Quote:
Originally Posted by Zero
Obviously Alltunes is taking advantage of a legal loophole, it doesn`t actually describe their misdemeanour, but I presume they`re charging for something they have no rights to. That is Illegal in answer to your question, BUT as visa the people raising the objection are not the people who own the intellectual copyright then Alltunes are (currently) getting away with it. if the PRS/Mpcs or anyone owning rights takes up the case I think it may be a different story, I`m not sure .....That`s why Lawyers get paid so much eh ?
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What Alltunes are doing is effectively charging you the 'performance' rate that say a pub would pay PRS. They claim and technically its correct that they deliver teh byte stream to you once. If you choose to record that stream and reuse it it is just like you taped off teh radio. The difference is of course that in digital music there is no degredation. They are not breaking the law in 'performing music' as long as they p[ay the relevant fee to ROMS which they do.
You have to also consider that their whole business is sited in Russia and yet teh Americans are trying to sue them outside Russia. The case that I linke to is that a Russian judge has decreed that it is only the copyright owners who can take them to court or withold services that they were contracted to do. As such I believe no record label has actually tried taking them to court they just put pressure on Visa etc to cut off their main source of revenue.
The underlying priciple here is a trading model that undercuts what western suppliers could hope to get away with and that irks them.
I'd really like to hear Lindsay's view on this. After all fundermentally its just like iTunes and Amazon selling music as opposed to outright theft.