Copyright news links

http://blog.marques.cx/2007/11/25/digital-russian-rights-management/
ZML is the "AllOfMp3 of music". I wonder how long will it take to have MPAA threatning Russia (again)...

http://smallr.net/label-that-get-it
Suburban Home anounces “I Celebrate Their Entire Catalog” digital sampler, proving that there are music labels that "get it". They encourage you to download the entire sampler and share it with everyone.

http://smallr.net/distributor-gets-it
...and a music distributor that also gets it. Basicly: stop whining and act!

http://smallr.net/who-cares
Yeah, Facebook is evil, but who cares? Seems that Techcrunch readers care, but that's surely not a representative slice of Facebook users...

http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1845.html
French polititians are doing drugs. No, really!

http://smallr.net/europe-oss
Europe the leader, not the follower in open source

http://smallr.net/swpat
Finaly, someone getting nailed for trying to use that software patents to get money. Why not working instead of bullying?

http://smallr.net/music-industry
A nice and actual music idustry overview. Where are we heading to?

http://smallr.net/korea-music
The Asian market is quite ahead of us, specially in the music industry. This article is nice to see that, but what I liked the most was to see that in Korea this year they'll reach 4x more sales of cellphones that are also music players than music players that aren't cellphones...

More about AllOfMP3

Keeping up with the AllOfMP3 saga...

A couple of days ago I wrote about AllOfMp3 finally shutting down, but leaving a spin-off behind. The Spin-off, Mp3Sparks, is now also shutted down, but there are still alternatives:

For those using Microsoft Windows, you can still use your AllOfMp3's accounts (and credit) to buy music on the new Russian service AllTunes. I wonder how long will it take to shut them also down. Also, take in account that you'll be able to use your balance from AllOfMP3 in this service, but not to add more money to it (and keep using it): you'll get a "Processing for this site disabled." message.

If you're looking to a an alternative simillar to AllOfMp3, I wrote about MP3 City here: a simmilar service, also legal, but in Ukraine, a country that, while working on their accession negotiations to became members of the WTO, had still no pressure from the RIAA to the WTO to that country to change their laws.

AllOfMP3 - death and rebirth

Exactly one year ago, the British recording industry has been given permission to sue Russian music website allofmp3.com in the High Court, even if AllOfMP3 was a legal site in Russia. In October, USA decided that Russia had to change their laws and shut down AllOfMP3 in order to be a member of the World Trade Organization, in a economic terrorism move. People from AllOfMp3 fought back, yet in October, telling why their service was legal, and explaining that buying from them, even in USA, was legal, by both Russian and American laws. Of course that pressure kept going up, and Russia finaly setted a day for the law change. So, and while the site wasn't shutted down that day, since the 1st of June AllOfMp3 started being an illegal activity under the Russian law. While I covered it and pointed out a simmilar, but still legal, alternative (Ukranian), the best thing came only recently: the guys who had AllOfMp3 have just launched "a new service" (the same but with different prices and different name, even the user database is the same) called MP3 Sparks, that is basicly the same thing, but with a license from NP FAIR instead of ROMS. I'm still trying to contact them and know if this is the only difference, and, if so, why does this difference suffices to make them legal again, since no one seems to have that explained, but they state that they are legal. If I get more news on this I'll keep you updated.

AllOfMP3 dead? Long Live MP3 City!

Today, in a couple of hours, the new Russian law that will make AllOfMP3 illegal will be passed and activated. A good description about what is AllOfMP3 and what's the case behind it is here:

AllofMP3.com is a small Russian company which has become the international poster child for attacks on independent music download sites.

By itself, it probably doesn't represent much of a genuine threat to the labels or studios. But if it's allowed to survive and prosper, its existence would certainly encourage other entrepreneurs to adopt the same marketing approach - DRM-free downloads at reasonable prices - which would result in serious competition for the corporate cartels which, until the Net became universally adopted, had been able to control virtually everything ordinary people saw or heard.

Competition is good: it promotes free choice. But neither 'choice' nor 'competition' are words found in cartel lexicons. So a massive, and ongoing, multi-million-dollar campaign has been mounted against AllofMP3.com by the cartels, with the record labels to the fore.

