According to Reuters, the grammatically challenged Russian music site Allofmp3.com will soon be resuming business. The announcement shortly follows a Russian court's ruling that the site's former head, Denis Kvasov, was was not guilty of intellectual property theft, and had not violated Russian copyright laws. Allofmp3 sold digitally encoded music from a wide range of artists and genres at significantly lower prices than iTunes or Napster. The site paid no royalties to any major labels because, as Oleg Nezus of the Russian Organization for Multimedia and Digital Systems, which "licenses" music to sites like Allofmp3, "None of the majors, among them I mean labels like EMI and Universal, want their money." Major labels don't want their money? That assertion sounds suspect to say the least...
But I guess all that doesn't matter, because, according to the agreeably fine principles of Russian law, Allofmp3 is now legit. Business will begin shortly with enhanced payment procedures and a larger selection of music, which is good news to people who feel morally obliged to pay for their music but don't feel it necessary to, say, pay the people responsible for creating, manufacturing and distributing said music. And it's good news for me, as I have decided to announce that I am moving to Russia to sell the contents of my hard drive on the Internet, risk-free. See you in hell, suckers!
Another misinformed opinion based on the American propaganda machine. Yes, allofmp3 is legit and always has been. It the Americans who act illegally - like when Visa illegally withdrew its card services from the allofmp3 group. Every time that an independent court has had to rule these guys were found to be acting properly and within the law. And they have the receipts, which were produced in court, to show that royalties were paid on behalf of the copyright holders. Note that the record companies do not own any copyright in the work itself, that belongs to the author. The record companies own the copyright in the media, being the record, CD or DVD, that the music is distributed on, and as such are termed neighbouring rights holders. And here's the rub, because the music is broadcast over the internet, same as a radio broadcast, there is no physical media involved and hence nothing is payable to the record company. This is the way radio stations all over the world legally operate; in USA, UK, Australia, Japan, France and even Russia. DVD movies are completely different as the Studio owns the copyright.