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YouTube Rippers and Record Labels Clash in US Appeals Court:
In 2018, a group of prominent record labels filed a piracy lawsuit against two very popular YouTube rippers, FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com.
The labels, including Universal, Warner Bros, and Sony, hoped that the legal pressure would shut the sites down, but this plan backfired. At least in the short term.
The Russian operator of the sites, Tofig Kurbanov, fought back with a motion to dismiss. He argued that the Virginia federal court lacked personal jurisdiction as he operated the sites from abroad and didn't target or interact with US users.
The district court agreed with this assessment. In a verdict released early last year, Judge Claude M. Hilton dismissed the case. The Court carefully reviewed how the sites operated and found no evidence that they purposefully targeted either Virginia or the United States.
The record labels and the RIAA were disappointed with the outcome and swiftly announced an appeal. The landmark verdict also raised the interest of other groups, including the Motion Picture Association and EFF, which both filed amicus briefs, supporting the opposing sides.
After several months had passed, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held a remote oral hearing this week, giving both sides the opportunity to share their arguments.
First up was Ian Heath Gershengorn, attorney for the record labels, who described FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com as sites that help millions of people to infringe the copyrights of his clients.
[...] The attorney for FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com, Evan Fray-Witzer, has a completely different take on the case. He told the judges that the district court was right and that his client should not be dragged into a US lawsuit.
[...] "If you had an old fashioned tape recorder and you recorded hundreds of millions of songs and then you sent those out to users across the world, including more than 100 million in the United States, yes, you would be subject to jurisdiction in the United States for that misuse and abuse of your tape recorder," he said.
The music companies hope that the appeal court will agree. If not, then the US may have little recourse to deal with foreign pirates sites going forward.
[Disclaimer: I have a friend who signed a recording contract with Warner last year and is expecting a release shortly. --martyb].
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday May 03 2020, @08:40PM (4 children)
You'd think that the RIAA and their buddies would have learned decades ago that whack-a-mole doesn't work. If people really want those videos then they'll get them whether or not downloaders are freely available.
Thankfully there's not much worth watching there anyway, all the stuff worth listening to and watching is already on the torrent and the only fresh content on Youtube is mumble-rap, autotuned generic pop-shite, and globalist-curated talking points that have 5 likes and 12,732 unlikes and then seconds later they have over 10K likes and zero disikes.
Actually there are a few things on YouTube worth watching, video game playthroughs, and even that's a hassle because most of those have some asshole with an annoying voice talking over them. The only exception to the latter is Angry Video Game Nerd and anybody else who can pull off that kind of schtick well.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday May 03 2020, @08:57PM (2 children)
Why should they? They're all lawyers who get billed by the hour to fight those useless legal battles. Your idea of broken laws is their implementation of planned obsoleteness.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday May 03 2020, @10:24PM (1 child)
These fights are great for the lawyers whom the RIAA retains, as well as the lawyers the defendants are forced to hire. But the RIAA themselves, why do they keep pissing away their money on these fights against progress?
It's not even tilting at windmills, fighting the good fight. It's much worse, It's trying to stop the sun from shining, a new day from dawning, never mind that the consequences of success in such an endeavor would be extremely bad for everyone, including them. On that last point, they act like it's obvious the opposite is true, and so such questions need not be raised let alone debated. There I think the courts and the defendants' lawyers have gone wrong. Keep arguing the accused should be let off on various narrow technicalities, rather than that these extreme interpretations of copyright law should be struck down.
It's like the War on Drugs. The parasitic Prison Industrial Complex enjoyed far too much profit from that fight, even plowing some of the profit back into efforts to egg on the combatants. Marijuana use should never have been criminalized. Tobacco use isn't criminal. The RIAA is the idiot combatant who won't quit fighting no matter how many broken noses they suffer. Copying should not be criminal either.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RamiK on Monday May 04 2020, @12:03AM
No no it wasn't some hyperbole. Their CEO and COO are actually lawyers with the rest of the execs filling-in on legislation, law-enforcement and tech for writing and lobbying industry laws and preparing cases (per their mission statement): https://www.riaa.com/about-riaa/board-executives/ [riaa.com]
Yes but the RIAA aren't the idiot combatants. They're the staff officers. The idiot combatants are the musicians and the small labels.
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03 2020, @11:30PM
I just wish YouTube's "algorithm" would stop suggesting music to me all the damn time. I don't listen to music via YouTube. I hit "not interested" all the time, and "do not recommend this channel" music channels completely. Yet that's half of anything I'm recommended, and the other half is videos I've already watched.
The topics I do watch, stuff like "how it's made" or the occasional fail video, never gets recommended to me. I have to hunt for them. It's like someone who doesn't listen to music there and doesn't want more politics crap isn't supposed to be going to YouTube at all.