This article is more than 1 year old

Allofmp3.com bounces back - sort of

Mysterious downtime...

Update Music download site allofmp3.com lurched back into life today after almost three days of silence.

However, mystery continues to surround the site's status. While it appears to have had a facelift and still offers downloads of MP3s, the ordering facility is apparently out of service, according to one Reg reader.

The music site was unavailable over the weekend and for most of yesterday. This monitoring site tracks downtime, but counts providing an error page as uptime. Earlier today the site: "We are sorry but the server is down for maintenance".

The disappearance of the Russia-based site coupled with recent comments from President Putin on the importance of protecting intellectual property led some to fear the site has been shut down.

A visit to Netcraft, which checks the operating system of web servers, reveals the service was running Linux when last queried on 17 March 2006. Before this allofmp3 was running Windows 2000 so maybe they're just having problems with the new operating system. But any server problem should have been sorted out by now.

The IFPI, which was behind legal attacks on the site last year, told us the shutdown was not due to any enforcement action it was taking and it believes the site was genuinely down for maintenance.

The IFPI tried to take action against the site last year but failed because it does not break Russian laws, nor is it illegal to import music from the site into many countries.

The Business Software Alliance and the Recording Industry Ass. of America recently asked the US government to impose sanctions on Russia for failing to take adequate action against pirates. It called for Russia to be branded a Priority Foreign Country which could lead to sanctions.

A group of US senators and representatives have called on George Bush to block Russia's entry to the WTO unless it opens up agriculture markets and tightens up intellectual property laws. ®

Update:

Thanks to all the Register readers who emailed us to point out the site is back up. It reappeared minutes after our story was published. We still can't get hold of anyone at allofmp3, or its hosting company, but we will keep trying. Anyone with more information please email us at the usual address.

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