RIAA finally defeats allofmp3.com?

In what can only be described as unsurprising the U.S. Government has released a document which outlines a new relationship with the Russian government that will rule how the two interact based on intellectual property.

I didn’t provide a link, because the one I found was a PDF. Check here if you would like to read it.

I’ll summarize as best I can without causing an unnecessary loss in interest to those who are barely hanging on anyway, but nothing beats reading the original for yourself if you are someone who is interested.

The gist of the document is that Russia has agreed to begin to more aggressively chase down and penalize the people who would allow others to gain what the U.S. government would consider “intellectual property.” The most interesting thing about the document, of course, is that on page two, the first bullet point specifically names allofmp3.com as a target. Among other interesting, valid and needed points it seems questionable that allofmp3.com would be specifically targeted. Anyone who has ever been to Russian can tell you about the rampant illegal CD sales that go on, surely there were factories making these illegal CD’s which could be named as well? Instead, those points are glossed over and vague enough to actually allow continued violations while allofmp3.com takes the brunt of a direct reference, assuring that they will be specifically targeted and made an example of.

While I would be hesitant to say that the negotiations are in direct response to RIAA’s repeated demands even in the face of Allofmp3′s repeated justification it is hard to ignore the constant crowing the RIAA does about the site. Why would the U.S. government have any interest in specifically naming allofmp3.com as an enemy unless it is because of the constant complaints from the RIAA?

Now don’t get me wrong. While I like the idea behind allofmp3 much better than the blatant ripoff (I’ll write an article about that soon enough) that is our DRM overlords, I think the idea has been taken to an extreme and as such doesn’t compensate artists properly (or at all, actually). As such, it isn’t an acceptable solution to everyone and some changes should be in order.

I guess this is just another case, building on the suing of minors and people who don’t even own computers, which points out the complete and utter failure which is the RIAA. At some point artists are going to realize that they can make much, much more money by selling the bandwidth to download their songs rather than paying the RIAA and its minions to market the songs for them. I, for one, will be glad when the money I spend on music goes directly to the artist who created it instead of the executives who greedily mark up the prices to distribute the music.

Do the math… the DRM controlled music you buy is a ripoff.