Say goodbye to allofmp3
Say goodbye to www.allofmp3.com and say hello to www.mp3sparks.com, complete with a similar design, legal disclaimers and even a Moscow phone number that is answered by a puzzled employee of a parquet flooring store.
Since last week, Internet users have been unable to access the allofmp3.com site, which offered tracks at a tenth the rates of Apple’s iTunes. Its Russian version, allofmp3.ru, says it is closed for maintenance. Moscow prosecutors declined to confirm Tuesday whether the site had been shuttered for good, but the disappearance of allofmp3.com coincided with talks Sunday and Monday between Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush in the United States.
That fueled speculation that Russia was demonstratively clamping down on online piracy in an effort to sweeten relations that have been troubled by disagreements on Kosovo and a planned U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe.
Allofmp3 has been cast as the epitome of shoddy Russian copyright enforcement and repeatedly held up by U.S. trade negotiators as imperiling Moscow’s bid for WTO membership.
