A 25-year-old man was arrested in London following a
pan-European investigation led by the music industry. The unnamed
man is alleged to be the UK agent for Allofmp3.com, facilitating
the sale of digital downloads by advertising and selling vouchers
through auction sites such as eBay and the website
Allofmp3vouchers.co.uk. That website has now been taken down. The
vouchers contained a code that allowed European consumers to access
and download music from the allofmp3.com website.
Charging £10 per voucher, the suspect was believed to be taking
payment from European customers and transferring the cash into
various offshore accounts operated by the site's Russian owners,
according to a joint statement from global recording industry body
IFPI and the UK record companies' association the BPI.
Metropolitan Police officers seized computer equipment and
paperwork for further investigation. Early indications suggest the
pirate operation may have generated criminal proceeds for the
Russian website running into the tens of thousands of pounds,
according to the joint statement.
As the unlicensed sale of music is a criminal offence in the UK,
police executed the raid under Section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006
which created the offence of fraud by false representation. This is
the first time the new fraud legislation has been used in a
copyright-related case since coming into force on 1st January
2007.
Allofmp3.com significantly undercuts iTunes and other licensed
download services but it operates without permission from record
companies. The site claims to have an agreement with a Russian
copyright organisation, ROMS. However, no BPI or IFPI-member record
companies have mandated ROMS to license the sale of their music via
the internet either in Russia or anywhere else and ROMS has been
expelled from the international copyright confederation CISAC.
Allofmp3.com is being sued for copyright infringement of
copyright in the UK, US and France and criminal proceedings are
ongoing in Russia against the former managing director of the
service. There has been a court injunction against the site in
Germany, and the shutdown and criminal investigation of the portal
allofmp3.it in Italy. A court order requiring ISPs to block access
to allofmp3.com is already in place in Denmark.
PayPal, MasterCard and Visa have withdrawn their payment
facilities from Allofmp3.com "because of its flagrant infringement
of copyright," according to the IFPI / BPI statement.
John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of IFPI, said:
“Allofmp3.com is illegal in Russia, the US, the UK and everywhere
else in the world. The action announced today is the latest to
highlight Allofmp3.com’s long and undistinguished history of
stealing music from artists, composers and record producers and
selling it at a profit."
