US government turned up the heat on Russia’s anti-piracy measures, which till about last week amounted to doing pretty much nothing, and Dennis Kvasov, owner of MediaServices LLC, which develops and runs AllofMP3.com as well as TechCrunch-loved AllTunes is now in court again, on the same criminal trial that AllOfMP3 escaped before.
This time it’s for real though, as even some high-ranked police officials are now pointing to AllOfMP3.com as prime example of media piracy. Kvasov, however, sounds confident as well, as he’s not new to finding legal loopholes in Russian legislation. It looks like the situation got a bit out of hand with AllOfMP3.com taking 14% share of the UK market, losing to ever-leading iTunes (who had 44%). IFPI is staying mum about the lawsuit as well, as they’re surely not trumpeting the legal proceeding in which they don’t have a 100% chance of winning.
Thanks for publishing this info, Alex, it’s very hard to find elsewhere, and the Allofmp3 site has been down for at least 24 hours, ostensibly for “maintenance”.
It’s really a shame that this blog of yours doesn’t include dates! Would you be able to turn on some such feature? If not, perhaps you could mention the date in each entry. Otherwise the info could be from 2 years ago, we’d never know.
For the record, it’s 2006-5-13 today
Fair enough, dates added to the bottom of each post.
What is going on with AllOfMp3? Is there any more news about this trial? It is very hard to find out why their service is shut down.
I agree with Rogier, any news about the trial? How long will it take? When will good ol’ Allofmp3.com open back up? I see barely anything on the web about this. Oh well answers would be helpful!
It looks like they are totally offline at the moment. I wonder what implications this will have for customers? Are US based customers vulnerable to legal action if allofmp3 is found guilty and shut down? I’m sure there are many others who would be concerned. Only time will tell I guess.
Allofmp3 tech support finally emailed me back. They are having major technical problems with some of their servers and it will be fixed in a few days. Then they went on to say please don’t worry there is not any risk that our money or personal data will be lost.
So we’ll see what is going on. Hopefully it will be back up.
How could US based customers be liable to something that hasn’t been, as of yet, deemed illegal? I have about 50 bucks in there, and I’ll cry if allofmp3 gets shut down. Not just the money I’ve already given them, but I get a lot of material on there. Largely, it’s stuff I can’t find anywhere else, and I’m not about to get iTunes.
I was downloading some music on thursday 11th and the server was really very slow (sometimes showing message like “server is bussy, please wait”) and then (friday I think) appeared the “closed for maintenance” message… So I hope, that it’s really only technical issue and allofmp3.com will be back soon!
Rumors had been told that RIAA contracted Hackers to destroy allofmp3 computer systems.
Maybe this time they found their way thru.
I hope not, i used allofmp3 for getting old records that are not comercially avaiable anymore, and should even be considered public domain. But the record companies want to keep them to themselves, hopping someday to make an extra buck on old compilations sold on infomercials.
The RIAA has sued over 20,000 people for illegal file sharing. So far all the lawsuits have been for sharing with others and not just straight downloading.
I hope copyright owners begin to recognize that if they’re going to get people to spend money on things they can get for free, they need to make it easer to use and more convenient.
According to allofmp3 they are being pressured to shutdown from the authorities because of the WTO situation.
The good news is they are just relocating servers and will be back up in a couple of days. For how long, nobody knows….
I don’t even really use bit torrent anymore. Almost all the music I buy comes from allofmp3. Although yourmusic.com is unique at $5.99 cd’s free s/h. As it’s an offshoot from BMG Music Club don’t expect a selection. But compared to BMG itself. It’s a steal. ($19 now for BMG cd’s) I swear cd prices are going up. THe RIAA originally promised cd’s would be cheaper than tapes as it’s cheaper to make cd’s than cassettes. But that obviously hasn’t happened. If the same rule was applied to the MPAA, dvd prices would be $110 per. I buy more movie’s than retail cd’s right now. Heck I buy more books than retail cd’s. So the math would be $15 for a good dvd. $7.99 for a good paperback.$20 for a fairly good game. Then $19 for a 40 minute album. Gee even Spock would say that’s not logical.
Logistics/legalities aside, I second the opinion that allofmp3 is the only site that I have found that gives me a really great selection and I too have been able to find on their site selections that I have not been able to find elsewhere. Case in point, I spent almost a full day searching for a CD because I specifically wanted one song, the best I could find the CD for was $58 + shipping. Why I didn’t just try allof 1st I don’t know, but they had the one song I was looking for. I am more than willing to pay more so everyone gets their cut if I could get the great service and selection that I get from allof.
Hi,
we are sorry but ordering and listening is temporarily not available. The site is undergoing some technical restructuring.We work hard to resume the service. We expect to put back all the functions shortly.
Please, accept our appologies for this ongoing disruption.
Zlatka
Allofmp3.cz
Hi,
This is the answer of my question to allofmp3.cz. I hope to helped you. :-))
Olaf
Yah allofmp3.com is back
Hi guys,
Don’t worry, i know for sure there was a major power failure at the hosting provider of Allofmp3.com (checkout: Masterhost.ru and use online-translator.com) causing big downtime for all clients, not just allofmp3. This has nothing to do with this court thing.
Jan
During last two years I use only
Lavamus.com. Huge archive of music of any direction. Songs on
10-30 cents. Has spent already the order of 500 dollars. I wish to learn, somebody used
Lavamus.com?
I just want to contact this guy and see if I can get copies of the letters he supposedly wrote to various record companies telling them that they had money owed to them. As of 08/28/07 he just won another case and this bit about the companies refusing the money that is owed to them came out during the proceedings. So I’m off to see if google can get me his address