Last Friday, the RIAA caused outraged on the Internet when it filed a complaint that took down the open source software YouTube-DL from Github.

According to the RIAA, the “clear purpose” of YouTube-DL was to “circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube” and “reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings owned by our member companies without authorization for such use.”

As the debate and controversy over the complaint rages on, a company based in the US that operates a YouTube-ripping platform has filed a lawsuit alleging that similar complaints, filed by the RIAA with Google, have caused its business great damage.

Complaint States That YouTube-Ripping Platform “Time-Shifts”

Filed by Yout LLC. in a Connecticut court, the complaint alleges that its service allows users to enter a link for a video on sites including YouTube. Its browser-based software then gives users the ability to record the audio of a streamed video and store it locally on their hard drives as an MP3.

“By doing so, the user can thereby listen or view the locally stored content when not connected to the Internet and without the necessity of visiting the website on which the original content resides. In essence, Yout allows a user to time shift content,” the complaint reads.

Yout LLC does not name its service directly in the complaint but the website Yout.com, which lists its address as being in South Windsor, a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, matches the description in the lawsuit.

RIAA Sent “Abusive” DMCA Complaints to Google

Noting that the Yout service never saves users’ time-shited content on its own servers, Yout claims that many users utilize the service for the purpose of recording their own videos. Content creators, on the other hand, encourage their fans to “record and play back their original content” using the platform.

However, starting October 2019, the RIAA reportedly sent at least three notices to Google under 17 U.S.C. § 512(c)(3) , claiming that the Yout platform breached the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA.

“To our knowledge, the URLs provide access to a service (and/or software) that circumvents YouTube’s rolling cipher, a technical protection measure, that protects our members’ works on YouTube from unauthorized copying/downloading”, the complaints read.

According to the lawsuit, this caused Google to completely delist Yout’s software platform from its search results, rendering it undiscoverable for “many” Internet users. Yout says that the notices sent by the RIAA on behalf of its members allege circumvention violations, claims that are completely untrue.

“Contrary to Defendants’ allegations, Yout’s software platform is not designed to descramble, decrypt, avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair the YouTube rolling cypher technology.

“In fact, any digital mechanism in place designed as anti-circumvention technology stops Yout users from recording and saving that protected work, thereby demonstrating Yout’s compliance with any anti-circumvention protections in place,” the complaint adds.

Yout Says That the RIAA’s Claims Damaged Its Reputation

Yout’s lawsuit says that as a service designed to allow users to record publicly available media for personal use, at a time chosen by them and without breaching technical measures, it is entirely legal.

“Such time-shifting purposes, absent specific circumvention of technological copyright protections, cannot be the basis for an alleged violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1201. Yout does not violate 17 U.S.C. § 1201.”

By alleging otherwise, however, the RIAA’s notices caused third parties to believe that Yout is engaged in illegal conduct, something the company vehemently denies. Indeed, Yout states that the RIAA acted with “malice” when sending the notices since the industry group intended to harm the company.

Yout Wants Its Business and Tool Declared Legal By The Court

Reiterating that its platform does not act as an anti-circumvention tool, nor one that was primarily designed for the purposes of circumventing a technological measure effectively controlling a copyrighted work, Yout insists that it complies with “any and all” protections in place.

“Based on the foregoing, Yout requests a judicial determination and declaration that Yout’s software platform does not violate 17 U.S.C. § 1201 . Such a judicial determination and declaration is necessary to protect Yout from the Defendants’ DMCA Notices, which are causing Yout injury by, among other things, damaging its goodwill and disrupting its business,” the company adds.

Yout Demands Compensation For Abuse of the DMCA

Yout states that the RIAA’s complaints to Google were sent in bad faith, for one of two reasons.

In scenario one, the RIAA simply failed to determine via testing whether the Yout platform actually does circumvent technical measures. In scenario two, the industry group knew that Yout did not circumvent technical measures and did not infringe its members’ rights, but sent the DMCA notices to Google anyway.

In either event, the lawsuit alleges that Yout’s business was damaged due to the RIAA’s claims interfering with the relationships between Yout and its customers, partners, and potential users. As a result, compensation is due.

