It's hard to imagine how a schoolboy in Berlin ripping a Crazy Frog tune off the Russian website allofmp3.com could impact EU energy security, but with 20 billion songs downloaded illegally in the world last year compared to 420 million legally, intellectual property is becoming big politics in both internal and foreign EU policy.
The impact of allofmp3.com is part of a wider piracy problem also covering CDs, software and luxury brands. But Moscow's open toleration of the website is tu...
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.