TechCrunch40 Launch Success: Ponoko

We are being flooded with emails regarding the TechCrunch40 conference - things we did right, things we did wrong (lots, apparently), and suggestions for next year. All are welcome, but what I like to see the most are the emails from presenting companies talking about what’s happened to them since they went up on stage last week.

I’ll be pulling all of the feedback into a wrap up post later this week, but today I received an email from Ponoko, one of the forty launching startups, that really made me feel like the whole thing was worth it. “We reached 1 million website hits within 23 hours 27 mins and 6 secs of launch,” said Derek Elley, the company’s chief strategy officer.

They also wrote a blog post noting some of the coverage the company got immediately after launching - there was a lot of it. So much, in fact, that the site went down for a while.

Ponoko is a cool way for designers to create new physical products and sell them. Users collaborate on design and prototyping all the way through to production. Check it out - the website is back up and humming.

Russian Court Finds AllofMP3 Legal

A Russian court has found the former head of AllofMP3 not guilty of breaching copyright, a decision that finds the now shut AllofMP3 legal under Russian Law.

EMI, NBC Universal and Time Warner took Denis Kvasov to court claiming that AllofMP3’s cheap prices breached copyright laws. AllofMP3 went offline July 2 following continued pressure from the US Government on Russia to shut the site, including an escalation of the dispute to the World Trade Organization. AllofMP3 was also the subject of a lawsuit filed in New York last December that attempted to claim damages of $1.65 trillion.

The judge found that the service was legal as it paid royalties to rights holders via ROMS, a Russian organization which collects and distributes fees for copyright holders.

AllofMP3’s holding company MediaServices continues to operate mp3sparks.com, a nearly identical service to AllofMP3 that offers downloads at significantly cheaper prices to mainstream Western online music retailers.