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YouTube-MP3 Ripping Site Sued By IFPI, RIAA and BPI (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Two weeks ago, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry published research which claimed that half of 16 to 24-year-olds use stream-ripping tools to copy music from sites like YouTube. The industry group said that the problem of stream-ripping has become so serious that in volume terms it had overtaken downloading from 'pirate' sites. Given today's breaking news, the timing of the report was no coincidence. Earlier today in a California District Court, a huge coalition of recording labels sued the world's largest YouTube ripping site. UMG Recordings, Capitol Records, Warner Bros, Sony Music, Arista Records, Atlantic Records and several others claim that YouTube-MP3 (YTMP3), owner Philip Matesanz, and Does 1-10 have infringed their rights. The labels allege that YouTube-MP3 is one of the most popular sites in the entire world and as a result its owner, German-based company PMD Technologies UG, is profiting handsomely from their intellectual property. YouTube-MP3 is being sued for direct, contributory, vicarious and inducement of copyright infringement, plus circumvention of technological measures. Among other things, the labels are also demanding a preliminary and permanent injunction forbidding the Defendants from further infringing their rights. They also want YouTube-MP3's domain name to be surrendered. "YTMP3 rapidly and seamlessly removes the audio tracks contained in videos streamed from YouTube that YTMP3's users access, converts those audio tracks to an MP3 format, copies and stores them on YTMP3's servers, and then distributes copies of the MP3 audio files from its servers to its users in the United States, enabling its users to download those MP3 files to their computers, tablets, or smartphones," the complaint reads. "Defendants are depriving Plaintiffs and their recording artists of the fruits of their labor, Defendants are profiting from the operation of the YTMP3 website. Through the promise of illicit delivery of free music, Defendants have attracted millions of users to the YTMP3 website, which in turn generates advertising revenues for Defendants," the labels add.
Why? I do this all the time. If you don't want people listening to your music, maybe you shouldn't put it on the internet?
Just saying....
There's a hundred sites dedicating to YouTube ripping, not to mention browser extensions and command-line tools.
I can think of a few ways the media industry could prevent them, but suing one particular site will not do much in the end.
Ahh, the return of the Betamax case, should technology be banned because it can be used to infringe copyright? Supreme court said fuck no.
https://w2.eff.org/legal/cases/betamax/
"Jack Valenti: I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone. "
VCRs went on to be by far the biggest income Hollywood ever got from movies. Jack Valenti nearly killed that at birth. It was nice rhetoric backed by lots of fake studies, sort of like this one. RIAA tried to stop YouTube, now their members put music on there for free with adverts attached and get a billion from Google. RIAA tried to force DRM onto us, when they removed the pesky DRM, they magically had more sales than ever before.
But hey, this is different, there's no legal use for a mechanism to save the audio or video from a track is there?... It's not like you could rip the audio off a video, make a travel video with that, upload it to youtube and youtube would automatically detect the music, and stick an advert on it, or enforce whatever copyright restriction applies, advert for which the artist gets paid for? All with agreement from the artists who own the copyright? Oh right, yeh that's how it works.
Jack Valenti nearly killed the biggest source of revenue the MPAA ever had. Hilary Rosen of the RIAA nearly did the same to the MP3 player, the biggest market they ever had too.
Even if they managed to shut down every last YT->MP3 service, it's still a simple matter to just record the audio using freeware like Audacity and save MP3s from it. .
First..on YouTube, so you don't know the source and quality and then ripped to lossy mp3 format, and I'm guessing it isn't likely to be very high quality mp3.
This is almost analogous to trying to record songs off FM radio onto cassettes...except without having to dodge the DJ talking over the music.
Does no one put value into decent sounding music (just talking about the fidelity of the recording here, not getting into the quality of actual musicianship in the modern day).
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
What's the difference between me playing the same song 50000 times on YouTube, or me ripping the song and listening to that same MP3 50000 times?
Just create a $0.10 per pop Download button in Youtube and look how fast you'll be cashing in.
Hell, when I was about 12yrs, I went into a high end audio shop at the time, and heard my first pair of Klipschorns hooked to a McIntosh tube amp...and was hooked.
While there is nothing wrong with appreciating high quality sound, being willing to pay big $ for it makes you something of an outlier among the General Public.
But I wasn't the stand out of my day...all of my friends for the most part worked for and bought good stereos for home.
They did so because that was the fashion of the day. I seriously doubt many of them were audiophiles. Most young people I've ever met with expensive home stereos tend to listen to them at volumes that will ensure loss of hearing so that they will never be able to appreciate quality sound. In my college dorms 20+ years ago it was de-rigeur to have a ridiculously oversized stereo and to play it at volumes that would wake the dead. Subtle details of the sound were not important. Some of them were actually genuinely nice pieces of kit but that wasn't why anyone bought them.
So, wondering when the masses stopped caring at all about how the music sounded?
Why do you assume they ever really cared? People want to listen to music that evokes an emotion in them. For most the quality of the sound is largely incidental to this. Nobody really gives a crap if the latest Brittney Spears album has amazing fidelity.
iTunes is weird, in that you need a special application which only runs on a couple of OSes, to be able to use it. You can play the music on nearly anything, but you can't simply buy it on anything.
They should make a web store. I think this web thing is going to take off; it's not a fad.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
My headset costs 15EUR. The music boxes I have at home are around the same price range. I listen to music to have background noise. Do you seriously think I need to have the perfect quality of music?
When I go to a live performance, I am more interested in the "sharing an experience with friends" part then I am listening to the music. In fact, some of the best evenings where when the music was absolutely horrible. (Lousy music AND lousy PA)
So no, I do not put value into decent sounding music. To me music is like a hammer, a tool to either share time with friends or family (that is what I value); a way to have memories about these events by listening to the music and have my memory triggered or just as background.
It could very well be that I value things you deem worthless and I will not judge you for that, so please do not look down on others who do not have the identical values as you have.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
16-bit @ 44 KHz was "good enough" for the average Joe.
And by that you mean "mathematically proven to capture everything the human ear can hear". But I'm sure your cables are danceable.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.