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."
It's Hardly Scary (Score:1, Interesting)
Your assertion that the US would go to war with other countries is ludicris and you know it. Inflamatory remarks like yours serve only to alienate the world community.
When will the *AAs learn... (Score:4, Interesting)
The Pirates Are Coming (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pirates: Think about the people you're hurting (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Time to Change Tactics (Score:4, Interesting)
Because when I produce a creative work, my employer gets the rights to it, and I may or may not have a right to license it for my own use. So I want my paycheck, and the employer might get some of it if I decide to invest in them.
But when I buy music online, I get a copy of the music, and the only right I have is to listen to it on that device and make a backup copy. Even if I buy on a CD, I only get those rights. So why shouldn't I send them a copy of my money that they can look at and feel rich, but not give to anyonle else?
Quid pro quo.
Re:This is scary. (Score:3, Interesting)
When we run out of oil, we'll probably squabble over other things. Drinking water, copyright, its all possible.
Re:It's Hardly Scary (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Pirates: Think about the people you're hurting (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:It's Hardly Scary (Score:4, Interesting)
Just an opinion (Score:2, Interesting)
That being said I hate DRM and wish that whatever media I purchased could be used in my house in any way I see fit, streaming audio, video, etc. I wonder if the RIAA is going to start raiding houses with a Microsoft Media Server. I've never tried ripping a commercial DVD, but I can't imagine there's any DVD's there that don't have copy protection on them. So what are you going to stream with a MS Media Server? Home DVD's and music only? I thought the whole point was to be able to have all your DVD's in a central storage area where you could watch them anywhere in your house or w/e. But I digress.
I would hope that AllOfMyMP3 would be sending money not only to the artists but TO THE PEOPLE WHO SPENT MONEY TO PUT THE ARTISTS WHERE THEY ARE, i.e. the aforementioned producers, studio engineers, studio musicians, and so forth. Like I said, everyone involved in the production of a successful artist should get a cut of the money in some way, especially the artists, of course. I think most folks like the idea of being able to choose whatever format they want at whatever bitrate they want, and I think we're all willing to pay for good music. Difficulties and incompatibilities between MP3 players, software, and DRM makes it difficult as once you pick a hardware device (think iPod) and don't use MP3, you're stuck, or at least you have to re-rip your whole library if you want to use another unit.
So, in the end, the opinion is: AllOfMyMP3: good, but I hope they're really sending the money in...
The law is a ass (Score:2, Interesting)
How did this get approved? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is in contrast to the RIAA which feels more like a regular mall. The kids from high school come around and sit at the food court or buy crap, but the only profitable stores are the national chains like PacSun and Hot Topic.
I prefer to buy things at an independent retailer who sells things that are good enough that they can afford to be in a location disassociated with other stores and still get enough business to turn a nice profit. That's how you know something is good. When people come to it for its own sake, not because it's in a convenient location.
I guess I should just put this the easy, well-understood way. RIAA IS OBSOLETE, STORES ARE OBSOLETE, ALL HAIL THE INTERNET.
Re:It's Hardly Scary (Score:3, Interesting)
Give it a rest. These thousands that will be without jobs make more money as it is than most Americans. For almost 2000 years the world got by with just playing the music. No one sued people over playing 'their' song. It just didn't happen. But now you expect us to believe all of a sudden the music well will dry up if Brittney doesn't get her 5mil on the next album. Bullshit.
If the artists lost their incentive to create, fuck em. They are in the wrong biz then. They will just have to live with the fame, fans, and the millions they already made.
I know 'artists' that whittle baubles for minimum wage. People like them have been doing it for thousands of years. Somehow, they have the motivation to carry on, even though they aren't getting rich doing it.
Face it, the industry is fucked up from the top down. Where the fuck is my $5 CD I was promised in the late 80s? I don't mean the bargain bin. How is it possible that 20 years later we still have the same prices as we did then? I smell bullshit.
I think piracy is bullshit, but your argument is too. Get off your high horse asshole.
You also spewed "The United States feels that it is in its citizen's interests to protect the copyrights created by US citizens and marketed by a multi-billion dollar industry."
The fuck are you talking about? It's the citizens that are pirating like crazy. Tell it like it is you corporate whore, it is in the best interests of a select few, so that they may remain overly wealthy while the little man toils to pay for music to play at his party.
