Remember AllofMP3.com, the easy to use, consumer-friendly music downloading site based in Russia? It got shut down last July amidst threats that Russia wouldn’t be able to join the World Trade Organization. It’s a long story; read more here and here. Well, the RIAA brought a copyright infringement lawsuit against AllofMP3.com back in December of 2006, saying that the company made some $30 million per year but didn’t do so legally, even though AllofMP3.com offered to pay music labels based off of Russian copyright laws. Those laws, however, call for far smaller sums of money to be paid out to artists. AllofMP3.com owner Denis Kvasov also faced up to three years in jail after the site was shut down, but was found innocent of all copyright violations by a Moscow court back in August. The RIAA, now, has finally dropped its lawsuit against AllofMP3.com, as a spokesman told Bloomberg the following, “The site is now defunct and out of business, the result of a successful anti-piracy initiative.” An initiative so successful, in fact, that about a month after AllofMP3.com was shut down, MP3Sparks.com popped up — a site run by the same company, where people’s same AllofMP3.com usernames and passwords worked to buy music from the same catalog for the same prices. But good work by the RIAA, at least AllofMP3.com is gone. via TorrentFreak → Read More
It looks like the RIAA and big music labels have won a battle, if not the war, against massively popular AllOfMP3, a Russian music download site that sells MP3s for as little as two cents per megabyte. The site has been shut down, again, reportedly at the hands of the Russian government. Russia agreed to force the site to shut down last year, in response to pressure by the U.S. government and the RIAA. The site has been under constant fire over the last two years. For a brief history of its travails, see our coverage (in chronological order, skip to the end of the list for the most recent stories): AllofMP3 Down – For Good? AllofMP3 Outsources Marketing to U.S. Government Russia Agrees To US Request To Shut Down AllofMP3.com I Wish Google Could Buy AllofMP3 AllOfMP3 Responds To RIAA’s $1.65 Trillion Lawsuit AllOfMp3 Down For 8 Hours And Counting AllOfMP3′s parent company, Media Services, has taken a firm position that the RIAA should go to hell. In a now famous response to a RIAA $1.65 trillion (yes, trillion) lawsuit for copyright infringement, the company said: “AllofMP3 understands that several U.S. record label companies filed a lawsuit against Media Services in New York,” an unnamed “senior company official” stated. “This suit is unjustified as AllofMP3 does not operate in New York. Certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish, despite knowing full well that AllofMP3 operates legally in Russia. In the mean time, AllofMP3 plans to continue to operate legally and comply with all Russian laws.” A new site, very similar to AllOfMP3 and also owned by Media Services, launched simultaneous with the shutdown. MP3Sparks looks to be a clone of AllOfMP3 in all but name. → Read More
