Tech Shout!

The US music industry is extremely wild at a Russian website allofmp3 for having allowed visitors to download music albums for merely $1. The Russian government is being put under pressure by the US music and trade industry officials to shut down the ‘pirate’ site. Moreover, the powerful lobby has also threatened Russia that failure to shut down the site will affect the country’s negotiations to join the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Neena Moorjani, chief spokeswoman for the Office of the United States Trade Representative said, “Russia’s legal framework for intellectual property rights protection must meet WTO requirements… In that context, we continue to call on Russia to shut down web sites that offer pirate music, software and films for downloading.”

The parent company of the site, MediaServices is fully licensed to operate under the Russian law and pays a license fee for all materials downloaded from the site, in an agreement with the Russian multimedia and the internet society.

The site, allofmp3 is already under criminal investigation by Russian prosecutors and has been singled out by the U.S. Trade Representatives Office as an example of Russia’s bad record on tackling piracy. However, the real reason for the crackdown seems to be that the Russian site is posing a major competition to Apple’s iTunes and major online music stores and giving them a run for their money. While iTunes charges 99 cents per song, allofmp3 has been selling songs for a tenth of the price, making it an obvious winner with users.

Russia is already the second-biggest source of pirate music, film and software in the world after China — costing U.S. companies nearly $1.8 billion last year, according to anti-piracy groups.