EvilWizard said:
What is the name of your state? VA (but doesnt matter)
This is a question spurn from a previous discussion a forum member had about providing a service to stream copyrighted music...
Question: Is using a service such as AllofMp3.com (which resides in Moscow, Russia) legal from the US? Basically the site allows you to download music and you pay by the volume of bandwidth you use vs. paying for individual songs (which works out costing you about $.05 per song)... It sounds all good and great, but I just don't know if it is legal to use it here in the states. Anyone know of any pending action against the service or users of the service?
No, AllofMP3.com is clearly illegal under current U.S. copyright law -- but as you note, they are well beyond the reach of the long arm of U.S. law. The RIAA and others could take action against AllofMP3.com in Russia if they wanted to, but who knows if the Russian courts have the actual authority (or even interest) to shut them down -- plus, I don't even know if what AllofMP3.com is doing is even illegal in Russia.
EDIT: I believe that Russia is a Berne signatory, so it's
probably illegal even in Russia -- but there is so much corruption and other problems in Russia, who knows if anyone (other than the Mob) has authority to shut them down, even if they wanted to.
But back to your question, if you download songs from AllofMP3.com, you would be infringing on the copyright holder's rights, and you could be potentially be sued and held liable for copyright infringement. Downloading of copyrighted works is just as infringing as uploading or "sharing" -- read AMG v. Napster and RIAA v. MyMP3.com, the courts in both of those cases made it clear that the act of downloading an infringing work is infringing itself. If you read the boards on places like Slashdot and other open-source and file-sharing communities, you'll find that the prevailing wisdom is that downloading is okay, its the uploading and sharing that is not okay, and that BitTorrent is even better because you are only sharing a "piece" of a file at any one time, not the whole file itself. However, such wisdom is contrary to current U.S. copyright and caselaw, and until the law changes, downloading infringing works -- even if you pay for them -- is not legal.
iTunes, of course, is legal because Apple has obtained permission from the copyright holders to allow this form of distribution.
EDIT: As to your second question, I haven't seen anything that suggests the RIAA has taken action against AllofMP3.com directly, but I have no idea how the Russian judicial system works, maybe we would never know even if they did take action.
As far as her back home, the RIAA is continuing the file cases against people who have downloaded and shared music files -- I don't know if they've specifically tracked AllofMP3.com users or not, maybe they are still after the KaZaa and Gnutella users at this point, but there is no legal reason that they couldn't file against the AllofMP3.com users. From a practical standpoint, it may be more difficult to figure out who those users are, but if the RIAA could find them, there is no reason they couldn't sue them.
