sue other countries in US court? heh hehhhh

why don't you sue money laundering banks in the caribbean while you're at it.

ruski comradski's have nothing to fear. i dont think there are any laws in russia provisioning downloading music as being illegal (could be wrong, tho). they can wipe their butt with US laws over there!

and secondly, i would fear retaliation from the ruski hackers, lol!

lastly, i'd setup shop next to borat (Jegshemesh!) and pay 1 Tenge to the dollar for royalties, as it is only fair, unless they want a goat or somethin as compensation.

Land of the free after rebate ;)

Bigger pocket trumps right or wrong haha.

I've forgotten the company name, but recently there was another lawsuit filed in the US against a British company, and they just didn't show up because they claimed no jurisdiction, so they lost, and had a fine to pay to the plaintiff but they just said they'd never pay, and something happened to screw them over on it.

At the very least, they might get arrested if they ever did come to the US after failing to pay the judgment. Kinda like whatshisnuts that got arrested when he came to a convention or something in Vegas because Adobe said he'd broken a law.

spuppy: You're assuming that what they're doing IS pirating and illegal. That hasn't been proven, and the Russian government would have to bring charges against them to prove it. They claim that under Russian law they are legal, and on the face of it, it sounds like they are following Russian copyright law. They do pay a fee to a consortium that is supposed to pay the copyright holders. It's not their fault if the money doesn't make it to the holders. Of course there's consideration of whether they have the right to sell songs outside of Russia. The copyright holders would prefer that a company make their payments directly to them, and negotiate prices with each holder, and have different prices in different countries.

But yes, this IS a valid lawsuit, going after the people that (if what they're doing is in fact illegal) are actually profitting from pirating, and are patently and demonstrably taking away sales. If the RIAA had gone this route from the start, there'd probably still be people whining about it, but far fewer of them.

On a random thought about downloaded music...
I mentioned that i have no problem paying for music if i know the money went into the hands of the guys and gals who made the stuff. On that note, many smaller bands have stated that they actually PREFER music downloads over RIAA CDs for a couple reasons.

1. they can make a website for their band and set it up where they sell you their music (per song of course) at w/e rate they choose and they get all the profits.
2. This way with number 1 in effect they also can see what the people like, not just what the RIAA is telling them people like, or trying to push a song that the RIAA wants to be big ("A Side" tracks i believe they are called if i recall my history correctly from ye ol' vinyl days).
3. Also with 1 in effect they are more free to manage themselves the way they want to and in some aspects are more free to say what they want to say in their lyrics.

Personally that right there makes the most sense to me for what i personally would like to see with music and downloading. Of course this would have to work on the principal that people would be more willing to pay for money if they know that more/all of it was going to that band (the "honor system" they are calling it). Also I think this could give many smaller bands more of a chance to compete with the bigger nationally known bands (in their own local area of course). I can't speak for the rest of your areas where everyone lives, but the radio station 93X here in the twin cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul area in MN for those of you who do not know what the "twin cities" are) frequently play songs from local bands and help to get their name out there with the rest of the big boys. Some of them of course have websites setup like the one above i described, which is nice.

Personally i would like to see more music go towards that more localized setup where you can pay THEM for what YOU want to be listening to. Plus making and managing a website like the above really isn't that difficult of a task. Many of the musicians in my area are smart people (don't assume all musicians are idiots like Jessica Simpson) who know how to do stuff like that with relative ease, and have already done so.

What about the rest of you? Since everyone here (from what i have seen) hates the RIAA, where would you like to see music move to? What system do you think would be best suited for music distribution? The one above, or are you still clinging to CDs? Obviously people can see the need for possibly a corporate system for HUGE nationally known bands (but hopefully one a little less greedy than the current RIAA setup), but how do you think they should handle it? Personally even a simple website setup like the above would work awesome for national/international bands if they had a decent web host that could handle the traffic imo. But what do the rest of you out there think? Please, discuss!

I wonder if members of the RIAA will now end up glowing with polonium soon

How does this work, when AllofMP3 doesn't even have a business presence in the USA (as far as I know)? As a Russian company, they have no reason or compulsion to follow US laws.

It's not illegal in a LOT of countries. They may get the site shut down etc, but I don't expect fines or jail time. Nothing of that type.

Good riddance :-)

Now give us a comparable legit service !

With the money the Russian government and its associated companies are currently making I think the RIAA may be under an illusion as to who has the big stick these days....

I don't know if they could actually win a lawsuit against Gates just on the fact of him saying he did that. Heck the government can't always even win a criminal case when the defendent admits he did it. But since they don't have the names of people to start with, and have to work backwards from IP addresses, it would be hard to gather evidence against Gates unless they checked all their monitoring for all IP addresses from Microsoft or whoever he uses for an ISP (or maybe has his own IP block) and then subpoena those companies for the names of every user who was using those IPs at that time, which might be harder to do for Microsoft, unless they have a DHCP server which logs the IP assignments and the logs get backed up or are still online/nearline, or they use static IPs. Even then, that only tracks it to the computer used, they'd have to also have the logins recorded to show which user was logged into which machine at that time, since they couldn't otherwise prove that it was him logged into it.

As bad as the RIAA is, suing grannies and little kids, you just have to side with them here. A bunch of stupid Russians are profiting from pirating music, and think they are not doing anything legal? Sue the hell out of them, and take every penny they profited from since they started!

Not that I think that AllofMP3 has a leg to stand on, but how will a suit in a NY court make any difference? They don't even have to bother turning up. They'll lose the case, but no US court can order them to do, or not do, or pay anything.

Now, perhaps their domain could be revoked, but that sets a nasty precedent - one that ICANN backed away from when Spamhaus faced the same situation.

The RIAA can only do what AllofMP3 invited them to do, and sue them in a Russian court, under Russian law. If that doesn't work, their only recourse is to wait for diplomatic pressure to get the Russian laws changed.

I can't believe it took them this long to go after the service.
Perhaps they just didn't think they would have a chance of receiving any damages under the previous Russian attitudes.

What took them so long? Were they too busy going after single mothers whose kid downloaded 20 songs? ;)

Seriously, if the RIAA is going to sue to protect its interests, at least they've filed a worthy suit.