YouTube-dl: The operator takes the website offline due to a judgment by the Hamburg Regional Court

YouTube-dl: The operator takes the website offline due to a judgment by the Hamburg Regional Court

“Due to the judgment of the Hamburg Regional Court, access to this website is blocked,” says the website of the open source download manager YouTube-dl, which was previously accessible via the URLs yt-dl.org and youtube-dl.org. Following a judgment by the Hamburg Regional Court in March 2023, the music publishers involved, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music and Warner Music Group, celebrated their first partial success and initially made it impossible to continue operating the website by depositing a security deposit. The said court order can be viewed at openJur.org.

Fine of 250,000 euros for violation

Jonas Pasche, the operator of the hoster Uberspace, told the website Torrentfreak: “I now have no choice but to follow the verdict. Otherwise I face a fine of 250,000 euros or even jail time.” This is also evident from the court decision.

The defendant is sentenced to avoid a fine due for each case of infringement and in the event that this cannot be enforced, a disciplinary detention or disciplinary detention of up to 6 months (fine in individual cases at most EUR 250,000.00, disciplinary detention at most two years ) (…)

Judgment of the Hamburg Regional Court of March 31, 2023, openJur.org

As Torrenfreak further reports, the music publishers had to deposit a security deposit of 20,000 euros in order to have the website taken offline. So it is initially 1:0 for the music industry, music publishers and rights holders of video and audio content.

Uberspace hopes for further proceedings

I received this information from the plaintiff on July 27, with proof that they deposited the deposit with a bank,” said Jonas Pasche , it goes on.

(…) to refrain from assisting third parties in distributing software or copies of the software that make it possible to stream sound recordings available for retrieval on the video platform YouTube, which are protected by encryption or a similar measure before direct access to the purposes of downloading are protected (…)

Judgment of the Hamburg Regional Court of March 31, 2023, openJur.org

On October 23, 2020, the Recording Industry Association of America (“RIAA”) filed a request to remove the project and its 17 public forks from the developer platform GitHub under the currently applicable provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). The RIAA argued that YouTube-dl violated the provisions of Section 1201 of the DMCA and applicable copyright law. However, the last word may not yet have been spoken.

Source: Hamburg Regional Court via openJur.org, Torrentfreak, Golem

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