Allofmp3 Shut Down, Again 291
studguy1 writes to tell us TorrentFreak is reporting that the Russian government has shut down Allofmp3, the popular online music site. "AllOfMP3 has been a thorn in the side of the RIAA and the US government for years. Last year, U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab said that if Russia wants to join the WTO, they should shut down the pirate music website that is robbing US recording companies of sales."
Heh (Score:2, Insightful)
So then, they shut down the wrong website.
Exposure leads to increased sales, period.
DON'T DO IT (Score:5, Funny)
No Big Deal (Score:5, Interesting)
The rather more substantial thorn in the record industrys side is now iTunes and Apple.
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Re:No Big Deal (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No Big Deal (Score:5, Funny)
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I mean, hell, how the fuck do offshore casinos move cash around?
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BTW... serves you right.
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Hmmmmm! (Score:5, Funny)
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W: Daddy what do you think?
Daddy: Read my lips, No New Taxes! Oh, on the MDS
W: Well, if you're going to be all kriptik about it, I'll call Jebb. He's always willing to help.
Soo... (Score:5, Insightful)
When US record companies see no positive impact in sales, will Russia be allowed to let allofmp3 reopen?
Because, for some reason I find myself really doubting that people that were paying pennies for songs are going to suddenly turn around and start paying an order of magnitude more.
But hey, what do I know? I'm just a lowly consumer...
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_magnitude [wikipedia.org]
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Actually, I bought at least 10 albums in the last year that I wouldn't have if I hadn't downloaded the whole thing on allofmp3 first. As well as several shows that I've gone to, enjoyed, bought a t-shirt at, etc...
Re:Soo... (Score:4, Informative)
Copyright is for a period of time, period.
Trademark is forever until failed to be maintained.
And you're an idiot for telling people they HAVE to file copyright infringement suits - even worse, this isn't even copyright infringement, it's a civil issue over which of the (many) royalty schemes allofmp3.com should be paying.
But hey, feel free to think you knew something.
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Bribery? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Something (usually money) given in exchange for influence or as an inducement to dishonesty.
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More like extortion.
Re:Bribery? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bribery? (Score:4, Informative)
coerce [wiktionary.org]: to use force, threat, fraud, or intimidation in attempt to compel one to act against his will.
extort [wiktionary.org]: To wrest from an unwilling person by physical force, menace, duress, torture, or any undue or illegal exercise of power or ingenuity; to wrench away (from); to tear away; to wring (from); to exact; as, to extort contributions from the vanquished; to extort confessions of guilt; to extort a promise; to extort payment of a debt.
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There is no bribery and nothing dishonest in saying that if you want to join the WTO, you must play by the rules of the WTO.
AllOfMP3 will come down - and stay down - as soon as Putin decides it is bad for business.
This would matter except . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
And once they stop "robbing" RIAA, sales go up? (Score:4, Insightful)
If there was a similar legitimate, and DRM-free service, and prices were low enough, perhaps sales would go up.
It seems that RIAA still does not get it, things like Napster, mp3.com, and allofmp3 will keep coming until the RIAA, or the artist themselves decide to stop fighting the Internet model, and instead profit from it.
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and prices were low enough. A subjective statement. What's 'low enough'? All prices in a free-market are the result of a compromise between producer and consumer, neither side gets free-reign to set the price.
perhaps sales would go up. Perhaps they would, but then
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All prices in a free-market are the result of a compromise between producer and consumer, neither side gets free-reign to set the price.
I call bull. In the case of a monopoly or cartel, the price is solely set by the producer(s) at the profit maximizing point. Granted, the demand will determine this point, but there is no compromise to speak of.
In the case of a monopsony, there is a single consumer that likewise sets the price, take it or leave it.
Now, when it comes to used cars, that's true.
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Re:And once they stop "robbing" RIAA, sales go up? (Score:5, Interesting)
There isn't much a customer can do about this, but there is a lot an artist can do when they do the same sums. This is why the RIAA members want AllOfMP3 shut down. It shows exactly how much profit they are raking in from online sales to exactly the people they don't want to know; the ones they claim to represent.
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Unfortunately, the biggest and best studios and probably most of the good sound engineers work within the recording industry, so many artists find that the services that they need in order to produce albums are owned by th
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Except that those "middle men" really DO provide service of immense value... they filter out the crap. And let me assure you, there's lots and LOTS of that crap out there. And much of what they do is help train marginal artists into much better (or even great) artists.
Even though it's not a shining example of talent
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Except that its still a top-down approach, where they groom "talent" to fit their own pre-conceived notions of what the 'market' wants, and then force it onto the airwaves and into stores.
Once upon a time, there was more of a bottom-up ap
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I'm in the middle of building a music store for my company; however, we produce multimedia software instead of being "professional middleman".
Let me see if I can convince management (of which I'm a part, fortunately) to open-source a "lite" version. Enough to easily sell your own music (and possibly partners - I do enjoy doing web services), but not functional (or complicated) enough to bother running a large music store with.
