What Price Pop (and classical)?

I made some online music purchases today from AllofMP3.com. This was mainly because if the USA has its way, then the site may be taken down in preparation for Russia’s entry into the WTO. If you’ve not been there before, AllofMP3 is everything you ever wanted from Internet age commerce: dirt cheap goods sold legally (according to Russian jurisdiction), massive choice and as a finishing touch, stunning typos. Not surprisingly, a whole album for a dollar (or any combination of tracks you like) has been making the RIAA and its international puppet organisation the IFPI see red. Ha!

Like The War On Terror, the copyfight claims the vast majority of its victims innocently, and those victims are predominantly overseas. Last week, it was the turn of a large number of perfectly legitimate Swedish small businesses to be taken off line in the name of copyright as the Pirate Bay‘s servers were confiscated along with a number of totally unrelated ones. The site’s back up now (well, the tracker at least, the website seems to been somewhat patchy since) but the damage has been done – to the publishing industry. Even if the raid turns out not to have been illegal, which it seems to have been, then the number of registered users of the Bay are going to go through the roof as the oxygen of publicity fills its sails even more. We could be seeing the resignation of a Swedish minister or two perhaps.