German web hosting company Uberspace is being sued by a group of major record labels in Germany for hosting stream-ripping service youTube-dl.
The court case is the latest in the long-running battle between stream-ripping services and the music industry. The music industry argues that stream-ripping services violate copyright rules. There is also another argument that these services violate rules against circumventing a technical protection put in place to prevent violating copyright rules.
The latter argument has been used by record labels in the case against YouT in the US. But the stream-ripping company insisted that YouTube does not have a technical protection measure preventing stream-ripping. Record labels insist that there are technical protections put in place by Google to prevent direct downloads of streams.
The same is being used in the case against Uberspace, which involves youtube-dl. The music industry has been pursuing youtube-dl for a while, the most notable incident being in 2020, when record labels demanded the removal of youtube-dl’s code from Github. After backlash, Github reinstated youtube-dl’s code.
“But with help from GFF, Uberspace is standing up to the music labels. In a brief…Uberspace explains that youtube-dl is simply a tool that doesn’t circumvent any digital locks, and therefore Uberspace can’t be compelled to take down the homepage,” EFF posted.
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