Leading it on behalf of the labels and other vested interests is the US administration, which has brought its full weight down on a handful of people in another country who dare to compete with Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, with the major movie studios and software houses lurking darkly in the background.

In rich irony, only Warner Music can be said to be truly American. And even it's run by Canadian. The other three members of the Big 4 music cartel are EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, based in Britain, France, Japan and Germany, respectively.

In other words, the US government is generously spending money provided by American tax payers to help four foreign companies maintain an iron grip on a market whose openness would benefit American artists as much, if not more, than artist in other countries.

Nor does it appear anyone in either the United States Trade Representative Office, which is behind much of the US-mounted pressure on AllofMP3.com, nor music industry 'trade' organizations, such as the IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry), have made any effort to talk directly with AllofMP3.com executives to find a way to reach an accord.

But if you want to see how high they go, take a look at this: according to Reuters, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said:

"I have a hard time imagining Russia becoming a member of the WTO and having a Web site like that [AllofMP3.com] up and running that is so clearly a violation of everyone's intellectual property rights"

Of course that what is legal and what is not all depends on the standing legislation, and AllOfMP3 are under Russian laws.

While DCC's Russell McOrmond (DCC is Digital Copyright Canada, Canada's RIAA) says that

While AllOfMP3.com may be perfectly legal for Russian customers, it is not legal for them to sell to foreign customers. Copyright and licensing need to be analysed domestically, and you can't say that what is legal in Russia allows you to do something in Canada or the USA

Any lawyer will tell you that that's not true: AllOfMP3 is legal on Russia, and their license lets them sell worldwide (according to their exportation laws). The only way you can make illegal for Canadian or American people to buy stuff from AllOfMP3 is for those countries to actively forbid those transactions. In that case, their citizens are forbidden to buy from AllOfMP3, but still AllOfMP3 have the right to sell their music to Americans or Canadians.

Anyway, nothing of that really matters, since Russia will change their laws today, to ilegalize AllOfMP3.

I thought of changing this blog's layout to a black theme for a day, or talking about sweet, nice and cool alternative online stores, like Amie Street. But that wouldn't really be an article that would piss RIAA off, if they were to read this, right?

So, I've searched and came out with a better music service to talk about: MP3 City. First of all, MP3 City sells mp3 files, no .wmv's and such. The files are all DRM-free, and untagged. Like in AllOfMP3, here you can find lot's of kinds of music, from underground stuff until major label's artists. Damn, you can already buy there Marilyn Manson's "Eat Me, Drink Me", an album that is only to be released in four days, or Paul McCartney's "Memory Almost Full", also to be released next week. And you know what? $1.76 is the price for Marilyn Manson's album, $2.08 for Paul McCartney's. No, I'm not talking about one track, I talking about the whole album, in DRM-free MP3 files encoded at 320kbps.

As cool as AllOfMP3, right? Cooler in fact, since MP3 City is also legal with Author's distribution rights granted by State Enterprise "Ukrainian Agency on Copyright and Related Rights" (UACRR), and, as far as I know, Ukrain isn't (still) being pressed to change their laws.

Eat this, suckers!

AllOfMp3 and DRM

I was feeling quite depressed and started venting on Selva, a Portuguese talker. Since that, after this, I didn't feel like writing an article about it... Here's the log (with permission, of course) of the conversation (unfortunately in Portuguese).

BTW, just for reference, here are the latest news on AllOfMp3, to be dead at the 1st of June, and the Portuguese anti-DRM action I also talked about.

