Supreme Court Denies Petition from YouTube Rippers ‘FLVTO’ and ‘2Conv’
In 2018, a group of prominent record labels sued two very popular YouTube rippers, FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com. The labels, including Universal, Warner Bros, and Sony, accused the sites of copyright infringement and hoped to quickly shut them down. That didn’t go as expected. The owner of the sites, a Russian man named Tofig Kurbanov, lawyered up and fought back. Before the copyright issues were even discussed in court, the complaint was...
Yandex & Mail.ru Reported For Abusing Dominant Positions To Facilitate Piracy
The appearance of pirate sites and content in search results and similar online services is an ongoing issue for copyright holders. In an ideal world, all allegedly-infringing content would be removed, they argue. However, given the nature of copyright infringement and licensing of official material, it is not always a straightforward matter to determine who has the necessary rights to display or distribute content. As a result, many...
RIAA Defeats False DMCA Takedown Notice Claims in Court
Last March, popular hip-hop mixtape service Spinrilla filed a lawsuit against the RIAA. Spinrilla accused the music industry group of sending inaccurate DMCA takedown notices that waste resources and harm the site’s goodwill and reputation. ‘RIAA Doesn’t Listen’ The mixtape platform said the RIAA was using automated text-based searches instead of actually listening to tracks. As a result, the group allegedly reported non-infringing...
YouTube-DL Fallout: Google Rejects RIAA MP3 Ripper Takedown Notices
The member companies of the RIAA are no strangers to sending DMCA takedown notices to have content removed from Google search. At the time of writing they have sent more than 94.4 million across more than 20,600 domains. The vast majority of these are standard DMCA claims, targeting content or links to content that directly infringe the labels’ rights. However, in more recent times the labels added a new tool to their arsenal in the...
Member of SPARKS Scene Piracy Group Pleads Guilty
Last year, the US Department of Justice booked one of its biggest successes in its battle against online piracy. In August, law enforcement upset the international piracy ecosystem by taking out a prominent Scene group, which was the source for many pirated movies and TV-shows. SPARKS Raids Throw Piracy Scene in Turmoil With help from international law enforcement partners, several raids and arrests were carried out, with the SPARKS...
The Pirate Bay is Pretty Broken Right Now But Can Be Coaxed Back to Life
In file-sharing terms, The Pirate Bay has been around almost forever. Launched in 2003, the torrent index has overcome every hurdle put in its way while other competitors have succumbed to various pressures. Indeed, even after all these years, The Pirate Bay is still a file-sharing giant. As revealed in our latest list of most visited torrent site, the site is still at the top of the heap, successfully pulling in more traffic than...
