This article discusses the closing of www.allofmp3.com - a major Russian music download website, which was considered a significant copyright infringer by western countries. Users could buy songs from the website and the owners claimed that they paid royalties and license fees for the songs and therefore the owners argue that the site was legitimate in accordance with the law of the Russia Federation. Western music companies, however, assert that they do not receive any of these fees. This issue is important for a political reason: the presidents of Russia and the U.S. were meeting at the same time and the article speculates that Russia was trying to improve its relations with the West.
    This source is important for my research because it shows the link between piracy and international politics. Perhaps a way of dealing with countries where piracy is rampant is to tie their success enforcing intellectual property rights to the amicability of their relations with the West. The outcome of this scheme will depend on the country’s size and particular international standing and needs. As this article shows, the closing of www.allofmp3.com was merely a symbolic gesture since a nearly identical site opened up soon after but at a different address. It is also evident that there are domestic inconsistencies when it comes to applying copyright and license laws. For example, even though allofmp3 claims to have paid the necessary licensing fees, the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society says that it has not received these payments for months. This hints that piracy is not just a copyright and intellectual property issue, but that it has links to more lucrative domestic crime operations. Because of the vague wording of the ACTA, it is not clear how this agreement will affect similar situations.