Russian Pirate Web Site Rivals iTunes

4 Jun, 2006 at 11:33am ET Article published in Tech

Boris says “Aaaarrrghhh”

MOSCOW – A Russian Web site that lets visitors download albums for less than $1 is a smash hit with music fans — but not with U.S. trade and music industry officials.

The site is a pirate, they allege, and say Russia’s failure to close it down presents a direct obstacle to the country’s negotiations to join the World Trade Organization.

Russia is already the second-biggest source of pirate music, film and software in the world after China — costing U.S. companies nearly $1.8 billion last year, according to anti-piracy groups. The Web site www.allofmp3.com just adds to the dispute.

Source: Associated Press

Comments

4 Jun 2006 ~ 1:03pm airbornflght wah wah wah...give me a break. seriously, when these people that are crying about their 1.8 billion stop living it 4 million dollar houses, then I might consider buying the software. but with them flying in million dollar private jets, and taking a vacation whenever they damn well please, I could really care less.
4 Jun 2006 ~ 1:26pm profdlp

airbornflght wrote:

wah wah wah...give me a break. seriously, when these people that are crying about their 1.8 billion stop living it 4 million dollar houses, then I might consider buying the software. but with them flying in million dollar private jets, and taking a vacation whenever they damn well please, I could really care less.

Are you saying that it's alright to steal from people, as long as they are richer than yourself?

Let's keep the discussion centered on how this might affect the online music industry, not class envy.
4 Jun 2006 ~ 3:30pm GrayFox Ive bought music from www.allofmp3.com (The russian site there talking about)

I love it I can pick what type of encoding I want and the bit rate before I download it then its like $0.03 per song no dmca and I can get it in ogg vorbis.
4 Jun 2006 ~ 4:11pm Esso The Internet and downloading of music and film will change the way they are able to make profit.

The company's are going towards more control, making it harder to copy music, films and programs.

On the other hand there will be people trying to get around the copy protection, so there is an war going on.
Who will win and who will lose ?

Next step for the illegal download sites is to decrypt the information, and that will make it harder for the national
security officials to decipher mails, when people starts using the same technique.

I can see only one solution here, and that is to lower the price for the product, and make it more easy for downloading music and films.

Otherwise the price for the products will go up, cover the extra cost for the protection software and maintaining status que.
Less people will buy an music CD for testing, or buying films.

Here in Sweden the price for CD is 20-25 USD, and that is to high.
It is more then 4 years ago, when I bought my last music CD.

One good thing with getting old, is that you like the music from the time when you were young.
And you you can't remember them all ...
, so with 400 CD in my shelf, I can stay happy for along time.
The rest I get from radio gaga.

And as some of you already know, this happened in the week that past
ThePirateBay.org Raided - Servers Seized

You can read more about this at XS,
TPB is seized and temporarily shut down
4 Jun 2006 ~ 5:03pm GrayFox

Esso wrote:

The Internet and downloading of music and film will change the way they are able to make profit.

The company's are going towards more control, making it harder to copy music, films and programs.

On the other hand there will be people trying to get around the copy protection, so there is an war going on.
Who will win and who will lose ?

Next step for the illegal download sites is to decrypt the information, and that will make it harder for the national
security officials to decipher mails, when people starts using the same technique.

I can see only one solution here, and that is to lower the price for the product, and make it more easy for downloading music and films.

Otherwise the price for the products will go up, cover the extra cost for the protection software and maintaining status que.
Less people will buy an music CD for testing, or buying films.

Here in Sweden the price for CD is 20-25 USD, and that is to high.
It is more then 4 years ago, when I bought my last music CD.

One good thing with getting old, is that you like the music from the time when you were young.
And you you can't remember them all ...
, so with 400 CD in my shelf, I can stay happy for along time.
The rest I get from radio gaga.

