BPI Sue AllOfMp3 In British Courts

Ckwop writes "AllOfMp3 is getting sued by the British Phonographic Industry. From the article:

"We have maintained all along that this site is illegal and that the operator of the site is breaking UK law by making sound recordings available to UK-based customers without the permission of copyright owners. Now we will have the opportunity to demonstrate in the UK courts the illegality of this site."

" The issue of course will be whether any injunction will be enforceable or not.

Re:So they sue....

[ScentCone]

I wonder who will pay the High Court costs of the whole affair. Artists? Perhaps an increase in fees. Consumers? Without a doubt. Shareholders? Nope.

Has it ever occurred to you that many artists and consumers are shareholders?

Huh?

[Jamu]

There are lots of issues with this: Firstly, the UK High Court has no jurisdiction in Russia (unless you're British and then only for some crimes). Russian companys have no legal status in the UK. You can't sue them and they can't be prosecuted in the UK. I think what they might be doing is sueing the operator of a Russian site in the UK for damages for operating in the UK without a legal licence.

Re:Blowing in the wind

[Ckwop]

That's a good point. My brother is a lawyer and I asked his opinion on it. His area of expertise is far removed from intellectual property but I suspect his opinion is still many times that of your average Slashdotter. Here's what he said:

As far as I understand it, the contract is made in Russia between allofmp3 and the consumer. In such circumstances obtaining a successful judgment is one thing, there's still the question of mutual assistance and enforcement.

From a political point of view, our courts have continuously refused to extradite Yukos linked Russians back home to face the music, so I see no reason why the Kremlin would suddenly lean on the Russian courts to assist in protecting our interests. It's not as if we already have a great tradition of mutual assistance. Besides, from what I understand, AllOfMp3 isn't breaking any laws in Russia, which makes enforcement even less likely.

In any event, as I've learned the hard way on numerous occasions, being granted permission to proceed by no means indicates that you'll be successful in the full hearing. Very often a case is granted permission to proceed simply to provide an early opportunity to close the door on a potential cause of action. Don't be surprised if the court lays down a precedent indicating that allofmp3 is actually legal.

The BPI have a lot of money but cases like this are nothing like OJ. There's no jury in cases like this in the United Kingdom. The law is applied as it is written and this means that even if you have all the money in the world, you can't buy a judgement. There's a good chance they will lose.

Simon

Re:The issue of course will be whether any injunct

[agentcdog]

Interesting, eh? Find the whole story.. the Indian gvt. was trying to use this guy as a scapegoat. The US didn't play along. Everyone dealing with day-to-day operations of the plant was a local. Modding this parent up is just asking for a war of words. Let the coward make his comment, but don't reward him for it.

Re:Big props to parent

[TheRaven64]

Assuming a track size of 3MB, the bulk hosting provider run by my my hosting company quotes 0.62 per track. That includes hosting and transfer; they have already built the infrastructure, so there is no capital cost. All you would need to do is set up the payment method. Even with that overhead, and the cost of preview downloads, I find it hard to imagine it coming to more than about 5/track.

Re:Blowing in the wind

[caluml]

AllofMp3.com is operating illegally in other countries please bring your laws in line with ours or we'll continue to impose tarrifs on XXX Russian goods.

Nyet, tovarish. The amount of gas that we get from Russia puts us in a very weak position when it comes to bargaining with them.

Re:AllOfMP3 has me spending

[gsslay]

I'm sure I'm not alone. Rather than shutting down AllOfMP3, the industry might want to pay attention to the hundreds of thousands of people who are actually spending on music and haven't done so in years.

Hundreds of thousands eh? People who haven't spent money on music in years? Do you have figures to back up these figures or are you just making them up?

As for the fact that AllOfMP3 is selling lots. Yeah, isn't it amazing how much money can be made selling something you don't own, haven't paid for and don't produce. Never mind the music industry, I'm sure there's lots of industries who'd fancy a go at this business model! You could sell anything for pennies and it's pure profit!

Re:Blowing in the wind

[Bogtha]

A) To prove that it is illegal in britian.

What is the "it" that you are referring to? I don't think anybody thinks it's legal for somebody to set up an AllOfMP3 in the UK that pays license fees in accordance with Russian law.

And, while the BPI have claimed otherwise [bbc.co.uk] to the press (and had their claims blindly repeated), it is not illegal [opsi.gov.uk] for people in the UK to download from AllOfMP3.

So what, exactly, are they trying to prove is illegal? One thing nobody thinks is legal anyway, and one thing is actually legal.

Re:AllOfMP3 has me spending

[Scudsucker]

Wrong.

No, he's not. For songs sold online, the RIAA takes the artist's paltry royalty fee and further reduces it by deducting the same distribution costs they do for physical media. This is obviously a crock as the physical costs for online distrubion are going to be almost nothing per song.

Re:Blowing in the wind

[Anonymous Coward]

(This comment does not constitute legal advice. If you require legal advice, consult a lawyer; if you are getting your legal advice from Slashdot comments, you want your head examined.) ...no it doesn't. In fact, that piece of legislation wasn't designed for this (but instead mostly resellers of counterfeit goods), and is not very encouraging for the BPI. "...otherwise than for his private and domestic use..." [opsi.gov.uk] is the critical part here; so a UK entity reselling grey imports would be in dodgy territory; but a UK citizen doing their own imports for personal use (bringing the CDs and DVDs you bought abroad back to your home in the UK, for example*) would be pretty well in the clear.

AllOfMP3 is obviously targeted at private and domestic use, as are all the current music download sites (because you need performing rights for any public exhibition of a phonorecording or motion picture, and last time I checked, the performing rights societies were claiming downloads didn't qualify, you needed original physical CDs; that may have changed). Section 22 therefore does not apply to music and movies you bought abroad and imported here (such as ones you bought on a site in Russia that's legal in Russia, and imported here to your hard disk via the internet), unless you plan on exhibiting or reselling them - and even if you were, that's your problem, not the problem of the person in the other country who sold it to you!

The BPI would lose this one, were it contested. The BPI probably don't care, if it allows them to issue, in the interim, press releases asserting that it's illegal for British residents to download music from AllOfMP3; even if that isn't actually true, if that is all that is being said, that is what is reported and in common belief.

will AllOfMP3 contest it? I seriously doubt it. They're in Russia. They're legal there (to the resigned annoyance of some officials); files have been closed, and will not even be investigated. Why in hell would they care about the UK? Their position has always been that since it's legal in Russia, that is the end of the matter as far as they are concerned.

The BPI can't possibly get an injunction with any force, and they wouldn't dare sue individuals for downloading music from AllOfMP3 - not that they'd have any way of tracing them - because as I've mentioned, they'd lose. So it's all about the press releases - as usual. Film at 11.

* Other than illegal porn, of course, but that's a given. And bear in mind that UK C&E have seized, and sometimes still do seize, things the UK & EU legislation doesn't actually allow them to seize.