
RIAA takes on stream-ripping in copyright lawsuit targeting YouTube-mp3 - redstripe
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/riaa-takes-on-stream-ripping-in-copyright-lawsuit-targeting-youtube-mp3/
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jdlyga
This isn't recording Spotify or Sirius XM. If I want to listen to a song 100
times on youtube, then how is that different from converting it to an mp3 and
listening to it 100 times? Youtube is free. Should whoever posted the song
have exclusive rights to the exact format you listen to something in? The only
argument I can think of besides controlling distribution is getting rid of the
ads.

~~~
izacus
Looking for reason, logic or restraint in lawnmowers[1] demanding utter, total
and complete control and submission to their DRM demands is rather futile.

In all my time in the digital broadcasting industry, there was no logic or
thought given from legal teams demand complete prevention of any kind of
recording or usage beyond extremely draconian DRM terms. At the ISP/IPTV
provider I worked with, at no point noone stopped and thought about how these
provisions affect the users. DRM was demanded by content providers (or you
didn't have content) and every year the demands for more control, spyware and
lockdown of devices increased.

The fact that there is practically no concern given to fair use (which should
be laid down by law, but has been trivially worked around by content
providers' legal teams) means that as soon as technical DRM capabilities will
expand, you'll soon only watch and listen to art on completely locked down
devices that will call home constantly to make sure you've paid enough and
seen enough ads. Removing DRM is already illegal under DMCA in USA anyway.

Cory Doctorow can explains and outline the utter catastrophe of modern state
of DRM and draconian copyright laws better than I ever could in the new
episode of The Changelog podcast [2].

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc)

[2]: [http://5by5.tv/changelog/221](http://5by5.tv/changelog/221)

~~~
userbinator
_Cory Doctorow_

Two related articles from him which also give a lot of good background on
this:

[http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html](http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html)

[http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html](http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html)

...and one from RMS:

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-
read.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

------
userbinator
On one hand, I can see the popularity of sites like these since they require
no additional software beyond a browser. On the other hand, since they have to
themselves download the video and then you download it from them, there is
quite a lot of bandwidth waste and they're centralised easily targeted single-
points-of-failure.

 _Cary Sherman, chairman and CEO of the RIAA_

I wonder if people like him live in constant fear of being targeted by
pranksters, or worse...

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _On the other hand, since they have to themselves download the video and
> then you download it from them_

On the other other hand, if you ever watch that ripped video again on more
than one separate occasion, you've already saved bandwidth / electricity on
unnecessary transferring the data again. More than that, if you're interested
only in the song, not the underlying video, you're saving even more bandwidth
because - as far as I understand - those sites hit the audio channel directly,
skipping the video download.

Also, I love them; they were godsent when I wanted to listen to something at
work while being in China.

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mark212
I had no idea this even existed and I'm excited to try it. Streisand Effect in
action -- thanks RIAA for the tip!

------
cantbecool
I equate this to recording a song off the radio onto cassette when I was a
kid. It's futile trying to stop this.

~~~
pcote
Morally, I agree with you. DRM is an exercise in futility. But you aren't
really comparing apples to apples here.

I radio ripped my share of music too when I was a kid. It was a pain. I had no
little control and often no warning about when a song I wanted would play. The
dj would often talk over the start or end of the song. A song I wanted would
sometimes fade transition with a song I didn't want. Reception sometimes
stunk. If everything went right, the overall quality of the recording was
still inferior to what you'd get if the single or album were just bought
outright.

In the 80s, DRM was naturally built into the inconveniences of the
technologies of the time. Now that technology has solved for those
inconveniences, we find ourselves in a fundamentally different situation for
both consumers and business.

~~~
yuhong
The fun thing was that copyright law was probably never meant to be enforced
against non-commercial copying. Of course, copyright laws are not the only
example of laws that are poorly designed.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The truth is, you can't really design a law to withstand strong, powerful
interest who simply want something not to happen. For RIAA, the society is
kind of a piñata - you hit it with a stick, and candies fly out. A
surprisingly popular business model, by the way.

At some point the piñata will break completely, though. Lots of candies, but
then, game over.

~~~
yuhong
Of course, but I am talking about copyright laws that was designed centuries
ago.

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lobo_tuerto
Hope they never hear of youtube-dl.

~~~
alphapapa
Or ffmpeg, or the browser inspector (with which you can see the URLs to the
video and audio clips and download them with any program), or Wireshark, or...

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nv-vn
There's a lot more you can do by ripping mp3s off YouTube than just using it
to get music for free. Sad that they're trying to stop people from using this
for legitimate purposes because they're afraid of the tiny percentage of
people who download music off YouTube. Also, how does this deal with people
using the new YouTube Go app in India, since that has an option to download
the videos?

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heyalexej
A very interesting excerpt, apparently from the site's owner himself[1]
regarding copyright and ad revenues:

 _" For years, I’ve had to watch how invisible frames have been attached to
many websites that load my site. Such ‘malicious’ traffic has increased
immensely and is becoming an increasingly large problem, because ads cannot be
displayed to those users.“ Usually, Matesanz’ portal monetizes the site via
imbedded ads. If these happen to be loaded in the background on third-party
sites, they cannot be clicked. Fake traffic doesn’t generate any money and
damages campaign performance on the site in the long term."_

[1] [http://www.onlinemarketingrockstars.de/philip-matesanz-
youtu...](http://www.onlinemarketingrockstars.de/philip-matesanz-youtube-
mp3-english/)

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cbhl
I feel like one of the biggest market failures here is that the average 16-18
year old doesn't have their own credit card, so they're excluded from legal
ad-free methods of getting music, even if they make money at a part-time job.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'd replace "credit card" with "means to pay on-line", and shift the lower
bound from 16 to 10 or whenever kids start to get pocket money these days.

Because that teens don't have their own _credit_ cards is something I'd call a
great _success_ for society.

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zouhair
_SIGH_

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codedokode
DMCA works only in US, right? So if website owners move their company to any
other country, their service would become 100% legal.

~~~
icebraining
I don't see what the DMCA has to do with this; they are alleging plain-old
copyright infringement, which is illegal is almost every country (though
whether the site is infringing may depend on each country's laws).

~~~
codedokode
They just made an application to extract an audio track from video file. There
is no copyright infringement here.

It is DMCA that makes almost any operation with copyrighted content illegal.

