Is it legal to buy songs from Russian MP3 sites?

The Russian e-commerce site allofmp3.com sells MP3s of all your favorite bands (icluding stuff that isn't on iTunes, like the full Beatles catalog) for about .20 a song. This WSJ article asks whether its legal or not.

[L]awyers say buying music from the sites is as illegal as downloading it for free over a file-swapping network. "It doesn't matter if somebody downloads in the U.S. and believes that it's legal because the site tells them so," says Evan Cox, an intellectual property lawyer at the firm Covington & Burling in San Francisco.

Link (WSJ article free today only)

But here's something from the Farber mailing list that goes into a lot more detail about the legality. It's not as clearcut as the WSJ article suggests.

There is a loophole in the Russian copyright legislation that makes services like Allofmp3 possible. Apparently this loophole cannot be closed easily.

...

The Music Industry claims that Allofmp3 is illegal but their own lawyers tell them "... the music industry doesn't have much chance in succeeding (if they attack these companies who are using music files on the Internet under current Russian laws)." Instead they are pushing for changes in Russian copyright law but progress is glacial. Chances that the loophole will be closed on short term are low and there is great resistance to changes.

Link

UPDATE: A reader says: "Please point out that, at least for me and I'm sure others, it is NOT about get music on the cheap - but rather, without DRM! I do not expect or want free music - I expect and want to be able to do with it what we have always been able to do - play it on any damn player I own whenever I want to."

Mark's comment: I couldn't agree with you more. I think most people are happy to pay artists for their work in order to get music that doesn't have DRM woven into it. Too bad most of the sites that offer DRM-free music also don't pay artists (exception: eMusic.com), because for a lot of people, getting music without DRM is more important to them than making sure the artist is compensated.