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27 September 2016Copyright

Sony and Warner sue German website over ‘stream ripping’

Record labels Capitol Records, Sony Music and Warner Bros have sued a German website for copyright infringement.

The lawsuit was filed at the US District Court for the Central District of California yesterday, September 26.

Capitol Records, Sony Music and Warner Bros, along with a number of other record companies, claimed that a website known as YouTube-mp3 (YTMP3) infringes the companies’ copyright in sound recordings.

YTMP3 is not affiliated with YouTube.

The domain is owned by Germany-based company PMD Technologie.

The record labels alleged that the domain exists to profit from the unauthorised production and distribution of copyrighted music that is on YouTube.

According to the companies, YTMP3 unlawfully removes the audio tracks from videos on YouTube and converts them to MP3 files, copies those files to its servers and distributes the files to its users in the US via downloadable audio files.

In the suit, the record companies claimed that PMD Technologie has directly infringed the companies’ music copyright and committed contributory copyright infringement.

The labels added that the scale of the ‘stream ripping’—the name of the process carried out by YTMP3—and the impact on music industry revenues is “enormous”.  They said that tens, hundreds or even millions of tracks are illegally copied each month.

Capitol Records, Sony Music and Warner Bros are asking for maximum statutory damages to the amount of $150,000 for each work infringed, actual damages, pre-judgment and post-judgment interest, and attorneys’ fees.

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