“As the Defendants knowingly misrepresented circumvention of digital copyright mechanisms and infringement of the Defendants’ rights, the Defendants violated 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) ,” the lawsuit reads.

In other words, Yout wants to be compensated for the losses caused when the RIAA reported Yout to Google as an infringing service that should be removed or delisted.

“Yout Does Not Circumvent YouTube’s ‘Rolling Cipher'”

In most if not all similar anti-circumvention notices sent by the RIAA to various platforms, the industry group states that “technological measures” can include YouTube’s “rolling cipher”. In Yout’s complaint, the company categorically denies that it circumvents any such measure.

In fact, Yout says that by respecting the rolling cipher, it not only doesn’t infringe the labels’ rights but actually helps to protect them.

“[B]y respecting anti-circumvention technology in place, Yout facilitates protection of the copyrights of the [RIAA member labels’],” the lawsuit reads.

After repeating several times that Yout acts illegally under the DMCA, the RIAA has tarnished the reputation of Yout, the complaint adds. The industry group knew the notices would be published in public (on the Lumen Database) so as a result, the false statements constitute business disparagement.

For this and general defamation, Yout also demands compensation, punitive damages, and a trial by jury.

The complaint can be found here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Enlarge (credit: YouTube / Getty / Aurich Lawson )

A popular tool used for archiving YouTube videos, YouTube-dl, is gone from GitHub after the Recording Industry Association of America filed a claim arguing that the code is inherently illegal under copyright law.

GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft, removed 18 projects on Friday that previously hosted versions of YouTube-dl, a Python library that allows for the downloading of YouTube video and audio files. Those repositories now display a message reading, "This repository is currently disabled due to a DMCA takedown notice. We have disabled public access to the repository."

Although the notice is framed as a DMCA issue, the takedown notice from the RIAA, dated Friday, does not make claim that YouTube-dl is an act of copyright infringement. Instead, it alleges that the code itself is a violation of a different section of Us copyright law (as well as German copyright law), because the "clear purpose of this source code is to... circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube, and [to] reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings owned by our member companies without authorization for such use."

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Last year, a group of major music companies sued Internet provider Bright House Networks, a subsidiary of Charter Communications.

The lawsuit claimed that the ISPs failed to terminate repeat infringers. By keeping pirates as customers it violated the DMCA, the music companies alleged.

Such claims are not new. The same music companies have sued several ISPs in the past and booked a major victory when a jury ordered Cox to pay a billion dollars in damages for turning a blind eye to piracy on its network.

Charter is determined to avoid ending up in a similar position. In March, it denied the copyright infringement allegations in court while striking back with some accusations against the record labels. According to Charter, the companies abused the DMCA by sending “false” and “deceptive” piracy notices.

These counterclaims were filed against the same music companies that sued Bright House. However, in a new filing this week, the ISP informs the Florida Federal Court that it would like to add two new defendants to the suit.

RIAA and MarkMonitor Played a Central Role

Bright House explains that the music industry group RIAA and its anti-piracy partner MarkMonitor are also to blame. The RIAA was responsible for sending the piracy notices that were sent by and based on evidence provided by MarkMonitor.

“The RIAA and MarkMonitor are central to Plaintiffs’ wrongful conduct,” Bright House informs the court. “Bright House received copyright infringement notices containing material misrepresentations from the RIAA, purporting to assert the rights of Plaintiffs but sent by MarkMonitor.”

Normally, it wouldn’t be a problem for Bright House to add new defendants to its counterclaim. However, in this case, the officially scheduled deadline to do so has passed. This is why the company is requesting explicit permission to add the new parties.

This delayed request is justified, the ISP argues, because the originally scheduled deadline passed before it had the chance to add the new parties.

A copy of the proposed amended complaint, filed yesterday, shows that Bright House accuses the RIAA and MarkMonitor of committing the same offenses as the record labels that were sued.

Violating the DMCA

First, Bright House accuses all companies of violating the DMCA by knowingly sending inaccurate piracy notices. This includes sending notices for musical works that they allegedly don’t own or have the rights to. In addition, the notices themselves are sometimes based on unconfirmed evidence.

