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RIAA Sued By YouTube-Ripping Site Over DMCA Anti-Circumvention Notices
A company operating a YouTube-ripping platform has sued the RIAA for sending "abusive" DMCA anti-circumvention notices to Google. According to the complaint and contrary to the RIAA's claims, the Yout service does not "descramble, decrypt, avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair" YouTube's rolling cipher technology.
Last Friday, the RIAA caused [outrage] 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.
RIAA's YouTube-DL Takedown Ticks Off Developers and GitHub's CEO
An RIAA takedown request, which removed the YouTube-DL repository from GitHub, has ticked off developers and GitHub's CEO. Numerous people responded by copying and republishing the contested code, including in some quite clever ways. Meanwhile, GitHub's CEO is "annoyed" as well, offering help to get the repo reinstated.
Previously: GitHub has Received a DMCA Takedown from RIAA for youtube-dl
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @09:34PM (8 children)
OK, so I'm a little bit confused here.
To remain in compliance with the DMCA safe harbour provisions, if Github takes down a repository due to a DMCA takedown notice, then they are legally required to reinstate it upon receiving a counter-notice (at which point, the RIAA must either give up and do nothing, or file a lawsuit within 10 days).
Obviously Yout LLC. is willing to take this to court. So filing a counter-notice seems like a no brainer? Why is the repository still down?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2020, @09:39PM (1 child)
Ah, the timelines appear to be that the repository is to be reinstated between 10 and 14 business days upon receipt of a counter notice. So I guess you get fucked for a minimum of two weeks even if the DMCA claim has no merit and you respond promptly. Brutal.
(Score: 2, Informative) by fustakrakich on Wednesday October 28 2020, @10:16PM
By design... The machine is working perfectly, keeping the common carrier threat at bay...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shortscreen on Wednesday October 28 2020, @11:21PM (2 children)
IIUC there are two separate cases here. Yout can't file a counternotice for the github takedown because the original takedown wasn't directed at them. Yout doesn't run the youtube-dl project.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jasassin on Thursday October 29 2020, @12:20AM
That may be true, but since they claim their business is losing money because of what may be a frivolous DMCA claim, they have every right to sue. What repercussion ensues, if any, only time will tell.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2020, @06:02PM
Oh I see, I was confused by the headline "Yout LLC. Sues RIAA Over Youtube-DL DMCA Complatins" which appears totally wrong. This lawsuit is in response to totally different DMCA takedowns (delisting Yout from Google search) and is not related to youtube-dl at all.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Thursday October 29 2020, @02:21PM (2 children)
As I understand it, it's actually asymmetric. They are required to take down the project when they receive the take-down notice, they are permitted to put it back when they get the counter-notice and protected if they do, but they are not required to put it back.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2020, @05:56PM (1 child)
It seems you may be, at least in part, right. IANAL, but taking a look at the statute [cornell.edu] it looks like reinstatement is required only to avoid liability for damages directly caused by the takedown itself. But indeed, the limitation on liability offered by responding to takedown requests does not appear to be conditioned on responding to counter notifications.
So I think that means, for example, if you took down someone's website in response to a takedown and failed to reinstate it within the timelines upon receipt of a counter notice, you could potentially be liable for the lost business that occurred because the website was down, but still not liable for the original alleged infringement (because you responded to the takedown notice). I have not examined any relevant case law.
However, I suspect virtually everyone implementing the takedown process also implements the reinstatement process because that should really not be any harder to do and does provide additional liability protection so why would you not do it.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:11AM
YouTube famously does not bother with reinstatement in a lot of cases. Their T&Cs provide them with the right to drop your content without notice for any reason and explicitly provide no availability guarantees, so you have no liability from them that you can usefully argue in court.
sudo mod me up