A Russian court has found the former head of AllofMP3 not guilty of breaching copyright, a decision that finds the now shut AllofMP3 legal under Russian Law.
EMI, NBC Universal and Time Warner took Denis Kvasov to court claiming that AllofMP3’s cheap prices breached copyright laws. AllofMP3 went offline July 2 following continued pressure from the US Government on Russia to shut the site, including an escalation of the dispute to the World Trade Organization. AllofMP3 was also the subject of a lawsuit filed in New York last December that attempted to claim damages of $1.65 trillion.
The judge found that the service was legal as it paid royalties to rights holders via ROMS, a Russian organization which collects and distributes fees for copyright holders.
AllofMP3’s holding company MediaServices continues to operate mp3sparks.com, a nearly identical service to AllofMP3 that offers downloads at significantly cheaper prices to mainstream Western online music retailers.
Previous TechCrunch coverage here.
(in part via CNN)
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RIAA should just quit
Duncan’s back!
WB Duncan - go anywhere special?
An informative, interesting post from duncan? Whats next, 24 hours without facebook or iphone coverage?
I don’t get it, from what I understood, royalties where royalties no matter the country, now it seems that royalties are based per country, otherwise, no way to explain how they can sell music for much cheaper then north american or european download services… and still make a profit.
Jon
No duncan should quit.
Thanks Allen
No where particularly exciting. Melbourne then a couple of days in the snow. Skiing is nearly as hard as the trolls on TC
Interesting, since the author right company to which AllofMP3 claims to give back to the right holders, has been kicked out of CISAC (The organization managing all the authors companies in the world), because it was issuing licences to coyright user without consents of copyright owners…
And coincidentally as far as I remember ROMS top head is involved in AllofMP3…
http://www.ifpi.org/content/se.....61018.html
The lawsuit was only about the time from sept. 2003 until dec. 2005. in sept 06 they changed the law and now it is illegal.
see: http://futurezone.orf.at/it/stories/214853/ (german)
It’s not about copyright or royalties, it’s about the fact that Allofmp3 were charging a ’sensible’ price and offering DRM free music which pulls the rug out from the RIAAs restrictive rip-off business model!
I like this kind of things!! it really shows that all thebig music companies rip off customers for years…… and when someone sells theri products for less they get so angry!! hehehe
I’m disappointed, guys. TechCrunch is usually first with this stuff. This news was on CNN 18 hours ago.
I still love ya, though. Keep up the good work.
I think I need to move to Russia and open an online video store…
This is not actually the full story here… I will not go into details of Russian IP laws here (that actually do have some flaws giving ways for allofmp3 & the likes), but the problem with the this very case was that it was very poorly presented in court by the music companies (EMI, Universal…), and the allofmp3 guy did have a top notch lawyer speking for him, so that’s the actual reason behind this court’s decision. The trial is definitely not over, and there’s gonna be more to it…
$.99 doesn’t seem so bad for a song to me.
Wonder what happened to the $30 that was in my allofmp3 account. Oh well its money well spent if it pissed off the RIAA and the WTO