Redd Ears used our news submit to tell us he spotted this news over at Prime Tass (subscription required) that indicates at least for now, AllofMP3 can continue business as usual. In case you don't know, AllofMP3.com is an online music distribution site located in Russia, that offers music with no Digital Rights Management and also is ridiculously cheap. They have always contended that they are a completely legal operation and that they do reimburse artists directly for the music they sell.
According to an un-named source, it seems that the Prosecutor for Moscow's South Western district has decided to not persue legal action against the site. However, we must agree that the logic used here seems flawed in some respects, at least at first glance. On one hand, it is gratifying to see that yet another country feels that laws created prior to the birth of Internet and digitised music cannot apply, yet we have to wonder why digital doesn't mean the same thing as physical. After all, a digital form of the music is a copy. But, once we read the legal language that applies in this case, it seems the correct logical decision was made.
What impact this decision will have on legal downloads around the world is simply guesswork. But, if consumers are given a choice between music crippled with DRM at as much as .99 cents a track, or DRM free music in a variety of bitrates from all their favorite artists for .02 cents a megabyte, we can see this could be devastating.
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However, the holder of right for these recordings did not authorize to distribute them for commercial purposes. At the same time, the Prosecutor found that the Russian Law on copyright does not qualify Internet in legal terms, whereas the authors' property rights are extended to distribution of copies of their works by any means. Along with that, the Prosecutor says that from judicial point of view, distribution of any works via Internet is impossible because it would be a digital transfer, whereas the current Russian legislation necessitates corporeal transfer of works only. Besides that, the Prosecutor concluded that, distribution of works does not result in making a new copy of the work, but only creates conditions for being utilized by end consumer. On these grounds, the Prosecutor's Office in Moscow's South-Western district rejected initiation of a criminal case against the Internet resource officials due to absence of corpus delicti. |
If we take the time to look up the word "corporeal" we see that it means: Of a material nature; tangible. In the last sentence of the quote above, we can see the prosecutor decided he was powerless to persue the complaint as there was no physical evidence or corpus delicti.
The complaint alleging copyright violations had been filed against the AllofMP3 owners by the IFPI or the International Federation for Phonogram Industry. The complaint was received on March 4th, and the Prosecutors Office concluded that the AllofMP3.com owners were distributing music via the online resource.
Only time will tell if this issue has been resolved for the long term. If it has, we can only assume that the online distribution of music from Russia will become more mainstream, at least until new laws are written. But, we have to suspect this will be a long time coming, due to the many priorities that face that part of the world.
We also have to wonder if even though there are no laws being broken, if it is safe to say that AllofMP3 is really conducting an honorable business model. At these prices, are the copyright holders really receiving any income from AllofMP3? Or are the owners just pocketing the whole enchilada? It would seem a dream come true if we could just get someone to provide us with the music we want at reasonable prices that we can use as we please. AllofMP3 does just that. But we have to ask them to please honor those that are buttering their bread, or wouldn't it just be better for us to simply share the music over P2P for free than to allow an organization to profit from anothers work?
Wouldn't most consumers gladly pay more for the DRM free music if they could be assured that the artists were being reimbursed for their efforts? Yet, we cannot find any evidence to support this either way. Make sure to drop by our Music Downloads, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) & Legal Issues Forum if you would like to discuss this further.
Source: Prime Tass
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