allofmp3.org

Dunno about them but I got an email through from a mate who said that
http://boxmp3.net
was selling his stuff without permission.

Glad you said that, I wasn't sure. I'd say try and get it for free rather than pay to people who don't ask.

they are crooks. they haven't got permission from anyone to sell their stuff, yet they have the most obscure stuff ever on there. A friend sent me an email about it too mr sloane, probably the same person.
its a suprise paypal hasn't locked them off.

what are you after incidentally leo?

Leo said:

ha...actually looking for that jeff mills "contact special" cd we discussed in the other thread!

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thats what i thought.
pm me and we can sort something out.

They're not technically crooks because they operate through a loophole in Russian copyright law...while it's illegal to sell an unlicensed copy of a CD, the selling of the data on the CD is not properly covered by any current legislation. As a result, allofmp3.com has the same type of license that a radio station in Russia might have.

The service they provide is exactly what online vendors of music should be doing: a comprehensive selection of music available in a wide range of un-DRM'd formats and bitrates charged at a very reasonable rate per MB downloaded. I'd be happier about using allofmp3.com if I knew for a fact that they do provide proper compensation to the artists and songwriters/producers who actually made the music though. It's not clear if the license they have provides for proper royalty payments and while they maintain that they voluntarily send payments to artists, the veracity of this claim is unsubstantiated.

Edit: Just went back to the allofmp3 site for the first time in over a year or so and discovered that it is apparently no longer possible to use the service unless you have a Diners card. Guess PayPal, Visa/Mastercard, and AmEx decided that they didn't want to do business with them anymore which certainly makes the site look much shadier than it used to.

Canada J Soup said:

I'd be happier about using allofmp3.com if I knew for a fact that they do provide proper compensation to the artists and songwriters/producers who actually made the music though. It's not clear if the license they have provides for proper royalty payments and while they maintain that they voluntarily send payments to artists, the veracity of this claim is unsubstantiated

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you're right but this is the crux, they don't have an agreement with anyone to use the data and they don't pay any artists, i know people who've written to them without any response, it's fairly big news with the majors i'd imagine. these sort of probs getting cleared up in russian law are i guess a bargaining tool with the european community.

the riaa is suing them for like 1.65 trillion dollars which is more than the gdp of russia

Last summer allofmp3 was big news because it was being used as a reason to keep Russia out of the WTO. (NY Times from last June) That's probably the reason all the major credit cards have dropped their association.

This recent ruling (last few days, in fact) is not about allofmp3 as such, but will likely have an impact, as it's the first successful anti-piracy case brought in Russia and sets an important precedent.

Interesting bit from that NY Times article...

People associated with AllofMP3, which lists no telephone contacts on its Web site, declined to comment for this article when tracked down by domain-name ownership records kept by Verisign. Those records show that Ivan Fedorov of Media Services in Moscow is the owner.

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Ivan Fedorov is apparently the first Russian printer. Coincidence or joke that the NYT didn't pick up on?