response (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yeah,,,, (Score:5, Informative)
Of course not. The RIAA doesn't care a hill of beans about whether the individual artists are ever paid for their work. They just want to make sure that the major record companies get paid.
Re:The RIAA's response (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Time to Change Tactics (Score:1, Informative)
Re:This is scary. (Score:1, Informative)
Universal Music Group is owned by French media conglomerate Vivendi.
EMI Group is from the UK
Sony BMG is Japanese/German
Warner is the only US group
There is obviously a lot of foreign money and lobbies behind US efforts in this area. Like the UN and other countries when the heavy lifting needs doing they want the US to do it while softies whine over tea and crepes.
Love it (Score:3, Informative)
Now I've started downloading music again, although in not really huge quantities through this website. I download a lot of what I've never heard. One instance, I heard a track at the end of a movie that a really liked. I looked into it and I bought the entire album and the previous album by the same artist.
The pricing structure is good. In fact I'd say fantastic. You pay for what you get and because the prices are so reasonable, you perhaps buy what you wouldn't normally as you don't necessarily care if you don't like it... each song is only 10-20 cents (Australian).
I hope Allofmp3 get to keep their licence and artists and recording labels alike see the advantages in such a flexible pricing structure. You've got a love the fact you can also choose your codec as well as bit rate.
Cheers AllOfMp3!
Re:The British BPI say its illegal (Score:3, Informative)
The company is in Russia. The laws in Russia differ than ours. Hence what that mp3 site is doing right now is legal...for now until their government passes laws that protect copyright holders. Or unless there is a international agreement between Russia and other countries that allows individuals/corporations to sue Russian people/companies in that other countries civil court.
Re:The British BPI say its illegal (Score:3, Informative)
There is no difference in making a backup of a cd or a dvd or copying you cassete tapes or even recording your phonorecords or 8 tracks to cassete tapes. Show me a law that makes any of that illegal. It is like file sharing, There is no law on the federal books that say=es downloading or obtaining an illegaly made piece of copyrighted material is against the law. Neither RIAA OR MPAA or any of the *aa's have made any legal claims against someone who obtained material but never distributed it.
Re:The British BPI say its illegal (Score:5, Informative)
Rubbish. You've been able to "buy" copyrighted material for as long as the idea existed. I have thousands of items of "copyrighted material" that I most certainly have paid for and own. Note: I own the ITEM; not the copyright. If you want to publish copyrighted material, you need to make arrangements with the copyright owner. Not if you want to read, view or listen to it yourself; or even make exerpts from it in certain cases.
Point 2 is a lie (Score:3, Informative)
2. The Russian site AllOfMP3.com is not operating or advertising its business on the territory of other countries.
Is a lie. If you go to their site from a UK address you get offered the chance to pay by mobile phone (UK only). That's operating and advertising as I see it.
Re:The British BPI say its illegal (Score:1, Informative)
The reason you could record TV shows on VHS tape and songs on audio tape was not due to some organic right. It had to do with a complex set of agreements between the record industry, the TV producers, and the manufacturers of recording equipment. Whenever you bought a blank tape in the U.S., part of that money went to the various industry representitives. They in turn granted a license to allow you to copy their work onto tape.
In the case of songs on audio tapes, I basically agree. (Specifically, the Audio Home Recording Act covered this in the early 90's.) Recording TV shows on VHS, though, is different -- there was a legal dispute, and the TV producers lost. The "Betamax case" established that recording TV to video-tape for time-shifting purposes was protected under the fair use doctrine. I haven't heard anything about DVD, but I can imagine that DVD-R (which, as a write-once medium, isn't suited to short-term 'shifting') might get a different treatment than video-tape or DVD-RW (which can be used repeatedly for short-term 'shifting').
Remember you don't "buy" copyrighted material (and you never could). Instead, you license it from the copyright holder.
That's a bit of nitpick. Why not take this all the way? If we're talking about buying CD's or DVD's at the local Walmart, then, no, you aren't buying copyrighted material, but you aren't licensing it either. Some CD-or-DVD-printing-company was licensed (directly or indirectly) by the copyright holder to copy the copyrighted material to CD or DVD. (If the CD-or-DVD-printing-company weren't authorized, then it would be called infringement.) Walmart thought this CD or DVD would be a valuable object, so Walmart bought the CD or DVD. You, the consumer, also thought the CD or DVD would be valuable, so you bought it from Walmart. (If you didn't buy it from Walmart, but you took it anyway, then you would be commiting larceny -- but not infringement. (Of course, if Walmart operated on a boat, and if you took the CD from their baot without paying, then you would be a pirate.)) Notice that you, the consumer, never have any license, contract, or other agreement with the copyright holder.
Why the hell am I talking about this? What does this have to do with AllofMp3? Je ne sais rien. AllOfMp3 is a different ballgame from CD or DVD or TV. Which makes it an ambiguous-omg-j'ai-besoin-de-precedent-zoot thing to deal with. Can I say anything relevent to AllOfMp3? Maybe this: Spo-koy-na-no-che.
Re:The British BPI say its illegal (Score:4, Informative)
>holder of the copyright great powers to say how
>their work is distributed, how you may use that
>work, and in what formats.
Not true, the copyright law gives a few specific rights as exclusive (but with exceptions) to the copyright holder. Ordinaru use is NOT one of those, nor is format decision. Please feel free to read the US copyright law below and if you find any reference to any exclusive rights that support what you say, feel free to quote or point it out.
>Can a company claim that recording their TV show
>is breaking their copyright? Yes, if you
>recorded it on a DVD. No, if you record it on a
>VHS tape.
I believe this has allready been mentioned, but this is a complete lie and not at all supported or even touched on in the copyright law.
>Now, companies like Sony owns the content, the
>distribution and the manufacturing sides.
Now, they don't own the content, they hold the copyright to it, which is a HUGE difference. Copyright only gives a few specific rights, and those are the ones given by copyright laws, in addition there is often exceptions to the exclusivness, one such being the fair use, but there are MANY others, see 107-122! Holding the copyright is quite different from owning something.
As for manufacturing, they hold control over creation of copies only as much as the copyright law gives and although it is a quite exclusive right, there are many exceptions when others can "manufacture" or create copies of a work that is not infringement, fair use is one such common exception.
As for distribution, they only control or "own" the initial distribution, after that, they have MUCH less control, I believe that in the US it goes under the "first sale doctrine". but basically after the initial distribution, that right is consumed for a particular copy of a work. That is why you can resell a book for example or borrow it from a friend and so on.
>Remember you don't "buy" copyrighted material (and you never could). Instead, you license it
>from the copyright holder.
This is not at all true. Most copies of copyrighted works are sold, there is nothing wrong with buying, selling or owning copies of a copyrighted work and such ownership and transfer of ownership has nothing to do with and is distinct from ownership and transfer of the copyright itself. See the link below and specifically 202 which tells about this in detail.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/u
Re:The British BPI say its illegal (Score:3, Informative)
This holds as much weight as Bill Gates saying Linux encourages Piracy.
By that I mean, he may be right, he may be wrong, an opinion stated loud enough frequently enough by someone sounding official will start to carry weight.
Re:The British BPI say its illegal (Score:2, Informative)