Take a look at AllofMP3 and you will see some Russians successfully taking advantage of a loosely regulated, young, open market. AllofMP3 is an iTunes alternative from the bowels of Russia. It’s a seedy and shady place where you can buy the new Arctic Monkey album for $1.15 or just one of the songs on it for as low as $.08. The pricing has no correlation to the artist or the label or the genre. Instead, the cost is based on the size of the file or the bandwidth required to download it. By default, all songs are downloaded at 192 kbps and in MP3 format, but at the time of purchase you can choose between MPEG-1 Layer 3 - MP3, Windows Media Audio - WMA, Ogg Vorbis - OGG, MusePack - MPC, MPEG-4 AAC and select the quality you want to download. The higher the quality, the larger the file, the more expensive the download.

So why isn’t this illegal? Well in the eyes of the RIAA it is, but because of a loophole in Russian law, the Russian government says no. What this all mighty loophole basically says is copy write only covers infringement via physical media, e.g., CDs and DVDs. Since the site isn’t dealing physical cd’s and only the digital form they are not breaking the law in the eyes of the government. For the near future, the RIAA is just going to have to bite their lip and watch the Russians continue to deal their cheap goods with no repercussions.

The way I see it is, if there is a service out there that is cheap and not illegal for me to use, and I don’t care about giving my credit card to some Russian guys (paypal pulled the plug because of the shadiness of the site) then by all means take advantage of it. It is tough to say no when you can get every U2 album for under $30.

If music is not your thing, there is always the plethora of On-Line Russian Bride Services (how much for Olga?)

Enjoy.