When I was a kid I got my first cassette recorder (for those of you that do not know what this is a cassette was… well you can Google it). With this I was able to record music played on the radio onto blank cassettes so I was able to listen to what I wanted without all of the other songs I did not. What I did not know at the time was that the price I paid for those cassettes (and the actual recorder) also included a small royalty fee from the recording industry to cover some of the potential losses that they might incur from someone doing exactly what I did. Now my recordings did not stop me from listening to the radio at all, but the industry was not making any money all of the times that I played my tape. The same thing later happened with Betamax and VHS tapes and recorders, CDs and CD-burners, DVDs and DVD burners and even now into almost any type of media that can be recorded to (I do not think they have a royalty fee on HDDs, SSDs or Flash memory yet.
Still there are royalty fees on a ton of other items that people regularly use to record video and audio information onto their computers for the purpose of listening, watching or whatever. This means that in most cases the industry (by industry I mean recording and movie) have already been paid for a few “playbacks” of an individual song or movie.
Now however, it seems that the old method of recording straight from the “radio” is back. It is just that the radio is actually Google’s YouTube and the Cassette recorder… well it is an internet service and it has not paid its royalties yet.
The service in question is YouTube-MP3.org and it uses the YouTube API to allow you to convert YouTube videos top MP3 with nothing more than the link and a mouse click. Google is not happy about the state of affairs and has asked (well really demanded) that they stop this at once… or within seven days.
YouTube-MP3.org is not the only site to provide this and there are many, many others. These are either web-based or more conventional applications like Audials (formerly TuneByte), SnagIT, and more (really there are too many to list). However, it seems that the popularity of YouTube-MP3.org has lead Google to go after them directly. Google sent a strongly worded letter where they remind YouTube-MP3.org that any offsite storage of YouTube content is against the TOS (Terms of Service)as is separating modifying or isolating the video or audio content.
Although this is Google going after the service you can bet that they received a nice reminder letting from the RIAA about this which prompted Google to go after the service on their own. They are still working to get a verdict overturned on appeal where they were found to be responsible for the content posted on their service. This is probably just a proactive move to prevent the MPAA and RIAA for coming after them for allowing their “products” to be recorded like this. No matter how you slice it, the industry does not want loosen the grip on their cash cow and are very willing to do whatever it takes to discourage the sharing of music and movies, even if it is less than ethical or legal.
Right now YouTube-MP3 would like to talk with Google about this to see if they can work something out. Google has not been responsive and if the service does not stop will move forward with legal action. At that point, if it goes through, it will make all of these services illegal (and possibly the use of them as well). Considering that some 200 million people use these types of services that is a lot of law suits.
Source TorrentFreak
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