AUSTRALIAN PAPER: RUSSIAN DOWNLOADERY SELLS SONGS
ON THE CHEAP
The company, allofmp3.com, prices its downloads by the megabyte, at a rate of $5 U.S. per 500MB, according to the report, which says a “sample” batch of 968 tracks (or 56 albums) that would have cost $958 on Apple’s iTunes ended up costing just $48.65.
That's better than free, one might say, but not by much. Material downloaded included songs from Norah Jones, The Beatles, Janis Ian, Otis Redding, Ray Charles and Paul Simon, among others.
Interestingly, allofmp3.com claims to have legal clearance to sell the downloads, revealing on its site that “All the materials in the MediaServices projects are available for distribution via internet, according to Licence # LS-3M-02-36 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society.” The company also says it pays licence fees for the music it sells, “subject to the law of the Russian Federation on copyright and related rights.” However, the site’s end-user agreement asks that people not use the site “if it is in conflict with legislation of your country.”
The Herald article’s author, reporter Charles Wright, notes that the site feels legit. Purchased downloads sound as good as any, he says, with a greater range of encoding options—including CD quality, if you’re willing to pay for the bandwidth—than most other services. Once a customer selects tracks to buy, he then chooses format (MP3, WMA, etc.), bitrate and encoder, and the allofmp3.com servers put together the order on the fly. One can even opt for email notification when the tracks are ready for downloading.
“There is no indication in our dealings with allofmp3.com over several weeks that this is one of those dubious enterprises so much loved by the Russian mafia,” Wright writes.
A Melbourne attorney told the Herald that as long as an individual purchases downloads from allofmp3.com for private use, there’s probably no case for copyright infringement, given the company’s asserted licenses. At worst, the attorney said, a downloader could be asked to delete downloaded material and cease using the site if it were found to be a bogus operation—just in case anyone’s worried about allofmp3.com’s suspiciously low prices.
And there is cause for suspicion: Last month, U.K. paper The Guardian reported that the IFPI has taken a dim view of allofmp3.com and other international sites, saying that collecting small amounts for songwriters while ignoring the rights of other copyright holders is in violation of the law.
“While we suspect the recorded music industry would like to earn more from their music, we're in no position to judge the arrangements they might have made with Russia,” notes Wright. “Nevertheless, the prices we're paying to satisfy our increasingly obsessive passion for music tend to make us a little nervous about whether we're engaging in a spot of bargain-hunting or a form of digital burglary.”
