Russian YouTube-Ripping Site Wins In US Court (torrentfreak.com) 77
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.
So the MAFIAA is pissed (Score:3)
Beaten by the formerly soviet russians.
The communists.
They tried that. Didn't work. MySpace, though (Score:3)
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
Re:They tried that. Didn't work. MySpace, though (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org] 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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Totally agree on the dynamic range thing.
Women who look like porn stars - well I can live with that.
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Conversation about Britney Spears (Score:3)
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! :)
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Hence the issues with the sanctions on the Russian elites causing problems.
They talk a good game as they rule with an iron fist, but want to keep their money in stable US dollars, and also so other corruption in their own dictatorship can't get at it.
Thanks for the ... (Score:4, Interesting)
... links to the rippers.
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I think this should fall onto the DMCA exception clause for interoperability purposes though. Seriously.
Re:Thanks for the ... (Score:4, Insightful)
That falls under 17 U.S. Code 1201 - Circumvention of copyright protection systems [cornell.edu]. Notice the jurisdiction.
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Well, the only ones Google makes easy are 720p and 480p streams. That's it. If you want 1080p or 4K streams, Google makes it harder. Many sites like genyoutube and the like only let you get at those streams because that's the easy no-hosting one.
And you do want it, because only the 4K/1080p streams have the best audio quality - 128kbps AAC. I believe 720p gets you lower quality and 480p e
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Hold that thought then read TFS.
YouTube is the new Pirate Bay (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!
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The big get bigger by being big. Trickle Up.
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YouTube doesn't allow ripping and works hard at it. You need only take down copyrighted stuff when requested and you would be safe.
Unless that law gets repealed, like that ignorant senator wanted to do...to coerce the speech of those who it protects.
Or the big companies that use it to keep safe, now having developed payment stream mechanisms, ask that it be repealed to keep new competition out.
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"YouTube doesn't allow ripping and works hard at it."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH
YouTube is chock full of full movies uploaded under their actual title plus "full movie". A very small shell script could prevent that. Now go on, pull the other one.
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Re: Wrong- ruling was US court has no jurisdiction (Score:1)
"rule otherwise allows other Empire Powers (China and Russia) to prosecute US citizens for things they do in the USA"
Well, they can. But if they want to enforce it they have to wait for you to step into their country (it's happened, and we've done it too) or come over here and enforce covertly (it's happened, and we've done it too) but these are typically reserved for enemies of the state (or dictator).
No, the real reason our own court correctly states it doesn't have jurisdiction over it is because this is
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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?
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Does Youtube block access from Russia? Of course not. So Youtube does biz in Russia that, by international treaty, must respect Russian laws.
Non sequitur. Youtube does what it does in the USA. A person who watches or rips Youtube in Russia does so according to Russian law. The people who operate the networks are the ones who do business in both countries (for the sake of argument), but governments so far had the good sense not to hold them responsible for other people's communication that they only carry over the borders.
If an American calls me and I tell them a dirty joke, I tell that joke here and they listen to it there. It is quite sad that
Good news (Score:3)
It's not piracy. (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.
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Youtube rips for non-public use are LEGAL around here.
Where is here (roughly)?
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Europe.
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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 y
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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.
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Yea, on Linux Mint I use the gui frontend 'Youtube-DLG' then in advanced options I have it set to download best audio + best video and - - merge using the youtube-dl and ffmpeg backend.
I've used the command line youtube-dl but I love the gui front end, makes setting up a whole playlist of links for automation very simple.
CCLIVE (Score:2)
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YouTube-dl is the only tool to use. I only wish I could get it working on Android. I built the app that someone made for it but it choked on a download that worked fine on my desktop, and the author closed my bug report as user error. I guess you can just run it in qpython, but qpython demands lots of permissions and won't run if you don't enable them all, so I don't trust it.
power-drunk overreach (Score:2)
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...
Still true (Score:1)
The Internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it.
Why do they even bother? (Score:1)
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 eve
Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Clause (Score:2)
"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.