Remember all of the fuss that the RIAA made over AllofMP3? They sued the Russian music website for a whopping $1.65 trillion back in December of 2006, and now that lawsuit has been dropped. Yes dropped. The RIAA has walked away from trying to get a penny from them saying that “The site is now defunct and out of business, the result of a successful anti-piracy initiative.” But is the site completely out of business?
Sure AllofMp3.com no longer exists, but MP3sparks.com does. It’s run by the owners of AllofMP3, so it’s essentially the same site in disguise and it emerged last summer right after AllofMP3 went down. So why is it that the RIAA was all over AllofMP3.com trying to shut it down but they haven’t blinked an eye (yet) at MP3sparks? Users of the original site are still able to use their usernames and passwords on the new site, prices are about the same, so can RIAA really say they walked away with a victory?
At this point AllofMP3.com remains a place to go to get links to news about the music industry, and nothing more, but there’s a chance that it may come back. Last August a Russian Court determined that the site operated within the bounds of Russian law and they didn’t infringe on copyright law as they had been accused of, so the site at that point said that “service will be resumed in the foreseeable future.” Now that the RIAA has dropped their lawsuit, will AllofMP3 be daring enough to make a come-back even though things are running smoothly at MP3sparks?
“So why is it that the RIAA was all over AllofMP3.com trying to shut it down but they haven’t blinked an eye (yet) at MP3sparks? Users of the original site are still able to use their usernames and passwords on the new site, prices are about the same, so can RIAA really say they walked away with a victory?”
Yes they can. MP3Sparks is a fantastic failure. They haven’t been able to accept credit or debit card since they opened, which cuts out 99% of their customers. Then the other payments they accept are either payments through your phone or through some dodgy looking Russian payment processor (which most people won’t go near). So I’d say they done a pretty good job of killing the ‘untouchable’ AllOfMP3.
I love how the RIAA claimed a victory, but many sites popped up to take AllOfMP3’s place. They may not be too good, yes, but the point is they can’t stop this from happening;)
RIAA just seem to be claiming victories even when it is pretty much implied that they have failed. The important thing is that copyright laws really need to start keeping up with times.
I’m sure the RIAA will do all they can from stopping sites like AllofMP3, but it will take a lot of effort and a lot of money.
A lot of Russian music websites have had to go that route though, and it’s mostly because the credit cards have decided that they don’t want to support these services. I seem to recall an announcement by Visa stating that they would no longer accept credit card transactions from these services, and other credit cards followed suit shortly after.