« Previous post
Next post »

August 15, 2007

Russian Court Finds AllofMP3 Legal

Duncan Riley

24 comments »

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)

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 at 7:03 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. | friskyGeek

    August 16th, 2007 at 6:13 am

  2. I, Studio, Web

    August 16th, 2007 at 10:21 am

  3. Allofmp3.com hallado inocente « TIDDER

    August 18th, 2007 at 3:14 am

  4. Grindersbox YAP! Blog » AllofMP3 To Rise From The Dead

    August 27th, 2007 at 6:35 am

  5. The Muso » Are Your Ears Bleeding Yet?

    August 28th, 2007 at 4:01 am

  6. percocet

    December 16th, 2007 at 5:57 pm

  7. EMI Music Sues Hi5, VideoEgg and Ten Defendants To Be Named Later

    June 27th, 2008 at 5:50 pm

  8. TechCrunch en français » EMI poursuit en justice Hi5, VideoEgg et 10 autres sociétés

    June 27th, 2008 at 10:32 pm

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Andrew

    August 15th, 2007 at 7:39 pm

    RIAA should just quit

  2. Michael Arrington

    August 15th, 2007 at 8:02 pm

    Duncan’s back!

  3. Allen Stern

    August 15th, 2007 at 9:33 pm

    WB Duncan - go anywhere special?

  4. Jay

    August 15th, 2007 at 9:33 pm

    An informative, interesting post from duncan? Whats next, 24 hours without facebook or iphone coverage?

  5. Jon

    August 15th, 2007 at 9:34 pm

    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

  6. chad

    August 15th, 2007 at 9:37 pm

    No duncan should quit.

  7. Duncan Riley

    August 15th, 2007 at 11:11 pm

    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 :-)

  8. Johann Romefort

    August 16th, 2007 at 12:53 am

    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

  9. Florian

    August 16th, 2007 at 1:50 am

    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)

  10. needlegun

    August 16th, 2007 at 2:42 am

    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!

  11. stelios

    August 16th, 2007 at 3:23 am

    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

  12. Bo

    August 16th, 2007 at 3:25 am

    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.

  13. Vlad

    August 16th, 2007 at 10:18 am

    I think I need to move to Russia and open an online video store…

  14. Peter

    August 16th, 2007 at 10:38 am

    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…

  15. David Mackey

    August 17th, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    $.99 doesn’t seem so bad for a song to me.

  16. Reid

    September 3rd, 2007 at 12:14 pm

    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 :D

« Previous post
Next post »