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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.

6 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

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      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  2. 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!

  3. 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 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.

  4. 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