AllofMP3.com: Illegal?

Lots of digital-music news this week. Much of it centers on a story about a little Web music store with global-sized impact. Russia-based AllofMP3.com, which has long purported to sell tunes that were legal but very cheap, "could jeopardize Russia's long-sought entry into the World Trade Organization," according to the New York Times. "Operating through what music industry lobbyists say is a loophole in Russia's copyright law, AllofMP3.com offers a vast catalog of music that includes artists not normally authorized for sale online — like the Beatles and Metallica," the Times reports. "The songs are sold by the megabyte instead of individually, and an album of 10 songs or so on AllofMP3 can cost the equivalent of less than $1, compared with 99 cents a song on iTunes." Those AllofMP3 songs also come with no DRM, or copyright protection, an added incentive for music customers. For some time the site has been *kind of* legal middle ground between "expensive" mainstream music retailers and free but illegal file-sharing. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that British record companies would be suing AllofMP3.com. In other major digital-music news, the BPI, which represents UK record labels, announced that British music fans UK music fans "no longer face the threat of prosecution for copying their own CDs on to PCs or MP3 players, as long as the songs are only for personal use," the BBC reported. "Consumers would only be penalised if they made duplicates of songs for other people."