TechNewsWorld is running an interview with Vadim Mamotin, CIO of the fabulous (if questionably legal) AllofMP3.com. AllofMP3.com is a download service that sells music by the megabyte—all of it unencumbered by DRM. The user chooses from a wide range of bitrates and file formats, from uncompressed WAV to low-quality MP3, with just about everything in between. Prices go as low as one U.S. penny per megabyte, and are never higher than two pennies per megabyte. In this system a WAV-format album might cost  13 dollars, while the average song track in 192k MP3 format might cost between four and eight cents.

"From our point of view, peer-to-peer networks are the natural reaction to the high cost of MP3 (and other audio) files at music stores of official distributors. We think the RIAA and other remedial organizations are acting badly in trying to sue music users. Lawsuits against users is only a temporary, insufficienly considered solution that will be found ineffective in the future. We think the only way to force users to pay for the music is to provide users with rich services for less cost."

AllofMP3 is sanctioned by a nebulous body called ROMS (Russian Organization for Multimedia and Digital Systems), a Russian royalty-collection agency. ROMS is closer to ASCAP or BMI than to a national copyright office, and if any service resides in a gray area of legitimacy, it is AllofMP3.com. This service might be a train wreck waiting to happen; it has already been declared illegal by one pissed-off piracy investigator in… Australia. But unlike Sharman Networks (parent company of KaZaA), which incorporated on Venus to avoid legislative reach, AllofMP3.com is operating in the open and is licensed by an organization with some kind of authority. The situation brings into sharp focus the global nature of online distribution, contrasted with the fragmentation of copyright law and royalty collection.

Here is an interview with a ROMS representative. And here is the English home page of ROMS.