allofmp3.com

flodis79

What's the current legal status of using allofmp3.com in Ireland? By using, I mean purchasing their download packages.

Blaster99

allofmp3.com is only licensed to sell music in Russia, and even that is debatable.

Stokolan

how safe is it paying into that site? I remember the first time i put in a few pound to get some albums that i went through a secure online paysite. but the next time it was there own web page and it didnt look right! So i didnt bother and havnt went back.

cgarvey

Safe. If you're really parenoid though, you won't want a CC trace linking you to that site, so that when the CIA/SAS get sent in to take it down (as seen as legal avenues are proving difficult), you won't be sued by some rights organisation.

I think the legal status in Russia isn't doubted, is it? It's the status of users outside Russia using the service that's in doubt (although I don't think there's much doubt about that either!). I haven't read any references to it being illegal with Russian territory.

.cg

Blaster99

BPI says that it's unlikely that they're legal in Russia but they're not going to pursue that. What is not disputed is that no artist or record company makes any money from whatever licence it is that allofmp3.com is operating under. It's piracy basically.

What's perhaps interesting is that there's a law coming up in the US where they're going to ban online gambling. They're going to do this by making payments to gambling sites illegal and will have the right to tell ISP's to block access to gambling sites or make ISP's liable if access is permitted or some such. The same approach could be taken when going after allofmp3.com. I'm sure it would be possible to go after the payment processor or indeed block illegal sites.

campers

I use it a lot (allegedly, lol). Must have paid them $50 by now.

I used to use AIB's TransactOnline thing to pay them; but AIB have scrapped it (because it was obviously too useful).

allofmp3.com's new AllTunes thing is well worth checking out. The download speeds are faster-- possibly because ISPs aren't throttling the new domains... yet.

loyatemu

cgarvey wrote:

Safe. If you're really parenoid though, you won't want a CC trace linking you to that site, so that when the CIA/SAS get sent in to take it down (as seen as legal avenues are proving difficult), you won't be sued by some rights organisation.

they're not going to go after the credit card holders! - they'd have to prove they'd broken the law to get the information - allofmp3 is now one of the busiest music sites in the world, it'd be a logistical nightmare to chase the users.

the record industry is currently leaning on the Russians, threatening to derail their membership of the WTO if they don't shut down the site.

shoegirl

I've used it extensively. I don't use download sites that charge more for a poor quality 128k rights-restricted WMA file than they do for the original cd.
I also subscribe to emusic, which is a legal service and suits the kind of styles I listen to.

Strange thing is that some of the content on emusic is also on ITunes etc, at about 7 times the price. I really do wonder why people are stupid enough to pay more for the same thing. Its overpricing that is crippling the industry, not piracy.

Blaster99

It's quite rare for iTunes to be more expensive than a CD. emusic is a nice idea but a subscription service to a fairly limited selection of music is not that great really. You can't really compare them with iTunes for pricing either as with a subscription you're invariably paying for music you never download. But if you're getting value out of it, great.

Most of the DRM schemes are not that restrictive at the end of the day so they don't bother me. They're there to prevent fraud but usually allow a song to be played on a number of different devices. The problem is perhaps that there's no universal DRM scheme.