The case was filed by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries (IFPI) in Denmark in the Copenhagen City Court.
Allofmp3.com sells popular music downloads at a fraction of the cost of sites such as Apple's iTunes Music Store. Operating in Russia it says that it complies with Russian law; but the international recording industry says that it is illegal.
Allofmp3.com sells music by file size volume and says that it does pay a royalty, which goes to the Russian collection society the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society (ROMS). That society is not generally recognised by international collecting societies and artists must apply to it to receive any money.
Rory Davenport, a spokesman for Mediaservices, the website's parent company, told PC Advisor: "It's surprising for a court in that country to make a decision you would think is more common in a place like China. We shouldn't be in the business of censoring content."
John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of IFPI, said: "This judgment is one more step along the road to getting this rogue site closed down. Allofmp3.com illegally offers for sale copies of music that it has no right to reproduce or distribute. It provides unfair competition to the nearly 400 legal sites worldwide that respect the rights of composers, artists and record producers."
The Russian site is coming under increasing international pressure. US authorities have made it clear in the past that they consider it to be flaunting international copyright law and creating a barrier to Russia joining the World Trade Organisation.
Credit card companies Visa and Mastercard stopped dealing with the site in October because they believed that the site operated in violation of "basic international copyright and intellectual property norms," according to a Visa statement.
The tactic of targeting ISPs rather than individual users is one which may become more popular. The UK record industry lobby group the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) is demanding that ISPs Tiscali and Cable & Wireless suspend users that it believes are using internet accounts to distribute music without permission.
A total of 42 C&W and 17 Tiscali customers were identified as sharing music files in contravention of the firms' usage policies, the BPI said earlier this year. While Cable & Wireless pledged to "take whatever steps are necessary to put the matter right", Tiscali said that the BPI had not provided "proper evidence" that offences had taken place.
