The U.K. music-industry trade organization, the BPI, is to sue popular Russian download site AllofMP3.com, claiming it is operating outside the law and not sharing any of its profits with the artists whose music it sells.
AllofMP3.com sells music singles and albums for download in a fashion similar to rival iTunes, but AllofMP3′s offerings typically are much less expensive–1 pound (about $1.87) per album versus iTunes’ typical price of 7.99 pounds ($14.85).
The site says it complies with Russian laws and does make royalty payments to the country’s rightsholders organization. Not so, says the BPI, which maintains that all of the site’s claims to legal operation are false and that no artists have received royalties from the site to date.
As a result, the BPI is now intending to take AllofMP3.com through the U.K. courts.
A spokesman for the BPI told silicon.com that its lawyers won’t be going after any U.K. users of site: “While it remains illegal to use the site, we aren’t interested in taking users to task–what we are doing is targeting the site itself.”
and does the BPI share profits too? some how i doubt so.
It sounds like the movie and music industrie are pissed off at europe lately. They are sueing and asking questions later. Maybe they figure their frivolous lawsuits will work in europe too.
Another stupid lawsuit.
Well I’m not sure what good it’ll do sueing a Russian company (who doesn’t give a shit about foreign laws) in the UK. Me thinks publictiy is all this is but then again I’m wrong rather frequently.