A number of record labels finally pulled the trigger and filed suit against Russian music site AllofMP3 today. The lawsuit was filed in New York. Given that AllofMP3 maintains that it complies with Russian law, it might not be a stretch to assume that AllofMP3 won’t be showing up for their day in (a U.S.) court.
AllofMP3 is still in business, but under a triage of attacks. Their own government sold them out in U.S. trade negotiations, promising to shut them down. Visa and MasterCard stopped accepting credit card transactions from the site. And now the record labels are on the case.
All of this is great marketing for AllofMP3, but it’s unclear how long the service will last under this kind of pressure. Whatever happens, though, something else will spring up in its place. At the end of the day, the labels will have to choose between suing a very large percentage of the world’s citizens, or else finally coming up with a digital music model that makes sense (meaning, no DRM).
It’s too bad that AllofMP3 is too hot for even Google to handle. After seeing how they’ve bribed, bullied and basically generally rightsholders after the YouTube acquisition, its nice to imagine what they could do on our behalf if they were running AllofMP3 as well. More from Techdirt.