Russian WTO agreement includes copyright commitments

Russia has reached an agreement with US Trade Representative, Susan Schwab, regarding the issues which were preventing them from getting US support for their membership of the World Trade Organisation. This qualifies as music news because, of course, one of the issues of contention was Russia's somewhat slack intellectual property laws, including the regulations that allow rogue Russian download site allofMP3.com to claim domestic legitimacy. US record label trade body, the Recording Industry Association Of America, has been very much involved in Schwab's negotiations with the Russians, and they are expected to announce an agreement with key Russian authorities regarding improving the "protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights" there before Russia moves on to WTO induction. That agreement will probably force the Russians to act on AllofMP3.com although, as previously reported, the decision of major credit cards to no longer work the rogue digital music store has already seriously limited their customer reach, especially outside Russia.