UK music industry to sue AllofMP3.com

UK music industry body the BPI is to sue popular Russian download site AllofMP3.com, claiming it is operating outside the law and not sharing any of its profits with the artists whose music it sells.

AllofMP3.com sells music singles and albums for download, such as rival iTunes, but typically very cheaply - charging a mere £1 for albums, compared with iTunes' typical price of £7.99.

The site says it complies with Russian laws and does make royalty payments to the country's rightsholders organisation. Not so, says the BPI, which maintains all of the site's claims to be legal are false and that no artists have received monies from the site to date.

As a result, the BPI is now intending to take AllofMP3.com through the UK courts.

A spokesman for the BPI told silicon.com that it won't be setting the lawyers on any UK users of site: "While it remains illegal to use the site, we aren't interested in taking users to task - what we are doing is targeting the site itself."

According to recent research by XTN, AllofMP3.com is the second most-used download site in the UK, behind Apple's iTunes.