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Russian YouTube-Ripping Site Wins In US Court (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the rippers-v-RIAA dept.

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.

14 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. So the MAFIAA is pissed by WCMI92 · · Score: 2

    Beaten by the formerly soviet russians.

    The communists.

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    Corporatism != Free Market
  2. Thanks for the ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... links to the rippers.

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    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    1. Re:Thanks for the ... by CaptainDork · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That falls under 17 U.S. Code 1201 - Circumvention of copyright protection systems. Notice the jurisdiction.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  3. YouTube is the new Pirate Bay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!

    1. Re:YouTube is the new Pirate Bay by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      If I tried to make my own YouTube, I'd be sued into oblivion.

      The big get bigger by being big. Trickle Up.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  4. Good news by AHuxley · · Score: 2

    A another nation has a great useful service online.

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    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  5. It's not piracy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:It's not piracy. by dissy · · Score: 2

      Youtube rips for non-public use are LEGAL around here.

      Where is here (roughly)?

      There are certainly plenty of conditions making it legal right here in the USA.

      A major MCN (multi channel network) called Machinima was purchased by Warner Media last year, bought by Time Warner who after being bought by AT&T was finally given the order just last week to gut and shut down Machinima completely.

      Millions of videos on the Machinima channel, that Machinima didn't own but belonged to their customers the creators, were deleted in mass with zero warning.

      This MCN has been around about 15 or so years, and back then MCNs were the only way anyone could make ad money from their youtube videos.
      And I don't mean make significant money, I mean contractually Youtube would ONLY send ad checks to MCN companies and never directly to their members. That's just how it worked.

      Also 15 years ago storage space wasn't as cheap as it is today, and to somewhat non-technical people that are artists/entertainers/video producers at heart, it's fair enough to say massive amounts of storage weren't easily manageable by such people on their own.
      We're talking non-tech types with a couple HDs plugged in their windows computer JBOD style, where maybe they had a second copy serving as a fake-backup.

      Now that storage is far cheaper and RAID NAS is point-and-click to setup and run, this isn't a problem moving forward, but what about all that content made in the past that was recorded, uploaded, and deleted off their C drive to make room for the next video?

      Some of these people used video rippers more recently to download copies of their own creations and work to be archived. For those that haven't, their work is now lost forever.

      You'd be pretty hard pressed to find any "here" in the world that would NOT find it legal to copy your own copyright protected works. And this is just a single use case that came up 6 days ago.

      There are plenty of videos where the creator did give permission to use them for personal purposes. But with the changes Youtube made with Youtube red, it actually costs us end users a monthly fee to join Youtube red and get access to the "download" button that the video uploader enabled for everyone to use.
      A bullshit move on youtubes part to do, but both well within their own rights to do, and also well within our rights to subvert. Copyright permission has been granted and so no laws are broken.

      The one specific use-case the RIAA puts forth, which itself is illegal, is not the only use for youtube ripping by far.

      They are quite literally attempting to convince the court that "the only use for kitchen knives is murdering people" and having knives banned on that false premise.
      We aren't saying they are stupid for thinking that murder is a crime, we are saying they are stupid for trying to convince others that is the only possible use for a kitchen knife, when it is so obvious that isn't their only use or even their primary use.

    2. Re:It's not piracy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Just to be perfectly clear. I can rip a copyrighted music video from Youtube, extract the AAC audio, convert it to any format I choose and none of it is illegal or "piracy". With every writable CD and DVD and every hard disk, thumb drive and flash memory card I have bought, I have paid a percentage of the the price to the content industries to afford the legal right to make those copies. I will not back down on this. I PAID FOR IT.

  6. They tried that. Didn't work. MySpace, though by raymorris · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:They tried that. Didn't work. MySpace, though by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In particular, the major labels have very good producers working in state of the art studios.

      And then the fucking idiots proceed to making cookie-cutter music that all sound alike.

      Using women that look more like porn star than singers. And then are forced to use auto-tune because they can't sing on key.

      And then on top of that they use dynamic range compression to make sure anyone with a decent set of speakers or headphones have a headache after listening to their songs.

      Yes, clearly, this is all YouTube's fault.

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      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re:They tried that. Didn't work. MySpace, though by YouGotTobeKidding · · Score: 2

      I would agree... if they could sing. Most can't. Good example... compare nearly any female 'porn star' looking singer of today to Dolly Parton. You may not like DP's music but she could SING... and looked like a porn star.

  7. Re: Wrong- ruling was US court has no jurisdiction by tomhath · · Score: 2

    if our courts start hearing cases against foreigners in foreign lands, it will be a big waste of time and resources

    Remind me again how many Russians who are in Russia were indicted by Mueller; around 24 isn't it?

  8. Conversation about Britney Spears by raymorris · · Score: 2

    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! :)