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Russian YouTube-Ripping Site Wins In US Court (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader quotes TorrentFreak:
YouTube rippers are seen as the largest piracy threat to the music industry, and record labels are doing their best to shut them down. In 2017, YouTube-MP3, the world's largest ripping site at the time, shut down after being sued, and several other folded in response to increased legal uncertainty. Not all stream-ripping sites throw in the towel without a fight though. FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com, owned by Russian developer Tofig Kurbanov, remained online despite being sued by several record labels last August....
According to the defense, the court has no jurisdiction over the matter. Only a small fraction of the visitors come from the US, and the site is managed entirely from Russia, it argued.... Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Claude M. Hilton ruled on the matter. In a 14-page opinion, he clearly sides with the operator of the YouTube rippers. Kurbanov doesn't have to stand trial in the U.S. so the case was dismissed.
Billboard notes that the site was the 322nd most-visited web site in the world last year (for the 12 months ending in September, according to court documents) -- and that nearly 10 percent of the site's traffic -- 26.3 million visitors -- came from the U.S, including 500,000 from Virginia.
According to the defense, the court has no jurisdiction over the matter. Only a small fraction of the visitors come from the US, and the site is managed entirely from Russia, it argued.... Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Claude M. Hilton ruled on the matter. In a 14-page opinion, he clearly sides with the operator of the YouTube rippers. Kurbanov doesn't have to stand trial in the U.S. so the case was dismissed.
Billboard notes that the site was the 322nd most-visited web site in the world last year (for the 12 months ending in September, according to court documents) -- and that nearly 10 percent of the site's traffic -- 26.3 million visitors -- came from the U.S, including 500,000 from Virginia.
Beaten by the formerly soviet russians.
The communists.
Corporatism != Free Market
Then solveded is the Problem.
... links to the rippers.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
This is the most stupid thing the suing record labels could possibly do. It's just free advertising for youtube-dl, and Tor.
Anyone that can get python running (comes with most Linux distributions and all Mac OS X), can install the youtube-dl package, and get any video, extract any audio, and save media files locally. Getting this running takes less than a minute.
Once you've got it working, you can call it from a website cgi script, hook up some advertising service, put it on Tor, and in less than a couple hours you've got a nice self-generating revenue stream that they have almost no ability to track or shut down. Make money on ignorant people that don't know about youtube-dl, or are too lazy to bother.
Support local artists!
Basically every song in existence. Tons of TV shows and even movies. All for free.
Shutdown the sites? No problem, youtube-dl is infinitely better anyway.
The real problem is that Google shouldn't be hosting this content and making money off of it. If I tried to make my own YouTube, I'd be sued into oblivion. So whatever...as long as Google gets to get away with theft, I will take what they're giving out for free. Thanks!
Slashdot sells an anti-russian story with fake news, as always. This site did not 'win' in a US court- to do so the court has to rule that it has a right to try the case, and hence find the 'defendent' 'innocent'.
Instead the court recognised, correctly, that what Russians do in Russia is a matter for Russian authorities. And it did so with direct interference from the US Deep State, aware that to rule otherwise allows other Empire Powers (China and Russia) to prosecute US citizens for things they do in the USA- and you can see why this concept remains an eternal no-no.
Otherwise the Deep State controllers of Facebook, Google, Twitter etc could be sought and detained for trial in Russia, since their activities in the USA, when held to Russian legal standards, are clearly 'illegal'.
America is not just the planet's supreme mass murdering war-monger, it is also the planet's supreme business machine, and as such can be imaginged as existing at the bottom of a very deep hole. If America goes too far, the impact on US business interests can be devastating as America can only lose in tit-for-tat trade warfare such as is represented by the targeting of foreign business people for the business they do in their own territories.
The usual statist sh-ts on this site will dribble on about how Youtube is a US biz, and hence interactions with Youtube always fall under US rule- but this is utter garbage. Does Youtube block access from Russia? Of course not. So Youtube does biz in Russia that, by international treaty, must respect Russian laws. And Russians accessing Youtube in Russia via normal means are limited ONLY by the dictats of Russian laws.
Of course if the neo-liberal scum who voted for the demonic Clinton (on her war-mongering ticket that promised to immediately confront Russia in Syria to protect Obama's wahhabi hordes) want to go to war with Russia using any means, then one day soon every American will learn exactly how large the advantage in nuclear waepon tech Russia has. I don't see the upside in this however, since such a war will utterly wipe the USA from Human History.
