YouTube-mp3 settles copyright suit with Sony and Warner

German website YouTube-mp3 (YTMP3), which has no relation to YouTube, has settled a copyright dispute with record labels including Capital Records, Sony Music and Warner Bros.

Back in September last year, sister site WIPR reported that the record labels had sued YTMP3 at the US District Court for the Central District of California, alleging that the website had infringed their copyright in sound recordings.

The record labels claimed that the domain exists to profit from the unauthorised production and distribution of copyrighted music that is on YouTube.

On Friday, September 1, the parties filed a stipulation for final judgment and a permanent injunction against YTMP3.

The parties asked the court to rule in favour of the record labels and now the website will be shut down.

YTMP3 will also make a settlement payment to the record labels and the site’s operator will be restrained from “knowingly designing, developing, offering, or operating any technology or service that allows or facilitates the practice commonly known as ‘streamripping’”.

The impact of ‘stream ripping’—the name of the process carried out by YTMP3—on the music industry revenues is “enormous”, according to the labels. They claimed that tens, hundreds or even millions of tracks are illegally copied each month.

According to the record labels, YTMP3 unlawfully removes the audio tracks from videos on YouTube and converts them to MP3 files, copies those files to its servers and distributes the files to its users in the US via downloadable audio files.