Re:It's Hardly Scary (for an Imperialist) (Score:5, Interesting)
- Hawaii
- Mexico
- Nicaragua
- Dominican Republic
- Iraq
- Spain for Cuba, Puerto Rico, Phillipines
- Cuba
- Native Americans (so many times it's too hard to itemize)
These all were commercial motivated to some degree or another.Russia is way too big and has too many things that go boom to risk a war with and the copyright thing is probably too minor, but if this were a smaller nation with few friends who knows. Of course it would be over terrorism or for "liberation".
The major record labels are representations of capitalism at it's worse. Their demise might actually bring about a more efficient industry that meets the needs of consumers and artists better.
AllOfMP3 is what these companies deserve after their manipulation of copyright laws and buying congress for the DMCA.
we should be so lucky (Score:3, Interesting)
what "new russian laws"? (from TFA) (Score:3, Interesting)
I want to know what else besides the abolition of complsory license was included in this "copyright reform" to which AllofMP3 refers, but if this statement means what i think it means, this provision alone means Russia has at least partially caved to these pigopolists, and they now have the leverage they need to deliver the same unfair ultimatums they used to screw over crapster and the itunes store.. "put in drm or we refuse to license"..
Re:This is scary. (Score:5, Interesting)
daily operations (Score:3, Interesting)
Mainly because I was a target at one time.
The story opens, I wanted to share my music collection with a small digital community with diverse origins, partly as a social experiment. So I shared with explict instructions to not put it outside of the community. Being at a university at the time 10mbit upstream was quite nice for anyone accessing this bare-bones Apache generated file listing.
Of course, someone leaked it. It took about a month, but then I had some real leechers on my hands. Tracking the URLs that they came in from resulted in click-throughs from forums interesting in sharing out MP3 WWW sites and other niche posting locations. It didn't take long after that before I got listed on MSN search (surprise, they found me first) and click throughs started coming in from MSN and then Google with searches which matched Apache-esque strings to find people who put up pages in apache as directory listings.
A reverse DNS of one of the biggest leechers resulted in a domain name matching allofmp3.com, I had never heard of this site before and took a look at what they were doing. I was very surprised to see they were clearly finding good content online aparrently through search engine hits of these Apache sites, and then turning around and selling it to people. Clever business model, pennys on the dollar of cost.
So, allofmp3 and some IP in Hungary were soaking up my 10mbit/s. I got tired of this game of cat and mouse, now that I had search engine penetration this bandwidth peak never dropped. Tracking to the sites who had linked to my site I posted to take down the link. Few complied (no surprise) so a little fooling with "find", and I had a "mirror" ready.
You get to break down what I did for fun
find . -type f -exec ln -s
find . -type d -exec mkdir -p
target_file.txt contained the ascii, "go away".
After the automated bots swallowed a couple thousand of these files, someone figured it out. Tracking postings on the boards who had linked me, indeed they had gotten the message. Though I do admit it took some people 5 and 6 tries to figure it out. --- A 1kb file containing ASCII is not a MP3 file even if the extension says so dumbass.
Eventually it stopped bcause I took the site down from existence, the domain expired, I could care less.
I thought that I'd share this tidbit for you now anonymously, from my very publicly accessible IP address.
So, I'd like to hear if you ran into "MP3s" files filled with "go away" recently ?
Re:When will the *AAs learn... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes however by taking the breakage money without providing an exchange damaged media for a new copy policy, they have killed the golden goose.
DRM'ed stuff that can't be legaly backed up and breaks is a lesson in the value of the product. This lesson is remembered for a long time. It is one reason older people (over 30) simply stop buying perishable content. I've been here long enough to know there were two types of 8 track tapes. Those that have tangled and those that are about to. That was followed with Compact Cassettes and VHS tape. Now it's CD rot and DRM.
They wonder why I rip everything? Look no further than I want the content and it's lisence to outlive the distribution media.
Re:Pirates: Think about the people you're hurting (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Just an opinion (Score:3, Interesting)
As another artist speaking, that's just your take on the issue also. I think *you* are the one "full of it". You are not forced to enter into a contract to create "commercial works". That is your buisiness decision. Noone gauruntees that every buisiness must make a profit. If you base a buisiness on an unreasonable buisiness model, it will fail. If I canned air and tried to sell it with the expectation that the government would make free air illegal, I would expect to fail.
My band has a CD that we sell. It did not take the resources of a major label or studio to accomplish this. We know it is silly to expect people to not share an experience they enjoy with others. Therefore, we take advantage of this basic human trait, and encourage people to share it, copy it, put it on P2P, whatever. The increased exposure and word-of-mouth advertising is something that we couldn't pay any label or marketer for at any price. We consider recordings to be a promotional tool, not the goal or the main way of gaining income.
