AllofMP3.com servers ordered seized by Russian authorities

Today, we learn that that the Russian site, AllofMP3 is down, but not out yet. According to this story at Slyck, the controversial Russian music service is just recovering from having several of their servers taken by the Russian police a couple weeks ago. At the moment, they are simply down for maintenance. For years, AllofMP3 have been offering music for pennies a megabyte, even completely lossless versions-all without any DRM to speak of. 

Considering the entertainment industry's position against AllofMp3.com, many fans of this service feared the worst when the site was unavailable for a second day. Instead of the typical homepage, visitors were greeted with the following message: 'Attention" 'We are sorry but the server is closed for maintenance" However this is not the result of a civil complaint from the IFPI, nor does it appear to be anything other than a legitimate server issue. 'As far as we know the site is genuinely down for repair," an IFPI spokesperson told Slyck.com. 'Russian authorities had ordered the seizure of some of the site's servers a couple of weeks ago, but it switched to new servers and the service carried on." Although there's an ongoing case against AllofMP3.com, the service appears safe for now. A request for comment from the administration of AllofMP3.com was not immediately returned at time of publication.

You can read the entire story at it's source over at Slyck.  In case you are wondering why there is such an interest in this website recently, here is a small snippet from a Reuters report published last week. The speech was given by the Russian President Vladimir Putin and apparently he means business. Possibly, the activity we are seeing lately at AllofMP3 is a result of this new posture:

"A necessary condition for developing new technology is more reliable protection of intellectual property. We must defend copyright inside the country. That is our obligation to our foreign partners," Putin said.

"We must also ensure protection of intellectual property rights of our own producers."

Source: Various