The saga continues folks, but for how long ?
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/6002/wto.htmlFriday the Americans and the Russians came to terms over their trade differences, leading the US to OK Russian entry into the World Trade organization. The pact covers several grievances, one of them focused on Russia's poor track record on intellectual property rights.
Indeed, AllofMP3's low prices for music tracks combined with their availability in multiple formats without interoperability-killing DRM arguably made it the second most popular service worldwide, an achievement supported by Alexa figures.
The question now is will the Russians take steps to close the service down immediately or wait until its formal entry into the WTO, still threatened by former soviet satellites Moldova and Georgia.
But then maybe the point is moot? The other month the entertainment industry successfully convinced the major credit card companies including Visa and Mastercard to cut off AllofMP3. With its main source of international money exchange removed, AllofMP3 was forced to shift its business from a pay-per-track scheme to an advertised-based model. Whether the company can survive on the new model is debatable
I suspect while they are giving away the content for free the folks will flock to it , its human nature to achieve the maximum gain for little outlay, ask the music industry they have been doing this same trick for years to the artists.