And as some of you already know, this happened in the week that past
ThePirateBay.org Raided - Servers Seized

You can read more about this at XS,
TPB is seized and temporarily shut down

I disagree I think price has very little to do with it. I use allofmp3 because theres no drm.
4 Jun 2006 ~ 5:43pm Esso

GrayFox wrote:

I disagree I think price has very little to do with it. I use allofmp3 because theres no drm.

I believe you are using allofmp3, because they are cheap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality

And who has ever shown true Morality, it's just for the loser, right ?
We can all lose together.
4 Jun 2006 ~ 5:49pm airbornflght

profdlp wrote:

Are you saying that it's alright to steal from people, as long as they are richer than yourself?

Let's keep the discussion centered on how this might affect the online music industry, not class envy.

No, well, not exactly, I was actually moving towards the fact that they are hypocrites and actaully have plenty of money and probably arent hurting that bad for it. The price of software is driven by their own greed. And in my mind, to steal something, it must be owned by someone, physically. So stealing a cd from staples would be stealing. Programs are data, data is information, and informaion is free. If you would not like your information shared, you should secure it. Because when someone steals software, are they LOSEING and money?, nope. What they are upset about is that they didnt MAKE any money off of the deal. Because if you think about it, every other company that makes a product, once they make the prototype, they still have to produce a physical product that costs money. So if I steal a bike from walmart, me stealing the bike just cost walmart some ammount of money, if someone downloads photoshop, they did not cause adobe to loose one red cent of revenue, because no physical product had to be produced. What they are mad about is that they didnt MAKE any money. Once software companies have a product, they pay $.15 to have a disc copied and a little for documentation, so basically, once they have the product, it is all profit from there on.

And really, I dont know if they have noticed yet, but priracy has been happening for a very long time, and I dont see it stoping any time soon, especially as long as they want to charge exorbinant ammounts for software, people will continue to pirate, and until they decide to resonably price software, people wont stop. ie: $60 for a game that I might play 2weeks to a month long.

The companies say they are loosing money to piracy, okay, thats all well and good, but they are still showing multi-million dollar profits., sometimes in the billions. So as I've said before, they arent hurting too bad, they are just greedy, two different things.:tongue2:
4 Jun 2006 ~ 5:50pm Thrax That's a convenient logic you have there.
4 Jun 2006 ~ 5:53pm airbornflght I know, it works well with the conscious
4 Jun 2006 ~ 5:55pm Kwitko

airbornflght wrote:

Once software companies have a product, they pay $.15 to have a disc copied and a little for documentation, so basically, once they have the product, it is all profit from there on.

So you're saying there's no cost to the producer of the software? Coding, testing, marketing, these all cost money to the software producers. How about packaging and distribution channels? Product doesn't make it to the shelf on its own.
4 Jun 2006 ~ 6:00pm airbornflght

Esso wrote:

And as some of you already know, this happened in the week that past
ThePirateBay.org Raided - Servers Seized

You can read more about this at XS,
TPB is seized and temporarily shut down

yeh, read about that, dont know what they were looking for though, the actual filees arent stored on the servers. Unless they were after IP logs. I guess they handed the stuff back over, yesterday I was at TPB and they said it should be up within a few days.:thumbup
4 Jun 2006 ~ 6:01pm airbornflght

Kwitko wrote:

So you're saying there's no cost to the producer of the software? Coding, testing, marketing, these all cost money to the software producers. How about packaging and distribution channels? Product doesn't make it to the shelf on its own.

No, I said once the software is made, there is no more cost incured to produce it multiple times.
4 Jun 2006 ~ 6:02pm Thrax Every piece of software is the product of R&D, which can be in the billions. It is the product of the land, labour and capital used to produce the item. The salary of every employee that designed, tested, implemented, imagined, or cleaned up after the folks who did the aforementioned is in the cost of the product. You have the cost of the facility(ies) in which the product was produced; water, electric, heat, data. Your rationalization that the production of a piece of software stops incurring costs the moment it is finalized is utterly ridiculous; to this day, the R&D spent on games from the likes of Blizzard, Bungie, Microsoft and ID Software is still being recouperated from the sales of software.