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AllOfMP3 was operating on a broadcasting licence. They were exploiting a loophole in Russian law and they knew it.
even though Russia, as a sovereign nation, has every right to set its own royalties
Indeed, but kind of irrelevant when we're talking about sales outside Russia. Russia has the right to do what it wishes, just as an industry has the right to say we don't care to do business with you on these terms. The point of the the news story here is t
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Upstart Russian website exploiting a loophole in law = filthy communist thieves.
Established tax-paying middleman business exploiting a loophole in law = good business practices [wikipedia.org]?
Re:And once they stop "robbing" RIAA, sales go up? (Score:5, Interesting)
"allofmp3 WAS legitimate in Russia. It paid royalties to ROMS, the Russian organization responsible for collecting copyright fees. The RIAA simply didn't like ROMS' rates and structures (even though Russia, as a sovereign nation, has every right to set its own royalties), and declared allofmp3 illegal."
Well, for what it's worth, ROMS isn't recognized by any of the world's performance licensing groups. Whether that's a badge of honor or a shame is, as the math texts state, an exercise left to the reader.
Contrary to popular belief, the cost of sale of a music download usually isn't zero. There are mechanical royalties to the composer and lyricist to deal with (the mechanical rate is set by law), and there are usually contractual royalties as well, paid to the performer. Record companies have tricks for minimizing these royalties, but it's a safe assumption that for a typical track sold on iTunes, mechanical and contractual royalties are being accrued.
Now, let's say you're a record company. For the sake of simplicity let's say you're one of the cool indie labels, and you pay your artists fairly. One track you sell has a mechanical of $0.08 each to the composer and lyricist, and you're throwing the rest of the band an additional $0.04, for a total of $0.20 that you owe to the artists for each track sold.
So this ROMS outfit tells you that you can have a portion of the licensing fee that they've collected, if you really want it. The web site sold your track for $0.20, for which they paid ROMS $0.02. ROMS takes their cut, so that penny is ready for you to take whenever you want it.
Trouble is, if you take that penny, you still owe the band $0.20. If you take it and don't pay them their $0.20 (for a net loss of $0.19 to you), the best case is that they'll be mightily (and rightfully) pissed. The worst case is that they'll find themselves a lawyer.
So, you eat the difference. ROMS says that they've collected royalties for 10,000 downloads and they owe you $100. You take the $100 and pay your band the $2,000 they're owed. You're out $1,900.
And then ROMS tells you that they have another $100 for you. And another. And another.
My story is hypothetical; mainly for the very big reason that artist who've tried to get sales info from allofmp3.com have failed in their quest. Yes, I am aware that AllofMP3 stated that they supported artists' rights, but they could have at least shared this basic sales data, just as iTunes and legitimate stores do. And, if you try surfing the ROMS site for information on how to collect royalties, it quickly becomes frustrating, even if you speak Russian. Compare this with the two US performance right societies, ASCAP and BMI -- they go out of their way to make it easy for artists to find out how much they are owed. I know that lots of people reading this see ROMS and allofmp3 as the good guys in this situation, but it's just not showing from their actions.
Thorn in the Side? (Score:5, Insightful)
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In ten years, J.K. Rowling went from being a welfare mother to being richer than the Queen of England. The U.S. and the U.K. have learned how to spin their culture into pure gold for export.
You might as well ask if there is anyone in the Aussie government who cares about the wool market, anyone in the Saud
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A Thorn By Any Other Name... (Score:2)
Sure, it seems stupid right now. But, over the long haul, yes he will. Were he still Chancellor of the Exchequer, he'd care even more.
Stepping back up the thread to whether this was a thorn in the US Government's side, anything that causes major lobbying groups to suck up space in a Congressional Rep's/Senator's/President's schedule for bitching and moaning counts as a thorn.
And the site that replaces it is - (Score:4, Funny)
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Because the WTO is run by the US. (Score:2)
Remember when Russia was the enemy? And we had classic cliche's based on them? Meeeemmoorriiiiiieeesssss!!!!
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Balance carried over to Mp3Sparks.com (Score:5, Informative)
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Awesome. I just tried this too and my balance has been carried over
Re:Balance carried over to Mp3Sparks.com (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironic isn't it. The "pirates" are more honest than the corporations supposedly being harmed.
slyck.com (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Countdown until AoMP3 reappears in China/Brasil (Score:3, Informative)
So I guess AoMP3 has already reincarnated.
Re:Countdown until AoMP3 reappears in China/Brasil (Score:4, Informative)
From what I understand, the RIAA...I mean, US Government...I mean, WTO actually named AllOfMp3 by name, rather than specifying that a specific class of service be suspended.
So even though MP3Sparks is the same site, run by the same company, offering the same service, since the name is different, they've successfully satisfied the WTO request in this regard.
