The RIAA's Russian Nemesis
While the RIAA has been on a legal jihad in recent years, a growing number of consumers have been using allofMP3.com. The Russian-based service sells albums for $1 to $2.50 - depending on their popularity and the bitrate quality selected. Apparently, the company has been allowed to operate because of Russian copyright legislation, which lets "phonograms be performed publicly without the authorization of the copyright owner for broadcasting and cable transmission". If the music industry was pissed off with allofMP3 before, they'll be even more agitated with the release of alltunes - a desktop and mobile interface that makes it even easier to find and download music. TechCrunch has an overview on the new application.
 While allofMP3 can argue it's protected by Russian copyright rules, I wonder whether they protect consumers in North America? How do U.S. copyright rules, for example, apply to music downloaded from another country? In Canada - despite the claims of the music industry - downloading is still quasi-legal until the copyright rules over overhauled or clarified. A contentious issue in Canada is the levy regime, which slaps a "tax" on products used to record digital content such as hard drives, CD-Rs and audio cassette tapes. These fees, in theory, are supposed to compensate the music industry for loss sales but it doesn't work because music downloading is still wildly popular in the Great White North. For more on the controversial levy regime, IT Business ran a story on it earlier this month. You can also find a treasure trove of information on the issue on Michael Geist's blog.
March 30th, 2006 at 10:35 am
I disagree with your comment that the media levy system “doesn't work” because it's not stopping people from downloading music.
Provided that the levy money is getting to the content distributors and (more importantly) the artists, I'd say the levy is doing exactly what it was intended to do: Compensate content providers for losses incured by consumers freely sharing their content.
(Although even that statement is difficult to proove)