Wired.com is running an article about Russian websites where you can download music in mp3 format at rock bottom prices. More so, the concern about it is coming from “U.S. trade and music industry officials” stating that continued operation of the site is a direct obstacle for Russia joining the WTO.
“The United States is seriously concerned about the growth of internet piracy on Russian websites such as AllofMP3.com … the world’s largest server-based pirate website,” Neena Moorjani, chief spokeswoman for the Office of the United States Trade Representative, said Friday.
“Russia’s legal framework for intellectual property rights protection must meet WTO requirements…. In that context, we continue to call on Russia to shut down websites that offer pirate music, software and films for downloading,” she said. [wired.com]
You would think that this would be about oil, or something more precious to daily survival, and not piracy of music. That’s all it takes to stop your country from being apart of the WTO club. I would imagine that the pressure from the U.S. government is heavily influenced by lobbyists for the music industry, working the playground method of a little bullying to keep them from hanging out with the rest of the cool kids. The argument makes sense for both parties, but I keep coming back to this feeling that the music industry needs to stop fighting this and start to undermine these things to take advantage of it in some way.
This also made me curous about another Russian download site, mp3search.ru. The site appears to still be up and running. I gave that a shot and experimentally dropped twenty bucks on the site to see what it had to offer. For the most part, it’s good source with some reservation, but this was just over a year ago that I last did anything with it The selection was still growing, and bit rates of the mp3’s averaged around 192k. However, sometimes you would download a bad rip of an album that had lots of gross errors in the audio. At nearly $.10 a song, you get what you pay for.