Hamburg, Germany. Photo Credit: Claudio Testa
Amid an ongoing industry push to decommission stream rippers, a German appellate court has upheld a ruling against the web-hosting provider behind YouTube-DL.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) touted this latest ruling, handed down specifically by the Hamburg Appeal Court, in a brief release today. We previously checked in on the legal action, which comes from the IFPI as well as Germany’s Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI), in early April 2023.
That’s when the Hamburg Regional Court awarded the plaintiffs damages and, as described by the IFPI, slapped “the individual hosting the stream ripping software” with an injunction requiring him or her “to stop hosting” YouTube-DL.
Unsurprisingly, the development didn’t sit right with the individual, whose hosted stream ripper, as its name suggests, allows users to “rip” and then download audio (allegedly including protected music) from YouTube videos. (YouTube-DL had been in the industry’s crosshairs for years before the 2023 ruling, it’s worth noting.)
One lengthy appeals process later, however, the appropriate German court has sided with the record-label filing parties, as initially mentioned. In a statement, the IFPI welcomed the decision “dismissing the defendant’s appeal in its entirety,” confirming the aforesaid injunction, and leaving in place the damages order.
“The decision is final and The Higher Regional Court of Hamburg has not authorised an appeal,” the IFPI relayed. “The software tool has enabled countless stream ripping services to steal music from legitimate, licensed platforms and take revenues away from artists and rightsholders.
“This is a powerful message not only to those operating ripping services that they should cease their illegal activity, but also to online intermediaries providing services to infringers that they cannot continue to benefit from illegal activities without consequences,” the entity proceeded.
Of course, stream rippers – and recorded-rightsholder legal actions targeting the platforms – are hardly confined to Germany.
Despite the widespread availability of on-demand streaming options (including ad-supported free tiers), stream rippers are evidently continuing to drive piracy.
Recent years have seen courts in India, the U.K., and multiple other nations order ISPs to block several of the services, and marathon stateside litigation prohibited domestic access to Russia-based FLVTO.biz, to name just a few examples.
Closer to the present, against the backdrop of slowing subscription-revenue growth at the majors as well as allegations of massive streaming-fraud schemes, the focus has in some ways shifted to putting fake stream providers out of business.
March delivered a fresh round of fake stream takedowns in Canada, for instance, before August brought the court-ordered demise of Germany’s PimpYourFollower.de. In a testament to the inherent difficulty associated with stopping the sale of non-organic streams, monthly listeners, and more, though, a replica site called RatingHero24.de promptly took its place.
As of August, navigating to PimpYourFollower simply redirected one to the decidedly similar RatingHero24. And while that’s no longer the case, RatingHero24 was still live at the time of writing and remained the top result when searching Google for the shuttered platform.