The democrats were the party of Human slavery in the USA, and there is no moment in the history of this party when it reformed and repudiated its own history. Rather like having known convicted pedos running a nursery claiming they are 'different' now. It will be the DEMOCRATS on this site screaming that Tofig Kurbanov shoulod have been convicted in a US court, just as it was DEMOCRAT owners of tech companies that took him to court in the USA in the first place.
Neo-liberals = neocons = blairites = fabians = the primary demonic force on the Earth pushing for endless wars and inter-group conflict. This story on slashdot is merely part of this continuum.
A another nation has a great useful service online.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Youtube rips for non-public use are LEGAL around here. The law treats it like recording TV, which is also legal. If you are in a country with different laws that forbid Youtube ripping, then you may be breaking the law, but I'm not.
Just use the YoutubeDL library, it's cross platform and there are some nice GUI's for it too if you don't want to use the command line.
Itâ(TM)s inevitable
Your tricks won't work here.
Does this mean Kim Dotcom's case will be dismissed considering the dude never visited or conducted business in the USA in his life and the US was only a small fraction of megaupload's traffic and therefore the USA has no jurisdiction over a German national?
Man I wish this tool still worked.
"I don't see the upside in this however, since such a war will utterly wipe the USA from Human History."
Women's rights will end, men will marry cute young girls.
Cue the FBI issuing an arrest warrant and demanding another country enforce it. Since Russia (and China), like the USA, doesn't hand-over its citizens, Kurbanov best avoid all international flights.
You're right that the vast majority of musicians aren't represented by a major label. Millions of songs are available on MySpace free, legally.
The major labels did actually do what you suggested and did not post the music to YouTube. Did that mean people sought out independent artists? Nope, it just want they illegally posted it to YouTube. Apparently the vast majority of people only want major label music for whatever reason. There are millions and millions of freely available songs, nobody listens to them.
Maybe that's because the major label music is less likely to suck. Especially regarding production quality. The free music on MySpace and other places includes some very good artists and some very bad artists. I guess people don't want to look for the stuff they like. In particular, the major labels have very good producers working in state of the art studios. Apparently people like that, because they'd rather steal the 0.1% of music that's put out by major labels than listen to the 99.9% that is legally available for free.
The Internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it.
Question everything
Kidnapping foreign citizens from foreign airports is a foolish policy. It's likely to backfire. I hope our elected, accountable representatives can find the courage to check the power-drunk overreach of our judiciary.
If I were an executive in an American patastate corporation, I sure would be nervous about changing planes in any airport controlled by a Chinese ally...
Here in Sweden we're already forced to pay a fee on all storage media because we have the right to make a copy of some material for our own usage. Since that included cassette tapes before I assume doing so for music from YouTube may be fine. Before the law has been different for computer software. So there's that part where some private creation of additional copies are actually legal.
But then there's the aspect of quality. Good quality of the source material doesn't make poor music good and good music even at low quality may be enjoyable but personally I really only listen to music through YouTube mostly on the computer but sometimes on the phone and that's nice and I don't bother to rip it to download and keep it to play it again later. If I actually were to want to fetch a copy of my own I would try to find a FLAC or DSD or such copy anyway. By now we've got so good DACs and amps that may be noticable, and especially against some shittier low res videos on YouTube from music videos and such. So why if I actually wanted to download music without paying for it would I use the low quality YouTube offer? Because it's more legal/dangerous? "Easier"? Not sure about the alter if I have to find videos, copy url, paste url, click another link, shuffle tabs and what not ..
Kill the Satanic monster feeding on Russia's children!
Popcorn time!
So Russia (and we all know Trump is their faithful servant!) is messing with the MPAA. This is going to be... entertaining.
The Streisand effect. Now, more people know of the existence of these sites thanks to the lawsuit.
Actual conversation between my wife and I:
Wife: Britney Spears has a show in Vegas now. I kinda want to see it.
Me, with a skeptical look on my face and a concerned tone of voice: Eh, I don't know. Do you think she's going to be nasty, doing all that over-sexualized stuff, dancing around half naked and crap?
Her: Well it IS Britney Spears, so I guess so.
Me: Sounds good! :)
"26.3 million visitors -- came from the U.S, including 500,000 from Virginia."
Not sure why the summary is even bringing up VA, but...
Virginia has a population of 8.47M, or 2.6% of the population of the U.S. 2.6% of 26.3M is 683800, so clearly Virginia isn't doing it's fair share.
Just another day in Paradise