Following yesterday’s post about how the MPAA had actually managed to promote the The Pirate Bay by allegedly leaning on the Swedish police via Washington, there follows yet another stupid campaign - this time by the quaintly named British Phonographic Institute (BPI).
The BPI have denounced the Russian download site allofmp3.com, where albums can be downloaded for as little as £1 and currently accounts for 14% UK downloads. The BPI allege that the site is illegal and doesn’t pay royalties, which allofmp3.com denies. Well, they would, wouldn’t they?
The story has been duly reported by the BBC (thanks Jim as well as other media, donating allofmp3.com millions of pounds of free publicity. Even if you were interested in downloading MP3s of questionable legality and hadn’t heard of this site, the chances are you have now.
It’ll be very interesting to see if that 14% increases over the next month or two. I’m betting we’ll see a pretty dramatic rise in share.
And you thought we had to wait for the World Cup to see spectacular own goals.
[tags] allofmp3.com, bbc, mpaa, bpi [/tags]
Anyone that believes complete albums for $1.50 are legit must be pretty naive.
I saw the Allofmp3 story on BBC News earlier today and thought of you Russell
The use of the word “legit” in this context is completely meaningless. The site and its goods are completely legit in Russia - that’s the point of this whole issue. It’s not legit in the US and Europe. If it moved to Angola, it would be fine there too as far as I can tell, but Australia would shut it down.