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ITunes Russian Rival Being Forced to Shut Down
By: Priyanka Pradhan   |   Jun 09,2006
The US music industry is fuming over a Russian website, allofmp3 which allows visitors to download music albums for just $1. The Russian government is being pressurized by the US music and trade industry officials to shut down the ‘pirate' site. Moreover, the powerful lobby has also threatened Russia that failure to shut down the site will affect the country's negotiations to join the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Neena Moorjani, chief spokeswoman for the Office of the United States Trade Representative said, "Russia's legal framework for intellectual property rights protection must meet WTO requirements... In that context, we continue to call on Russia to shut down web sites that offer pirate music, software and films for downloading."

The parent company of the site, MediaServices is fully licensed to operate under the Russian law and pays a license fee for all materials downloaded from the site, in an agreement with the Russian multimedia and the internet society.

The site, allofmp3 is already under criminal investigation by Russian prosecutors and has been singled out by the U.S. Trade Representatives Office as an example of Russia's bad record on tackling piracy. However, the real reason for the crackdown seems to be that the Russian site is giving Apple's iTunes and major online music stores, a run for their money. While iTunes charges 99 cents per song, allofmp3 has been selling songs for a tenth of the price, making it an obvious winner with users.

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Guys, what you are failing to realize that this
is not maybe 'pirate' site, but a 100% pirate site.
They just put money in their pockets and that's it. They don't have a license from anyone, just made it up some performance society etc.
Neither artists nor record companies are getting paid, so you might as well get it from P2P.
Just how much are they paying artists/record companies, if they are selling for 9c, seriously :)
This is just a pirate site that makes you pay, so
no point compairing them to legitimate sites like Itunes, Napster, Rhapsody etc
David @ Jun 11,2006
At least with the russians we are not stuck with restrictions and we can use the mp3 files with any devise. I'm through with the stupid Apple/Itune restriction. So long...
Mustapha @ Jun 09,2006
If iTunes prices were at least half of what they are now, I'd be happy to use iTunes, even with the DRM restrictions.
John Sellers @ Jun 09,2006
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