Most of us have used the YouTube to MP3 conversion website to extract audio from YouTube videos. It offered easy audio file conversion from a YouTube video. As helpful as "YouTube-Mp3.org" website has been to users, it was a thorn in the eyes of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The company filed a lawsuit against the website, and today the final decision has come that is against YouTube-Mp3.org.
The youtube-mp3 (YTMP3) website was sued for enabling "stream-ripping" that falls under copyright infringement. The battle between RIAA and the website ended in the latter being ordered to shut down by the court. RIAA represented media majors like Capitol Records and Sony Music.
The online free conversion from YouTube video to mp3 was often used to upload free copies of copyrighted content online. In the lawsuit, RIAA accused the website owner Philip Matesanz and his company named PMD Technologies UG. The 2016 lawsuit file read,"Defendants are profiting from the operation of the YTMP3 website. Through the promise of illicit delivery of free music, Defendants have attracted millions of users to the YTMP3 website, which in turn generates advertising revenues."
YTMP3 had 60M unique visitors per month
At the time of filing the lawsuit in 2016, RIAA stated in a press release,"This is a coordinated action to protect the rights of artists and labels from the blatant infringements of YouTube-mp3, the world’s single-largest ‘stream ripping’ site" and it was found to be violating YouTube's terms of service. This is not the first time YTMP3 has been dragged to court, in 2012 Google sued the website but was not successful in removing it from the face of the internet.
The Californian federal court ruled that the YTMP3 owner should close down the website and hand over the domain and stop all operations. More details about the settlement are yet to be revealed, including the amount that Matesanz has agreed to pay up. An extract from the ruling reads,"any other website or system that Defendants own or control, directly or indirectly, that is substantially similar to the [YouTube-Mp3] service."
At the time of writing this article, the website is still active, but we can expect it to close down soon as its owner has been asked to disable it in 24 hours and transfer the ownership to "a registrar of Plaintiffs' choosing."
