Legal MP3 From Russia

Wall Street Journal discusses the legal standing of MP3Sale and Soundike, popular online music destinations located in Russia and selling songs for extremely low prices such as 10-15c for a song, while comparable Wal-Mart download price would be at fixed 88c. Wall Street Journal's verdict is that the sites are not legal to sell their goods in the US, although the offering does sound enticing.

What's more, the sites feature online music not available for sale in the U.S. Though copyright holders have prevented the sale of tunes from the Beatles online, the Russian sites offer most of the Beatles catalog - "Abbey Road" sells for $1.60 on MP3Sale.

MP3Panda, being a follower of MP3Fiesta, now offers mp3 music downloads for $0.20 per song. Together with a great catalog currently it's one of my best choices.

It's worth highlighting, however, that the services are perfectly legal in Russia. The legislature there enforces compulsory licenses, which means that anyone can get the license to distribute and sell music as long as they pay for it somewhere. In the US if you plan to sell a certain CD, you have to negotiate with the labels, and that's why the original Napster got shut down by the courts - they violated the law by not obtaining the licenses from the RIAA mob.

In Russia if you prove that (a) you keep track of what you're distributing (log number of downloads) and (b) you pay to the collection agency, you're legal to distribute any music you want. The collection agency (ROMS and FAIR, quoted in the Wall Street Journal article) will then re-distribute the money to the copyright holders.

Have you heard about illegal music downloads? Are you confused as to what is legal and what is not? The internet boom has now made it much easier for people to receive information online. In addition to that, technology and software programs have made it easier for the average music lover and computer user to do things they never could before such as download and share music and MP3 files over the internet. Sites like Napster were highly popular and for good reason. What person doesn't love some great music- especially if it's free?

If you have been surfing the web lately chances are you have noticed all the sites available that offer music downloads. When taking a closer look you may also notice that some of them do not offer this music legally. So what is a legal music download? It is a way to legally download music to your computer so you can transfer it to your portable music device. The music used for these downloads have been approved for these sites by the artists. These programs allow network users share files directly between each other.