To declare that the company "Doesn't lose one red cent" is fallacious at best, and thoroughly ignorant at worst. The only reason people feel comfortable using circumlocutious rationalizations when it comes to piracy is that it's not tangible theft. It's not like walking in the door of a Circuit City, stuffing a PS2 game in your pants, and walking out, however that is exactly what you have done. You have robbed the reseller of a potential resale profit, and the distributor from a sale.

Deal with it.
4 Jun 2006 ~ 6:05pm Kwitko

airbornflght wrote:

No, I said once the software is made, there is no more cost incured to produce it multiple times.

What you said was that it's all profit once it hits the shelves, which is definitely not the case. All those costs incurred have to be paid back somehow. When companies sell software, it takes a long time before they turn a profit.

And there's still a cost to produce it multiple times. They still have to package it and get it to the store.
4 Jun 2006 ~ 6:17pm profdlp

airbornflght wrote:

...Programs are data, data is information, and informaion is free...

If you think that information is free, check out the cost of college tuition. After doing that, why not stroll into Harvard and tell them you want one "on the house".

Good luck!
5 Jun 2006 ~ 2:01am drasnor

profdlp wrote:

If you think that information is free, check out the cost of college tuition. After doing that, why not stroll into Harvard and tell them you want one "on the house".

Good luck!

That's not a very good example. I've read my tuition bill and there isn't any "information" cost on it, mostly services fees related to paying professors, administrators, upkeep on computer labs, etc. The information itself is publically available, you're just paying for the presentation, services, and accreditation.

I would pay for music with no DRM. In fact, I already do: I buy CD's and rip them so that I have a physical backup I can store safely and a lossless digital copy I can burn to mix CD's and play on my computer without wearing out physical media. In the event of catastrophic data loss I can always go back to the CD's and rip another copy.

-drasnor
5 Jun 2006 ~ 9:23am profdlp

drasnor wrote:

That's not a very good example. I've read my tuition bill and there isn't any "information" cost on it, mostly services fees related to paying professors, administrators, upkeep on computer labs, etc. The information itself is publically available...

So I can sit down with any of your professors whenever I please and ask them anything I wish, right?

Tell them I'll be there next Thursday, about noonish.
5 Jun 2006 ~ 12:13pm drasnor

profdlp wrote:

So I can sit down with any of your professors whenever I please and ask them anything I wish, right?

Tell them I'll be there next Thursday, about noonish.

I don't know, prof, have you paid them any money lately :P (talking to you would classify as a presentation service)? Truthfully though, most of my professors welcome questions from random people whenever they're in their office. They like to share what they know; in fact when I went to ask one of them about something in his field of expertise he got excited about the idea and offered me a job.

drasnor
8 Jun 2006 ~ 2:50am bothered

drasnor wrote:

Truthfully though, most of my professors welcome questions from random people whenever they're in their office.

Sorry to butt in here but while they're in their office they're getting paid eh?
8 Jun 2006 ~ 4:14am Enverex hmm, I buy all my music from allofmp3.com because I thought it was the first legal place I could get "FLAC" files (due to their online encoding system). Wasn't aware that it was illegal.

profdlp wrote:

Are you saying that it's alright to steal from people, as long as they are richer than yourself?

Let's keep the discussion centered on how this might affect the online music industry, not class envy.

I think it's more annoyance over how it's gone from "making music" to "a quick way to make a massive amount of money by making a bit of crap and then force feeding it to everyone". It's all about the Benjamins.
8 Jun 2006 ~ 10:25am profdlp

Enverex wrote:

...Wasn't aware that it was illegal.

Depends on who you talk to, I guess.

I think it's more annoyance over how it's gone from "making music" to "a quick way to make a massive amount of money by making a bit of crap and then force feeding it to everyone". It's all about the Benjamins.

I'm with you on that. The only solution I know of is to seek out the small and/or independent musicians who aren't party to what Joni Mitchell called "Stoking the star maker machinery".