During a court standoff with Yout, the RIAA’s legal team went ahead and pointed out the alleged similarities between the Streamripper’s names and logos and YouTube. Photo credit: Digital Music News
As Hartford-based streamripper Yout appeals the dismissal of its long-running lawsuit against the RIAA, the industry representative is challenging the lawsuit’s “unbelievable allegations” and asking the appellate court to uphold the previous rulings.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) recently took a stab at Yout’s appeal in a detailed 60-page response. The last time we addressed the marathon case Yout initiated in October 2020, GitHub and the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed amicus briefs in February. In January, the court denied an RIAA motion to order the plaintiff to pay approximately $250,000 in legal fees.
“Here I elect to exercise my discretion to deny the fee request without prejudice and to grant the RIAA permission to refile the request after the appeal is resolved,” Judge Stefan R. Underhill explained of the decision leading to the dismissal of Yout followed by Fall in 2021 and then with Prejudice in September 2022.
In the lawsuits, Yout alleged (among other things) that the RIAA sent Google takedown notices with false information, in violation of the DMCA. These alleged misrepresentations, in turn, ultimately depended (and depend) on whether Yout actually circumvents YouTube’s Rolling Cipher anti-piracy technology.
As expected, the stream ripper states that it doesn’t do this, but rather automates a downloading process that users can easily complete themselves via web browsers. In addition, Yout has accused the RIAA of defamation per se, alleging that the takedown notices led third parties to believe that she had engaged in “illegal and unlawful conduct” and would continue to do so.
Now, the RIAA aims to expedite the “resolution of the appeals process,” making it clear that it believes that “the district court’s opinion was correct on all counts” and “is consistent with several courts that… have noticed a similar stream ripping technology”. unlawful.”
As in previously filed legal documents, the RIAA reiterated in the Highlighted Response that its takedown requests were legitimate because the nature of Yout’s business violated the DMCA.
“To prove his right to a declaratory judgment Section 1201“,” the RIAA’s legal department explained, “you would have to show that it violates none of the prohibitions of this law.” The reality is that it violates all of prohibitions. … YouTube is limited streaming Access is fundamentally different from serving unrestricted Access to downloadable files.”
Also in line with its previous arguments, the RIAA examined in detail the assumption that the DMCA section it allegedly violated concerns misrepresentations relating only to copyright—not to “circumvention.” And in any event, even if the relevant section were applicable in this case, the RIAA denies having “actual knowledge” of the alleged misrepresentation, according to the response, also reported by TorrentFreak reported.
Meanwhile, a precedent “overwhelmingly” supports the RIAA, the organization said, citing other stream ripper lawsuits involving the major labels and the alleged finding of international courts “that Yout’s service violated the equivalents of the DMCA of those countries violates”.
“Yout’s service is not a neutral camera or audio recording device that exists independently of the technology that circumvents it; It allows users to get a virtually perfect copy of the file,” the RIAA continued. “The entire purpose of the service is circumvention.”
At the time of writing this article, Yout (whose founder is “Completed” with Twitter) did not appear to have used social media to address the RIAA’s response. But the music industry has continued to target stream rippers on the global stage, including platforms operating and/or based in Germany and India.