RIAA and US force Russia to stop cheap music downloads

Allofmp3.com has denied charges of piracy by pointing out that the company is compliant with Russian copyright law. It says it is careful to pay royalties to artists via the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society, which claims to represent copyright holders.

Russia has agreed to shut down Allofmp3.com and other music sites based in that country that the U.S. government says are offering downloads illegally.

The nation has struck the agreement with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative as it seeks entry to the World Trade Organization. The U.S. has suggested [threatened] that it would hold up Russia's acceptance in the WTO unless leaders there took action against digital piracy.

I downloaded my last Tenacious D The Pick of Destiny - "The Government Totally Sucks" for about 9 cents.

Now, I have $0.0525 left in my account which should be enough for a relatively low quality version of Neil Diamond's Cherry, Cherry but for some reason it won't let me get below 7 cents for that song. Is there some kind of conversion cost with a one song order?

OK, continued searching brought me to "How to handle a disaster" from the Broadway play "How to succeed in business without really trying." That will cost me 4 to 5 cents depending on format and quality - CD quality for a nickel. One megabit - five cents OK. I'll let them fight over the unused quarter cent I'll leave them with Putin and the RIAA.

I could have gotten instead The Pirate Dance from the same play for a nickel but only under Microsoft's lowest 50% quality WMA format. What a bunch of pirates - no way.

Maybe I should have been looking for the Beatles or the Beach Boys instead for my last Russian download. If you could get only two more downloads what would you pick? What should I be looking for now for totally free downloads instead?

AllofMP3.com was a high-quality excellent site I highly recommended.

Tags: RIAA, MP3, downloads, Russia, allofmp3, music