Cheap Russian Music Saved, For Now
March 7th, 2005 | by Mike G |http://www.gizmodo.com/ga…llet-035056.php
AllofMP3.com was under investigation recently, but has been let off the hook by the Russian DA of the South-West district, who denied IPFI’s request to open a criminal case against Allofmp3.com., because of a loophole in Russian law which allows users create copies of songs by request.
Even though the courts have found their site operator’s behavior is illegal (they do not have the permission of all the artists they feature on the website to distribute their music) in Russian copyright law there is no specific prohibition of digital distribution over the internet, thus the law couldn’t be applied against them.
The catch is in the definition of “distribution” under that law implies actual physical sale of pirated cassettes and disks, in case of downloads the DA office said that “Allofmp3 does not distribute copies of CD’s, but creates conditions for its users to use the content themselves”, and they don’t have an article against that. I think its their online encoding feature that ‘saved’ them - with it, the user supposedly makes a copy of the song himself, and this is not something that was assumed under the anti-piracy law.
Eventually they will update the law I’m sure, but that will take a while (especially in Russia) so I figure we’re ok to use Allofmp3 for a couple more years).
