According to the report, Sony, Universal and Warner are suing the company that hosts the official youtube-dl homepage, accusing them of circumventing the open source software tool. While the RIAA's effort to take down youtube-dl from GitHub grabbed all the headlines, moves had already been underway weeks before that in Germany. The law firm that works with the major music industry players sent cease-and-desist orders to the local hosting service. The company was hosting the official website of the tool but it was hosted elsewhere.
"The software itself wasn't hosted on our systems so, to be honest, I felt it to be quite ridiculous to involve us in this issue anyway, a lawyer specializing in IT laws should know better."
Three major music labels are now suing the company in Germany after the cease-and-desist in October 2020. According to the labels, youtube-dl poses a risk to their business and enables users to download their artists' copyrighted works by circumventing YouTube's technical measures. If it does not wish to be found liable, the tool should not be playing a part in the website's operations.
The legality of the video is controversial. In Germany, there is a right to make a private copy, with local rights group GEMA collecting fees to compensate for that. Users agree to others in the community making use of their uploaded content under a Creative Commons license. Julia Reda from the Society for Freedom Rights says that even if YouTube doesn't provide video downloadFunctionality right out of the box, the videos are not provided with copy protection. "Not only does YouTube pay license fees for music, we all pay fees for the right to private copying in the form of the device fee, which is levied with every purchase of smartphones or storage media," says Reda.
Despite the double payment, Sony, Universal and Warner Music want to prevent us from exercising our right to private copying by saving videos on the hard drive.
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