YouTube-MP3 Ripper Creator Takes On Google 141
judgecorp writes "21-year old computer science student Philip Matesanz is ignoring a 'cease and desist' order from Google over his site YouTube-mp3.org, which rips audio tracks from videos hosted on YouTube. Instead, he has launched a public campaign against Google, arguing that German law allows what he is doing. Matesanz has an online petition."
Re:Why should Google care... (Score:4, Informative)
It's not Google, it's the copyright holders (Score:5, Informative)
The real issue here is that copyright holders (those big evil RIAA members) never realized how easy stripping music from youtube videos actually was. That's the only reason they let all their music go up on the site (albeit slathered with advertising and overlays.) Anytime someone draws attention to how easy getting the audio (or video) actually is, it makes copyright holders skittish. They think that this guy has somehow discovered some sort of technological loophole that allows him to download the files in a way others can't (he hasn't.) Google is probably under tremendous pressure to shut this guy down, and they'll do it just so that nobody starts asking questions about why it's so easy to do what he's doing anyway.
Better that one man takes the fall (and just shuts down his site) than that the whole world suffers losing unfettered access to youtube source files.
ffmpeg -i input.flv output.mp3 (Score:3, Informative)
TSIA
Re:Potential problem (Score:3, Informative)
As long as the US still has military bases in Germany it would be a relatively simple operation to pick him up off the street, throw him in a van with diplomatic plates, put him in a crate marked "diplomatic cargo", and fly him to one of many secret US prisons around the world (there's probably one on Rammstein, so he wouldn't even have to leave Germany). Since he's not a US citizen, he has no rights under the US Constitution, and America doesn't give a crap about the sovereignty of other "so called" nations that it defeated in WWII.
All Google has to do is suggest that this young "hacker" is a "cyber terrorist" acting against the interests of American corporations, which doesn't seem like much of a challenge given how our government always goes along with anything a corporate lobbyist tells them.
Enlightenment (Score:5, Informative)
You're [wikipedia.org] welcome [wikipedia.org].
Re:Potential problem (Score:4, Informative)