---

MindBoosterNoori says: estou deveras aborrecido
MindBoosterNoori says: Nao consigo entender como e' que ha' pessoas que nao acham nada de mal neste mundo
MindBoosterNoori says: num mundo em que as corporacoes mandam mais que a lei, fazem as leis
Hellraiser asks: hum?
Hellraiser says: ja' ouvi falar...
MindBoosterNoori says: Um site na Russia, completamente legal, que vendia musica muuuuuuuito barata porque as leis na Russia de copyright sao diferentes das dos USA
MindBoosterNoori says: entao eles pagavam directamente aos artistas e nao 'as labels
MindBoosterNoori says: houve obviamente pressao das big co's para fechar aquilo, comprar para depois fechar... de tudo.
MindBoosterNoori says: nao conseguiram
Hellraiser says: ena
Hellraiser says: nao sabia que isso era assim
MindBoosterNoori says: entao fizeram pressao junto a varios governos, e os USA, a Alemanha, o Reino Unido e a Dinamarca forcaram os ISP's a bloquear o site
Hellraiser says: curto a filosofia
MindBoosterNoori says: depois fizeram pressao contra a Visa, Mastercard e Paypal para deixarem de aceitar pagamentos para aquilo
MindBoosterNoori says: conclusao, o site ficou a funcionar um esquema de vouchers
MindBoosterNoori says: entao
MindBoosterNoori says: no reino unido agora e' proibido vender ou ajudar 'a venda desses vouchers
MindBoosterNoori says: 1 gajo foi preso e tudo
MindBoosterNoori says: mas achas que isso chega? naaaaaaaaaao...
MindBoosterNoori says: entao, fizeram um ultimato 'a Russia
Hellraiser says: isso ta' a ir um bocado longe demais... :-/
Hellraiser asks: houve artistas a queixarem-se?
MindBoosterNoori says: se quiserem pertencer 'a World Trade Organization (o organismo que, em ultima instancia, define quem e' pais do 1o mundo e quem nao e')
MindBoosterNoori says: teem de mudar a lei
MindBoosterNoori says: e entao a Russia vai mudar a lei dia 1
MindBoosterNoori says: para tornar o AllOfMP3 ilegal.
MindBoosterNoori says: makes me sick.
Hellraiser says: yah
MindBoosterNoori says: artistas a queixar-se? claro que nao... os artistas ficam mais contentes
MindBoosterNoori says: recebem 'a mesma, mas a musica deles e' tao barata que as pessoas compram muito mais musica
MindBoosterNoori says: tipo, em vez de comprares uma faixa, compras logo a discografia toda :-P
Hellraiser says: pensava que os artistas ganhavam mais por "venda directa"
MindBoosterNoori says: 1.30 centimos por faixa? nah, no allofmp3 1.30 paga-te cerca de 130 Mb de musica
MindBoosterNoori says: (la' a musica e' paga ao Mb)
MindBoosterNoori says: os artistas ganham mais se nao tiverem intermediarios
MindBoosterNoori says: como no caso do all of mp3
MindBoosterNoori says: ou seja
MindBoosterNoori says: eles estavam contentes
MindBoosterNoori says: quem nao gostou da coisa nao foram os artistas, foram as editoras
Hellraiser says: sim, sim. eu percebi
Hellraiser says: mas quem pode fazer forca, sao os artistas e os consumidores
Hellraiser says: o "negocio" das editoras ja' eu conheco...
MindBoosterNoori says: bem, a nao ser boicotar as major labels em forma de protesto, mas isso ja' eu faco :-P
MindBoosterNoori says: quem podia fazer era o povo Russo
MindBoosterNoori asks: mas achas que eles foram "avisados" de que se ia tomar esta decisao?
MindBoosterNoori says: BAH.
Hellraiser says: pois
MindBoosterNoori feels depressed
Hellraiser says: melhores dias virao...
MindBoosterNoori says: right.
MindBoosterNoori says: Aqui ha' uns meses consegui finalmente criar o DRM-PT.info
MindBoosterNoori says: criar buzz em volta do tema do DRM
MindBoosterNoori says: comecei a ver jornais, revistas, proteste, bloggers por todo lado, em Portugal, a interessar-se pelo tema, a mostrarem-se indignados
MindBoosterNoori says: e' organizado um protesto
MindBoosterNoori says: quantas pessoas inscritas menos de 48 horas antes? 4.
Hellraiser :-/
MindBoosterNoori says: e' um protesto dificil de fazer? nao, e' ir 'a porta de um cinema e distribuir panfletos.
MindBoosterNoori says: olha
MindBoosterNoori says: importas-te que ponha esta conversa no meu blog? :-P
Hellraiser says: nao
Hellraiser says: na boa
MindBoosterNoori says: vai mesmo assim em Portugues, nem me apetece escrever mais sobre o assunto...