MOSCOW: The owners of the Russian music site AllofMP3.com have announced plans to reopen barely two months after they were forced to close the site amid allegations they were running an illegal online music store.
“The service will be resumed in the foreseeable future,” said a statement on the site Tuesday, inexplicably dated Aug. 31. “We are doing our best at the moment to ensure that all our users can use their accounts, top up balance and order music.”
The site was shut shortly before a July 1 meeting between Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush in Maine. The timing suggested that the Kremlin was nervous about a U.S. threat to block Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization over its poor protection of intellectual property rights.
A Moscow court this month acquitted AllofMP3.com's former owner, Denis Kvasov, of violating intellectual property laws, citing insufficient evidence. MediaServices, the company that runs AllofMP3.com, said in a statement on the Web site that the court ruling showed AllofMP3.com had not broken the law.
Igor Pozhitkov, the plaintiff in the lawsuit and director of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in Russia, said that assertion was incorrect. “The court's decision was not about the activities of AllofMP3,” but about the activities of its director, Denis Kvasov, Pozhitkov said. “It is erroneous for anyone to interpret the court decision as allowing MediaServices to resume its activities.”
The absence of a court decision banning the Web site has created a legal vacuum that is being exploited by AllofMP3, said Yevgeny Ariyevich, an international partner at Baker & McKenzie specializing in intellectual property law. “The owners obtained a favorable decision and there is yet no verdict forcing them to close the site,” so they can operate, he said,
Pozhitkov countered that law enforcement officials should close the site. A spokeswoman for Maxim Medvedkov, Russia's chief negotiator for WTO accession, agreed. AllofMP3 claimed 5.5 million subscribers and sold songs for 10 to 20 cents each.