“Upon information and belief, Plaintiffs, the RIAA, and MarkMonitor, routinely fail to confirm that the files identified by MarkMonitor as allegedly infringing are in fact copies of the works asserted before notices are sent to ISPs, like Bright House,” the complaint reads.

Among other things, the ISP cites an academic study from Jennifer Urban and colleagues , which found that MarkMonitor occasionally makes mistakes. While that study was focused on web takedowns, not P2P infringements, the conclusions are not in favor of the RIAA’s anti-piracy partner.

For example, MarkMonitor was found to send takedown notices to Google which flagged sites that had been dead for over a year. In addition, not all identified URLs matched with the allegedly pirated material.

“The Urban Study also discussed specific instances in which notices sent by MarkMonitor were ‘clear mismatches’ between the allegedly infringed work and the online content that was allegedly infringing,” the complaint adds.

Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices

The second claim against the companies accuses them of violating Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

Specifically, Bright House accuses them of “knowingly or recklessly sending, and causing to be sent, false, deceptive, and misleading copyright infringement notices” for works they didn’t own or have the rights to.

Before the court reviews any of these claims against the RIAA and MarkMonitor, it first has to decide whether the counterclaim can be amended to include the new defendants. If it’s accepted, the RIAA and MarkMonitor will get the opportunity to have their say as well.

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A copy of the proposed amended counterclaims to the amended complaint is available here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

This year the RIAA has discovered DMCA subpoenas as a useful enforcement tool against alleged pirate sites.

The music industry group has repeatedly obtained these subpoenas against Cloudflare, ordering the CDN provider to hand over the personal details of its customers.

The latest target is Wi.to , a file-hosting site that specializes in music. In fact, that’s the only content that can be shared on the platform. However, like any user-generated content platform, people abuse it by sharing pirated files as well.

This didn’t sit well with the RIAA which, armed with three URLs of infringing music as evidence, sent a subpoena to Cloudflare. The music group specifically asked for the physical address, IP address, e-mail address, payment information, account updates, and other info of the customer connected to Wi.to.

This is the same boilerplate language we’ve seen in similar requests that were made in the past, which Cloudflare generally complies with. While the RIAA doesn’t specify what it intends to do with the information, it will generally be used to enforce the copyrights of its members.

To hear the other side of the story we reached out to the operator of Wi.to, Sergey, who resides in Estonia. He was informed about the RIAA’s subpoena last week but doesn’t feel directly threatened.

“We are not criminals,” Sergey says.

“Wi.to is a service that makes it easy to publish music files DJs have created themselves. It’s true that the service is sometimes abused. But that’s something the users do. Also, services like Soundcloud or Dropbox are abused as well.”

Sergey says that, as an Estonian, the DMCA doesn’t apply to him, however, the site does process abuse complaints . In response to these notices, infringing files are regularly removed.

This is where things get interesting. The RIAA subpoena identifies three of these infringing music tracks. However, when we checked these URLs we found out that all three files are still online, including this Harleys in Hawaii track by Katy Perry.

According to Sergey, the RIAA never asked for these files to be removed.

“The RIAA hasn’t even contacted me and it looks to me like they’re acting arbitrarily. They deliberately want to get everything out of the way they can’t make money from,” Sergey tells us.

Wi.to’s operator believes that the RIAA is overreacting. If they see any infringing files they should file an abuse complaint instead of going to court to request personal details through a third party company, while keeping the infringing files unaddressed.

To Cloudflare, the RIAA wrote that any disclosed information will only be used to protect the copyrights of its members. However, sending an abuse complaint seems to be a more direct and effective way to do so.

Intriguingly, the RIAA has asked Google to remove these three URLs from its search engine. However, these requests were pointless, for now, as the tracks were not indexed by the search engine.

TorrentFreak reached out to the RIAA to find out what the purpose of the DMCA subpoenas is, but the organization prefers not to comment. Thus far, these efforts have had mixed results , but Wi.to isn’t planning to change its course.

As outsiders, we can’t judge how Wi.to processes its abuse complaints. We did notice, however, that the site has a “pendejo” link in the footer, pointing to the Narcos theme song by Rodrigo Amarante, without permission.

