Recording Companies Sue Russian Site In U.S. Court

Recording companies have filed suit in U.S. Federal District Court in Manhattan against a Russan online music service. The lawsuit seeks an injunction against AllofMP3.com to prevent it from selling copyrighted music without permission and to force it to surrender its domain names.

The Russian site sells albums for a fraction of the cost of legal music sites and offers music from artists who have not authorized online sales of their music. The AllofMP3 site claims that it complies with Russian copyright law. Russia agreed to rein in Russian Web sites that illegally sell copyrighted materials as a condition of joining the World Trade Organization, but without evident progress to date. The U.S. lawsuit targets Mediaservices, the AllofMP3 site’s Moscow-based operator, which also runs a music service called allTunes that uses an interface similar to that of iTunes.

New York Times, 22 December 2006 (registration req’d)