Alltunes.com claims win in Russian copyright case
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iTuneski resurgence? Alltunes.com has won a court case against a Russian agent of Visa over its decision to disconnect the online music stores' payment system.â¦
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Russian authorities are seeking jail time for Denis Kvasov, the owner of AllofMP3.com, along with paying restitution to EMI, Warner, and Universal.
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File-sharing applications Morpheus and Grokster were claiming legal victory after a US court said it was not responsible for protecting the copyrights of material swapped on its person-to-person network.
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A Beijing court has rejected&#160;Yahoo China&#39;s appeal&#160;against a fine of 210,000 yuan ($28,400) for infringing a 2006 copyright law.The suit, filed in January by the 11 members of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), accused Yahoo China of infringing copyright by deep linking, through its music search engine, to MP3 files distributed by third party Web sites without the copyright holders&#39; permission.The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People&#39;s Court&#160;found Yahoo China guilty&#160;on April 24, imposing the 210,000 yuan fine -- far less than the 5.5 million yuan sought by IFPI -- and&#160;Yahoo China promptly appealed. The Beijing Higher People&#39;s Court rejected that appeal on Thursday.Yahoo China is wholly owned by Chinese company Alibaba.com, in which Yahoo owns a 44 percent stake. The offending music search engine allowed visitors to Yahoo China&#39;s site to find and play copyright music tracks without leaving the Yahoo site, according to the IFPI.IFPI blames such sites for what it says is an abnormally low level of music sales in China: around $76 million in 2006, representing less than one percent of global recorded music sales, according to the group. It estimates that 99 percent of music downloads in China infringe copyright.A separate suit filed by IFPI against Chinese search engine Baidu.com in September 2005 resulted in an acquittal for Baidu. IFPI appealed the ruling, but its appeal too was rejected Thursday, leaving Baidu in the clear, said IFPI spokesman Alex Jacob.&quot;The Baidu case was judged on the old copyright law, so our appeal was rejected,&quot; Jacob said.
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Never mind Baidu, look at Yahoo! A Chinese court last month found Yahoo! China liable for copyright infringement by deep-linking to songs. Both Yahoo! and Baidu, China's largest search engine, provide search tools for finding music, most of which is unlicensed.â¦
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People who received MP3 players as holiday gifts may want to steer clear of some Web sites that claim to offer legal music but don&#39;t have licensing agreements with major music labels, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) said.CDT, a consumer rights group, has published a list of more than 30 MP3 download sites that don&#39;t have licensing deals with major U.S. music labels. The sites, which charge between $20 and $35 for subscriptions, say they offer music from artists signed to the major labels, CDT said.Consumers should be aware of the sites on the list because in some cases, they may simply provide subscribers popular peer-to-peer (P-to-P) software that&#39;s otherwise free, said David Sohn, CDT&#39;s senior policy counsel. And customers using P-to-P software to trade unauthorized music files could face lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), he said.&quot;People might get the false impression of what they paid for was legal,&quot; Sohn said. &quot;If you pay $25, you might think that $25 goes to compensate the rights holder.&quot;The CDT tried to contact the operators of each site on its MP3 warning list. In each case, the site operators did not respond.Several of the sites on the list seem to be run by the same people -- they have similar designs and make similar claims. In many cases, the sites are registered outside the U.S., Sohn said.Some of the sites hedge their claims of being legal in small print. For example, AllCoolMusic.com, which says it offers 12 billion files, includes a disclaimer at the bottom of its front page: &quot;Today, there are 240 million users trading MP3s on legal file-sharing networks. Sharing is not illegal as long as you obey all relevant copyright laws. Sharing copyrighted material, without permission to do so, is illegal. Purchasing a membership in AllCoolMusic.com does not give you license to download or upload copyrighted material. AllCoolMusic.com implores you to respect all copyright laws.&quot;AllCoolMusic didn&#39;t respond to CDT&#39;s letter, and there&#39;s no contact information readily available on the site.In March 2005, CDT filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission against two Web sites claiming their music and video downloads were 100 percent legal.The FTC filed a complaint in U.S. court against one of the Web sites, mp3downloadcity.com, obtained an injunction, and eventually reached a settlement with the Web site operator in May 2006. The settlement required the site to refund customers.The RIAA has focused its lawsuits on P-to-P users that share music with others, not those that simply download music from P-to-P networks. However, if subscribers to these sites would opt to share their music on the P-to-P software some of the sites provide, that could expose them to lawsuits, Sohn said.In many cases, users of the sites are &quot;getting less than you pay for,&quot; he said.
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A federal appeals court offered sweet music for online file sharers and dealt a bitter defeat to the entertainment industry Thursday, ruling that two companies that make popular file-sharing programs aren&#39;t responsible for copyright violations by people ...
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Blog: The Russian government has shut down AllofMP3, which offered downloadable MP3 files at a much lower price than stores such as iTunes, but fans will probably just migrate to other similar services.
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Universal Music Group is poised to win a battle in its war to claim royalties from sites that allow users to upload videos that contain its music.
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LOS ANGELES (IFPI) - The company and operators behind the Puretunes.com website, an online service which formerly sold unauthorized unlimited music downloads, have agreed to an out-of-court settlement of a copyright infringement lawsuit brought last year
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Putin promises action It appears the Russian government has agreed to shut down popular music site AllofMP3.com in order to appease US objections to it joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO).â¦
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A court ruled that the distributors of software used by millions of people to exchange music files over the Internet cannot be held liable for aiding copyright infringement.
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Russian music store AllofMP3, which has long been under scrutiny by U.S. and European regulators for selling music without paying any royalties to artists, called out European music industry group IFPI Thursday, claiming the service is legal and a recently publicized raid was made up "sensational news."
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Some of rock 'n' roll's biggest names  have teamed up to sue the owner of a Web site that specializes  in streaming rare concert recordings.
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Perspective regained A tiny Russian software piracy case that ended up pitting Mikhail Gorbachev and Vladimir Putin against Bill Gates has been thrown out of court.â¦
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A federal appeals court has ruled that two peer-to-peer online music-sharing networks, Grokster and StreamCast, are not liable for the illegal swapping of copyrighted music and other entertainment files on their networks.
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A battle over copyright infringement on the Internet heats up. No, not over music. Over the classic 'Gone With the Wind.'