We are smart enough to realize that the majority of people who enjoy quality music are happy to reasonably compensate an artist they favor, along with knowing that treating them as criminals is counterproductive.
Likewise, we are also astute enough to not depend on such ephemeral and risky by nature buisiness models to pay our bills. We cover that with a quite conventional income model: we work for a living. We play clubs, theatres, fests, etc. and our income is paid in the form of tickets, cover-charges, and signed CDs and mechandise by the people that come to the show to be entertained.
The era where production and promotional costs, and the necessity to produce a physical medium and transport, warehouse, and sell it in a physical store, along with the expense and difficulty for individuals of making an equivalent copy that made selling recordings profitable, has PASSED! Gone the way of buggy-whips and gas lights.
If you choose to make a foolish buisiness decision to base your income on an obsolete buisiness model, that is your problem, noone elses'. I hope you see the light and base your income on a more realistic and profitable model. I do not wish to have everyones' rights and freedoms we currently enjoy, along with the Public Domain damaged so people like you may continue to sell the 21st-century equivalent of buggy whips.
Cheers!
Strat
Re:Enough of the FUD, here are some facts. (Score:4, Interesting)
only if the AMA has been going around suing the manufacturers and purchasers of over the counter medications (specifically mothers, grandmothers, and little kids) because their manufacture, trafficing, and purchase of said over the counter medications is "stealing" from doctors.
only if they had laws passed making it illegal to do the above, and forcing many companies and unions to pay kickbacks to doctors because their newer and safer working conditions are also robbing doctors of valuable revenue they would have had in the archaic times before OSHA and unions.
maybe then there would be an analogy, otherwise we're looking at apples and oranges.
ROMS only legally and ethically represents Russian artists under Russian copyright law. Russian copyright law only applies to Russian residents.
in this case.. it applies to russion firms, which may sell anywhere they choose, and so long as they stay on russian soil only russian law applies. the recording industries of other nations could petition ROMS and have themselves added to the list of those compensated, but they don't want to.. they want iron fisted control to which they should not be entitled, but which our whores.. err political representatives.. have given them since 1998.
Because
replace allofmp3 with "the makers of the vcr", and you get the same argument, would you say using a vcr is piracy too?
Allofmp3.com is essentially the same as if one of you setup a site where you ripped CD's you owned or had borrowed and put up the rips songs for sale. The difference between your service and allofmp3 is that you would be arrested for piracy because you do not live in Russia or operate your business out of Russia.
ok true, but this is perfectly legal in russia, therefore it's only piracy in your opinion according to your morality.
Also, notice the russian recording industry is doing just fine in a nation which by our standards is "rampant with piracy".
ask yourself why we need these laws when theyre doing just fine without them?
This is probably legal (Score:4, Interesting)
The music industry is bothered by international sales. If Russians sold music to each other, then there'd be no problem. The objection to the business model comes when U.S. buyers make overseas purchases for pennies on the dollar. The site allows foreign citizens to overcome their regional price hike. A good example of this is U.K. movies and music... often much more expensive than U.S. versions of the exact same content. This is the only valid reason why DVD movies and video games continue to be region locked.
Keep in mind, this is the same industry that sues old women who've never owned computers for downloading songs over the Internet. They can be wrong, are often wrong, and should be looked upon with the most analytical and skeptical mind. Considering the amount of money involved, they have a vested interest in coming out on top.
ascap anyone? (Score:1, Interesting)
dont like that youre not getting royalties, register with them!
As much as I loathe to see DRM rear its ugly head, it is become nonetheless a fact of life that in order not to have to deal with these two-faced champions of everything who expect creative works for free as long as it is not from something they personally made, (save the altruistic few) some types of solutions have to be put into place that put some element of fairness back into the picture.
treating me like a thief for the sake of your own paranoia is not going to win my vote. The market is not "polite", get over it.
Re:From a music insider's perspective (Score:1, Interesting)
AllofMP3 vs the official product (Score:2, Interesting)
Even if the products AllofMP3.com offered were priced the same as the "official" product, such as itunes (ie: 99c per song or whatever) the AllofMP3 offering is more compelling.
It's a better product.
Content companies, wake up! DRM makes your product less valuable to the consumer, even if it makes your product more valuable (per copy) to you.