Originally posted by kosmo vinyl:
i was just checking for metallica... sort of my lithmus test for legality 
i'm guessing even their lawyers don't have the balls to deal with the russian business ventures.
It's not so much that as much as they're not sure if they have any rights.
While Russia is a signatory of the Bern Convention and a member of WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) through their involvement in the UN, Russia and other countries are not bound to all clauses of the DMCA. They are only bound to the clauses that are concurrent with the treaty. Through other treaties (like the one with Canada which allows Canada to rebroadcast American TV through iCrave as long as they block Americans from having access) there are limits. At the present (and to my knowledge), there is no such treaty with Russia.
Now imagine when an unfriendly country starts up something like this or a country not a member of the WIPO or the Bern Convention? What is the RIAA going to do then? That is why attacking Napster was stop gap and not a solution. They should have been working with Napster to make a feasible solution for everybody involved and keep the threat of law suit at a high. Now people are so upset at the RIAA that getting it for free is a palusible of option instead of paying a small amount - bitterness carries a lot of weight.
That does not mean that the user is not violating the law just by going to a Russian web site. It's still against the law to download from that site if you are an American (and probably a Russian too, though I am not sure). However, unlike stopping Napster and forcing Verizon to reveal the IP addresses, there is little recourse for the RIAA at the present to take on allofmp3.com as long as they are in Russia. But you can bet that some sort of foreign aid or other agreement with Russia will be held up at some point until the Russians agree to start curtailing the piracy. The question then becomes how high on the list is this with all the rest of the international troubles? With the amount of money the RIAA is willing to spend, it's anybody's guess.
