[Infowarrior] - Tagoo Emerging as the Russian Napster?

[Richard Forno]

Tagoo Emerging as the Russian Napster?
By David Kravets EmailFebruary 12, 2008 | 3:24:05 PMCategories: Copyrights
and Patents  

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/tagoo-emerging.html

Ever heard of Tagoo.ru?

Until Tuesday, it wasn't on THREAT LEVEL's radar. But it appears to be a new
site offering virtually any copyrighted music downloads for free. It's as
easy to use as iTunes, minus the credit card. (Soon after this story was
posted, the site was periodically crashing because of "too many
connections," according to a warning.)

The site, based in Russia, is on Tuesday's "hotlist" in the popular
social-bookmarking site del.icio.us. The apparent popularity of the
music-pilfering site underscores what is already largely known: Russia, like
China, is often a haven for intellectual property piracy.

John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of the International Federation
of the Phonographic Industry, noted that point two weeks when Swedish
authorities charged four men in Sweden who operate The Pirate Bay, perhaps
the world's most notorious avenue to free intellectual property.

"The Pirate Bay has managed to make Sweden, normally the most law abiding of
EU countries, look like a piracy haven with intellectual property laws on a
par with Russia," Kennedy said.

The apparent popularity of Tagoo also shows that, for now, combating online
piracy is like playing Whac-a-Mole. Each time the authorities nab a site,
another takes its place.

In Russia, for example, the authorities last summer shut down AllofMP3.com,
which was selling dirt cheap downloads without the authorization of the
rights holders. The Russians shuttered the site in a bid to win entry into
the World Trade Organization. That site was quickly replaced by others,
including Tagoo.

And a week ago, a Denmark court pulled the plug on that country's largest
internet service provider from offering The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent
tracking service that points the way to free music, movies, games, software
and other material -- much of which is copyrighted.

But The Bay reports that its traffic is up a dozen percent in Denmark, as
BitTorrent users find other solutions to click onto the site. The Bay
founders have also created thejesperbay, an alternative for its Denmark
followers.

What's more, days after the British authorities last year arrested the
operator of OiNK, the popular music-sharing site, an even more popular site
emerged: Waffles. Tens of thousands of people are feeding and seeding on
that site.

Let's not forget that the United States is home to plenty of piracy sites.
Yet entertainment industry lawsuits against Napster, for example, have
turned some of them into legit, fee paying music-downloading services. Other
entertainment sites like TorrentSpy have blocked U.S-based traffic because
of litigation.

The entertainment industry, which has sued thousands of indivuals and web
sites for copyright violations in the United States alone, claims
California-based Seeqpod is a piracy vehicle, too. It's a search engine that
returns links containing "unauthorized and illegal copies of copyrighted
music," according to a lawsuit by Warner Music Group.