All of MP3 prepares to play it again, Samantha

FOLLOWING a Russian court's ruling that AllOfMP3 acted within the letter of the Russian copyright law - such as it is, folks - the site is promising to resurrect itself in the 'foreseeable future'.

The site's bog page says that "service will be resumed" and that work is going on behind the scenes to re-enable accounts, balances and music ordering services.

There's no further details, but this seems like a fairly big deal for the record industry, which must have thought it had succeeded in getting the industry's favourite big boogeyman taken out of play.

The problem comes because America made it quite clear that Russia couldn't accede to the WTO without ditching the site, which the Yanks were adamant made a mockery of international copyright treaties. Fair enough. So the Russians pulled it down - only to find that since they hadn't actually acceded to the WTO yet, their copyright laws still meant that the site was legal, and a judge ruled as such.

It now seems that for the site to be pulled down for good, someone in Russia is going to have to hastily enact some decent copyright legislation - not an easy task. µ