Disclaimer: This is not an advertisement, although it may appear that way. I’m just curious and excited by the possibility that the site described below may be legal. Mods: Feel free to move this to Cafe Society, although the topic strictly concerns the legality, not music itself.
With that out of the way…
I recently came across the site - - -. This is a service based in Russia, not unlike iTunes.
They have a pretty decent music and music videos collection, available for download. Their legal info(link near top-right of main page) claims that their service is legal. They have various tariff plans… (a) $1 per 100MB of downloads !! (b) $15/month for 1000 files, irrespective of size !! It seems that they have been in operation for 3 years now (ages in Internet time and considering that Puretunes was taken down by the RIAA after a month), as evidenced by Usenet postings.
They carry a LOT of mainstream material, including some offbeat stuff as well. One really attractive feature is “online encoding”. Which is basically the ability to choose encoder, codec, bitrate in which you want the file to be sent to you. The site looks professional and most “reviews” I’ve come across don’t seem to have qualms about the legality. They don’t appear to be a scam since they take Paypal payments and my friends have verified that they actually have all the music they claim they do.
So, does anyone have experience with the site? Can someone peruse the site and guess as its legality?
I highly doubt it, as I read several industry magazines and I’ve never heard of this site before. Being based in Russia is also a big warning sign that this might not be legit (no offense, law-abiding Russians).
If the major record labels had licensed content to this operation, the deal would have been announced in the press, they’d be advertising it, and TRYING to get you to use it as they’d get a piece of the action.
Although, after a little googling, a lot of people seem to think it’s legit, with few taking a strog stand one way or another.
The RIAA is suing a Spanish company , in part due to their files being taken from - - -.com, but doesn’t seem to have made much of a fuss about - - - itself.
Spurious George: If the major record labels had licensed content to this operation, the deal would have been announced in the press, they’d be advertising it, and TRYING to get you to use it as they’d get a piece of the action.
My understanding is that the service provider here has licensed the rights from the Russian subsidiaries of the copyright holders. So, it isn’t a deal between RIAA <-> - - -, rather Russian copyright holders <-> - - -. I’m also not sure RIAA would want to advertise the site, if it is legal since the fees are dirt cheap. The RIAA are probably making more money from the current reduced CD sales than they would if people could download 1000 songs for 15 dollars!!
I’m assuming that the service is legal to use within Russia. What I would like an opinion on is whether it’s legal for someone outside Russia (viz. US) to use the service.
Hmmm… if it’s legal in Russia, I have the right to go to Russia and import my own CDs. Didn’t someone cite someplace in another thread a Chinese restaurant that didn’t have to pay ASCAP fees (or whatever) because all the music was bought in China?
The “Russian Copyright holders” argument is bogus. The copyright holder is essentially the person who wrote the song.
Now, a Russian CD company may be licensed to make CDs for the song, but they don’t own the song and cannot sell the copyright to anyone, any more than you could sell a Hertz car you rented.
For the site to be legal, the copyright holder would have to grant the site the rights. It is possible that this has happened, but my guess is that this is a pirate site trying to use the difficulty of enforcing copyright in Russia as a screen.
Preposterous. If the song is under US copyright, it doesn’t matter where you buy it from: you have no right to make copies and public performances come under ASCAP.