FWIW, you can't pay by credit card at MP3Sparks either.
Re:Countdown until AoMP3 reappears in China/Brasil (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.mp3sparks.com/info/payments.shtml [mp3sparks.com]
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cha cha cha
=)
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You may as well just download the various format torrents from TPB....the artist will get the same as they were anyway, your CC will be safe and you won't have to maintain the pretence that paying tuppence to a pseudo-legal site was legitimately buying the music
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Re:robbing == theft (Score:4, Informative)
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More accurately, the RIAA can't prove that it's theft.
The RIAA argues that if the person hadn't received the song illegally, that they would have purchased it. By providing an alternative means to get that song, allofmp3 are taking $X from the RIAA, which is ethically (if not semantically) the same as theft. Unfortunately, the RIAA can't prove when they actually lost sales, but I'm sure they are in some percentage of cases. Maybe that percentage is around what you'd argue (perhaps 0.0001%?) or maybe it's
No, I can't totally agree with you there. (Score:3, Informative)
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I know the copyright infringement != theft line is common around here, but please respond intelligently to i
Copyright infringement is not the same as theft (Score:2)
If you can't understand the difference between copyright infringement and stealing then it's better to keep quiet. Its pointless arguing the finer points of a legal argument with someone who doesn't even understand the basics of law.
Logical fallacy (Score:2)
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Which in many cases can be completely legal despite you and them using the world "robbing", I believe it is common to call it competition in the market. Just because someone manage to use thw world "theft", "steal" or "robbery" to describe something doesn't turn it illegal (not commenting on allofmp3 here, just the use of the worlds). From what I see, people tend to use theft for all sort of things related (and not so related) to copyrigh
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The RIAA is robbing itself of legitimate music sales because the recording companies can't be bothered to put music out that is actually worth paying for. Now they have taken to bullying countries for admission into the WTO.
When I was
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Well I don't know of a online site that doesn't allow burning onto a CD. Got any examples?
.... I don't want to pay $15 for an album that is crap (which describes most, but not all, of new music today).
When I was younger, I almost always bought the newest albums, because the music was good, or at least I thought so
Congratulations, you have reached middle age. Next step - complaining that you can't
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Tracks bought from ITMS can be burned to CD a limited number (7) of times.
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Close. It's not an individual song, but a playlist [group of songs] that has a limit. By including a given song in different playlists, it can be burned an unlimited number of times, even without ripping a 'burnt' copy of the song, thus removing the copy protection completely.
Re:robbing == theft (Score:5, Funny)
-Stick 'em up!
-Yeah - git your hands in the air!
-We heard you got some "sales"
-No funny business - hand em over - slowly!
-That's right - nice and slow, and noone will get hurt...
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You have taken away their ability to sell it to you.
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So? You can only rob physical items, not opportunities and ideas If you own a diner, and I open a better one down the street, perhaps you won't be able to tell as many burgers. Does that mean that I've robbed you of sales in some metaphorical sense? You bet. Is the wrong? No. Is it legally actionable that I've caused the theft of your customers? Not in a million years.
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You have stated:
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I think "To use illegally" works best.
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"Consider this carefully: there is no right to profit."
Straw man. Copyright holders -- whether they're individuals or corporations, painters, novelists, songwriters, you name it -- are not asking that you honor a so-called "right to profit" when they ask you not to copy their stuff. They are asking that you honor their rights under copyright law.
"So? You can only rob physical items, not opportunities and ideas If you own a diner, and I open a better one down the street, perhaps you won't be able to t
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The notion that copyright infringement was a form of theft became current in English language and in English thought while the Black Flag still flew over the Caribbean.
It made perfect sense to Dickens, who had some choice things to say about the American character in this context. Copy Wrong: Internet Piracy and Dickens and Melville [americanheritage.com]
The geek wastes time and pursuing the linguistic argument, the philosophical argument, which were lost long ago.
The
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The notion that copyright infringement was a form of theft became current in English language and in English thought while the Black Flag still flew over the Caribbean.
So what? The times they are a-changin'. We have a more sophisticated understanding of intellectual "property" and similar doublespeak these days.
It made perfect sense to Dickens, who had some choice things to say about the American character in this context. Copy Wrong: Internet Piracy and Dickens and Melville
He's not exactly an obje
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Copyright infringement limits the ability of the content owner to receive compensation for his
work. Even though nothing physical is taken in the act, the result is the same and, in such instances,
can be considered a proper analog for theft.
It is all well and good to deny that copyright infringement is not theft and hide behind a naive technicality
in order to continue to be in the wrong.
By your logic, were I to acquire your credit card and purchase items, I a
Awesome or tiresome? (Score:2)
Re: robbing == theft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How does this work again? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How does this work again? (Score:4, Funny)
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AND YOU WANT TO PURCHASE MUSIC FROM THE ZUNE MARKETPLACE.
And it comes in brown. So there... Not too hard to understand after all...
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