More pressure on poor old allofmp3.com (some of you might dispute the 'poor old' I'm guessing). Following the news that Visa was stopping processing payments for the site, Mastercard said it was acting likewise yesterday. Both are concerned that by allowing their customers to use their cards to buy tracks from the download platform they are enabling copyright violation, and do you know, they're most probably right on that one. As we said yesterday, action by the credit card companies is likely to be by far the quickest way to slash the number of people outside Russia using the cut price download store - much quicker than any legal action taken by the major record companies, that's for sure. As far as we know the XRost pre-pay card system still works (the cards can be bought via eBay), though that is more hassle for the consumer, and whether XRost will be persuaded to take similar action against the rogue download firm remains to be seen.
Allofmp3.com yesterday called the moves by the credit card companies "arbitrary, capricious and discriminatory", saying Visa and Mastercard "lack the authority to adjudicate the legality" of the destination. The company's owners added: "AllofMP3 has not been found by any court in the world to be in violation of any law".