According to Sergey, this was a birthday present for one of his colleagues, which will be removed in due course or sooner, if an abuse notice comes in.

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A copy of RIAA’s subpoena to Cloudflare is available here (pdf) .

Source: TF , for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons .

Over the past few years, users ripping music from sites like YouTube has been portrayed by the industry as a bigger problem than torrent sites.

According to stats published by industry group IFPI last year, 32% of all Internet users were stream rippers, up from 30% in 2016. This, according to the group, made it the leading form of music piracy.

Last week, however, a new report revealed that the practice is actually on a downward trend , with 23% of those surveyed admitting to using stream-ripping services. Despite the big decrease, the RIAA isn’t likely to step away from its enforcement efforts anytime soon, as evidenced by a new application filed at a US court.

The application for a DMCA subpoena filed in the District of Columbia targets three sites that are either directly or indirectly linked to YouTube-ripping.

In common with several previous applications, this one also requires domain registry Namecheap to hand over the personal details of their operators, providing names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, payment information and more.

The first, YouTubeMP4.biz , recently suffered a drop in traffic according to SimilarWeb stats but that blip aside, has been pulling in up to 1.2 million visits per month throughout 2019. It is most popular in the United States, followed by the UK, Thailand, India and Turkey.

Next up is Keepvid.ws , which at around three million visits per month is the most popular in the application. Perhaps unusually given the close interest of the RIAA, the YouTube-ripping platform is most popular in South Africa, with around 16% of its traffic coming from the region. India and the United States follow with around 10% each.

The last of the RIAA’s latest targets is HDMP4.net , which on the surface seems different from the rest. When accessing the site’s URL directly, visitors are greeted with a blank page, which is unusual for a stream-ripping platform.

Furthermore, Google reveals that HDMP4.net has had just a handful of DMCA notices filed against it over the past several years, the last in 2015, with none coming from the music industry. However, checking in Google’s indexes reveals that the site isn’t indexed, so that makes sense.

The RIAA does mention some specific URLs carrying its content, including tracks by Cyndi Lauper and ZZ Top, which raises the question of whether other sites are using it in some way. Indeed, checks using various resources indicate that the site, which only gained significant traffic in June this year, seems connected to a number of other ripping services.

The big question remains whether the raft of DMCA subpoenas obtained by the RIAA against companies such as Namecheap and Cloudflare are having any direct effect on the operations of these platforms. While things are probably going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about, in the main most previously-targeted sites seem unaffected.

In May , the RIAA tried to extract the personal details of huge ripping site Y2Mate.com from Cloudflare and Namecheap. At the time the site had around 60 million monthly visits and despite the efforts, remains stubbornly online today.

The only real difference now is that SimilarWeb reports the site enjoying in excess of 130 million monthly visits, more than double the traffic reported back in May. The company recently changed the way it calculates traffic but it seems unlikely to have had this much of an effect, particularly since other online measurement sites also show a big upward trend.

On the flip side, a separate effort in May to unmask the operator of YouTubNow.com, a site with 15 million monthly visits, may have paid off. The site currently carries a “maintenance” message and its traffic has tanked to almost zero. That can probably go in the success column for the RIAA.

Back in June , the RIAA homed-in on 10Convert.com, Amoyshare.com, AnythingtoMP3.cc, IMP3Juices.com, BigConverter.com, YouTubeMP4.to, QDownloader.net, GenYouTube.net, Break.TV, DL-YouTube-MP3.net, ConvertBox.net, and Downloaders.io.

At the time of writing, only ConvertBox.net seems completely down while BigConverter.com might have resorted to blocking UK traffic for reasons unknown. The rest are operational, which doesn’t sound like a notable success rate. That being said, the RIAA may have other goals in mind so the bigger picture may play out in time.

By the industry’s own accounting, stream-ripping is on a downward trend but whether that’s attributable to the RIAA’s takedown efforts remains open to speculation. That being said, the RIAA will argue it has to do something , so the pressure is likely to continue.

The latest DMCA subpoena granted by the court can be found here (pdf)

Source: TF , for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons .