Tagoo Emerging as the Russian Napster?

Ever heard of Tagoo.ru?

Until Tuesday, it wasn't on THREAT LEVEL's radar. But it appears to be a new site offering virtually any copyrighted music downloads for free. It's as easy to use as iTunes, minus the credit card. (Soon after this story was posted, the site was periodically crashing because of "too many connections," according to a warning.)

The site, based in Russia, is on Tuesday's Hotlist in the popular social-bookmarking site del.icio.us. The apparent popularity of the music-pilfering site underscores what is already largely known: Russia, like China, is often a haven for intellectual property piracy.

John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, noted that point two weeks when Swedish authorities charged four men in Sweden who operate The Pirate Bay, perhaps the world's most notorious avenue to free intellectual property.

"The Pirate Bay has managed to make Sweden, normally the most law abiding of EU countries, look like a piracy haven with intellectual property laws on a par with Russia," Kennedy said.

The apparent popularity of Tagoo also shows that, for now, combating online piracy is like playing Whac-a-Mole. Each time the authorities nab a site, another takes its place.

In Russia, for example, the authorities last summer shut down AllofMP3.com, which was selling dirt cheap downloads without the authorization of the rights holders. The Russians shuttered the site in a bid to win entry into the World Trade Organization. That site was quickly replaced by others, including Tagoo.

And a week ago, a Denmark court pulled the plug on that country's largest internet service provider from offering The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent tracking service that points the way to free music, movies, games, software and other material -- much of which is copyrighted.

But The Bay reports that its traffic is up a dozen percent in Denmark, as BitTorrent users find other solutions to click onto the site. The Bay founders have also created thejesperbay, an alternative for its Denmark followers.

What's more, days after the British authorities last year arrested the operator of OiNK, the popular music-sharing site, an even more popular site emerged: Waffles. Tens of thousands of people are feeding and seeding on that site.

Let's not forget that the United States is home to plenty of piracy sites. Yet entertainment industry lawsuits against Napster, for example, have turned some of them into legit, fee paying music-downloading services. Other entertainment sites like TorrentSpy have blocked U.S-based traffic because of litigation.

The entertainment industry, which has sued thousands of indivuals and web sites for copyright violations in the United States alone, claims California-based Seeqpod is a piracy vehicle, too. It's a search engine that returns links containing "unauthorized and illegal copies of copyrighted music," according to a lawsuit by Warner Music Group.