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April 28, 2004
Is allofmp3.com legal?
Dear TechLawAdvisor:
I've been playing around with AllOfMP3.com and it seems to be too good to be true. Even when using CD-quality encoding (380kps MP3 or 380kps MP4s), it's still under $1.50 an album. Have you looked into this, and what's your opinion of it's legality? Can residents of other countries, the US for example, use the service legally?
Dear Reader:
This is not legal advice, simply some information I culled from various sources.
My research indicates Allofmp3.com is a Russian site that offers music for download by the megabyte and claims that all music is made available under license from the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. [SMH]
That’s the apparently insane price proposition that a Russian site called allofmp3.com offers its customers. You buy your music by the megabyte, at the rate of 500 MB for $US5 and you dial in the sort of encoding you want: MP3, MPEG4-AAC, OGG, MPC, WMA etc at various bit rates using different encoders _ say the LAME alt-presets. If we were prepared to pay more for the bandwidth, we could elect to have the music encoded with lossless algorithms, giving us the same quality as the original CD. […] 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. Our credit card doesn’t seem to have been abused, and while we have no legal qualifications, we can’t see that it fails to comply with the Berne Convention on copyright. According to the company, “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.” It claims it pays licence fees for all material on the site, “subject to the law of the Russian Federation on copyright and related rights”. We hope that this is correct, because under the terms of use, we’ve agreed we won’t use their services “if it is in conflict with legislation of your country”. The site is not licensed by any labels. However, currently there is an exemption under existing Russian copyright legislation (Article 39 for the aficionados) allowing phonograms to be performed publicly without the authorisation of the copyright owner for broadcasting and cable transmission. The Internet could be deemed to fall under this exemption. A similar argument can be applied to copies in the cache memory of computers. So as IFPI Russia’s legal adviser, Vladimir Dragunov, concedes: “Because of these loopholes we don’t have much chance of succeeding if we attack these companies who are using music files on the Internet under current Russian laws.”Additionally, assuming they have legitimate licenses to distribute the music, they probably are restricted to a certain geographic are via their distribution license. The end user wouldn't be violating any laws but the distributor would.
If they don't have legitimate distribution licenses then they obviously have no right to distribute at any price. If they claim to have the licenses the end user might be seen as an innocent infringer if not on notice. Here are some other comments on whether using Allofmp3 is legal.
** please note -- this is not legal advice **
Posted by Kevin at April 28, 2004 12:38 AM