This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply. Eriq Gardner, writing at The Hollywood Reporter, on record labels starting to sue some of the YouTube to MP3 ripping websites: On Monday, the plaintiffs filed a copyright lawsuit in California federal court, stating, “Stream ripping has become a major threat to the music industry, functioning as an unlawful substitute for the purchase of recorded music and the purchase of subscriptions to authorized streaming services.” With a few simple mouse clicks, the lawsuit reports, infringing copies of sound recordings are made available in MP3 format. The plaintiffs suggest that “tens, or even hundreds, of millions of tracks are illegally copied and distributed by stream ripping services each month.” Expand - View Original
These cases invariably turn on how the defendant markets itself. In terms of a fair use defense, the website clearly has both infringing and non-infringing uses (ala the Betamax case), but made the fatal error of marketing clearly infringing uses (ala the Grokster case), so there will be a strong argument that it induced infringement accordingly.
I suggested making a playlist for a roadtrip recently and my travel buddy asked if I had a youtube ripping program like sis Spotify Premium exists. I do think I have some albums still on my iPod Classic that were entirely ripped from youtube and I always forget until they come up and sound like garbage.
I've never used those websites for anything but downloading music, but only stuff that's rare and can't really be found anywhere else.
What if instead of paying legal fees on losing battles, record labels came together, made a competitive streaming service and phased out their agreements with Spotify/Apple? Is that a possibility for labels? Cause if profit is the end game, streaming is a better route than squashing those darn YouTubers.