RIAA Reports Telegram to US Govt. Over Piracy Concerns

The RIAA has submitted its most recent overview of "notorious markets" to the U.S. Government. As usual, the music industry group lists various torrent sites, download portals and stream-ripping sites as direct threats. This year, however, the messaging app Telegram is also highlighted as a problem.

Responding to a request from the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), the RIAA has submitted its annual list of “notorious markets.”

The submission identifies online and offline piracy hubs to help guide the U.S. Government’s position towards foreign countries when it comes to copyright enforcement.

“The online and physical markets identified in our comments are harming American creators, businesses, and the American economy,” writes George York, the RIAA’s Senior Vice President of International Policy.

Traditionally the online focus lies on classic pirate sites, such as torrent indexers, linking sites, cyberlockers, download portals, and stream-rippers. These are also listed in the latest RIAA submission. It includes many of the usual suspects, such as The Pirate Bay, Flvto, Newalbumreleases, and Uploaded.

While these mentions were expected, there’s also a new ‘issue’ highlighted by the music group – the encrypted messaging app Telegram. The software, which was launched by VKontakte founders Nikolai and Pavel Durov a few years ago, is frequently used by pirates, the RIAA notes.

The RIAA points out that messaging apps by themselves are of no special concern. However, Telegram also allows its users to share files of up to 1.5GB, a process that can be automated with scripts. This is a feature that many pirates have embraced.

“Telegram offers many user-created channels which are dedicated to the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted recordings, with some channels focused on particular genres or artists,” the RIAA notes.

Many of these files are hosted on Telegram’s servers and the RIAA says that it sent 18,000 DMCA notices to Telegram, identifying over 18,000 instances of copyright infringement.

The messaging app says that it forwards these requests to channel owners. However, according to the music group, this doesn’t have the desired effect, as many channel operators ignore the takedown requests. In addition, repeat infringers don’t appear to be punished in any way.

👉🏼 Read more:

https://torrentfreak.com/riaa-reports-telegram-to-us-govt-over-piracy-concerns-191002/

#riaa #telegram #tg #usa #govt #privacy
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⚠️ youtube-dl - Copyright Violations ⚠️

October 23, 2020

GitHub

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am contacting you on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America, Inc. (RIAA) and its member record companies. The RIAA is a trade association whose member companies create, manufacture or distribute sound recordings representing approximately eighty-five (85) percent of all legitimate recorded music consumption in the United States. Under penalty of perjury, we submit that the RIAA is authorized to act on behalf of its member companies on matters involving the infringement of their sound recordings, audiovisual works and images, including enforcing their copyrights and common law rights on the Internet.

Copyright Violations. We have learned that your service is hosting the youtube-dl source code on its network at the following locations, among others:

https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl
https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/tree/gh-pages
http://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/
https://github.com/benkeung/youtube-dl
https://github.com/cyberjacob/youtube-dl
https://github.com/elaopinska/youtube-dl
[private]
https://github.com/huangciyin/youtube-dl
https://github.com/jckelley/youtube-dl
https://github.com/LouisPlisso/youtube-dl
https://github.com/ojauch/youtube-dl
https://github.com/rbrito/youtube-dl
https://github.com/successLee/youtube-dl
https://github.com/trammel/youtube-dl
https://github.com/vs9390/youtube-dl
https://github.com/zackfern/youtube-dl
https://github.com/tosuch/youtube-dl
https://github.com/pornophage/youtube-dl
https://github.com/tejaskhot/youtube-dl
https://github.com/VideoUtils/youtube-dl
https://github.com/798221028/youtube-dl

The above list includes a representative sample of the youtube-dl forks of the youtube-dl source code being hosted on GitHub. Based on our review of the representative sample noted above, we have a good faith belief that most of the youtube-dl forks are infringing to the same extent as the parent repository.

👀 👉🏼 https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/10/2020-10-23-RIAA.md

#youtubedl #copyright #RIAA #takedown #thinkabout #pleaseshare
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Asking Microsoft to resign from the RIAA over youtube-dl takedown demand

We learned on Friday that GitHub removed youtube-dl's primary collaboration forum and code repository from their site, which had been hosted at https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl. The action was in response to a DMCA Section 512 notice that the RIAA sent demanding removal of youtube-dl, which was released and distributed via GitHub under a liberal FOSS license. In the notice, the RIAA cites DMCA Section 1201 (the removing digital restrictions section) as justification for youtube-dl's removal.

We believe that youtube-dl has substantial non-infringing uses. There are many, but to name a few, youtube-dl has the following important features:

— enable users to watch YouTube videos without installing any non-free software

— watch YouTube at different speeds (including speeds YouTube does not offer) — an important feature for accessibility!

— change the YouTube video quality setting manually when the user is more aware of bandwidth issues than YouTube's non-human algorithms

— ability to download (and then, with other software, modify and reuse) freely licensed videos, such as those licensed under CC-BY

We realize Microsoft, a paying member of the RIAA, has left themselves stuck between their industry association's abuses of the law and the needs of FOSS projects for which they provide infrastructure. While under current law (which we object to), complying with the takedown notice is admittedly the fastest way to limit Microsoft's liability, we view Microsoft's membership in the RIAA as a much bigger liability to our community, now that Microsoft controls GitHub. We call on Microsoft to resign from the RIAA and remove their conflict of interest in this matter. This is an important opportunity for Microsoft to stand up for the values of software freedom.

If you work at Microsoft (including for its GitHub subsidiary), we call on you to petition your employer to resign immediately from the RIAA. We suggest that you raise these concerns directly with your manager or other management, or (even better) by starting an internal email petition with other employees.

To build a strong community of FOSS developers, we need confidence that our software hosting platforms will fight for our rights. While we'd prefer that Microsoft would simply refuse to kowtow to institutions like the RIAA and reject their DMCA requests, we believe in the alternative Microsoft can take the easy first step of resigning from RIAA in protest. We similarly call on all RIAA members who value FOSS to also resign.

👀 👉🏼 https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/oct/26/microsoft-github-riaa-youtube-dl/

#youtubedl #foss #microsoft #riaa #dmca #takedown
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RIAA Abuses DMCA to Take Down Popular Tool for Downloading Online Videos

"youtube-dl" is a popular free software tool for downloading videos from YouTube and other user-uploaded video platforms. GitHub recently took down youtube-dl’s code repository at the behest of the Recording Industry Association of America, potentially stopping many thousands of users, and other programs and services, that rely on it.

‼️ Please share this video with others who use YouTube and other video uploading services. And if you use youtube-dl for lawful purposes, we want to hear from you. Email us at info@eff.org and include “youtube-dl” in the subject line. ‼️

👀 👉🏼 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/riaa-abuses-dmca-take-down-popular-tool-downloading-online-video

#youtubedl #copyright #RIAA #takedown #video #thinkabout #pleaseshare
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Origins of the youtube-dl project

As you may know, as of the time this text is being written youtube-dl’s repository at GitHub is blocked due to a DMCA takedown letter received by GitHub on behalf of the RIAA. While I cannot comment on the current maintainers' plans or ongoing discussions, in light of the claims made in that letter I thought it would be valuable to put in writing the first years of youtube-dl as the project creator and initial maintainer.

Copper thieves

All good stories need at least a villain so I have arbitrarily chosen copper thieves as the villains of the story that set in motion what youtube-dl is today. Back in 2006 I was living in a town 5 to 10 kilometers away from Avilés, which is itself a small city or town in northern Spain. While people in Avilés enjoyed some nice infrastructures and services, including cable and ADSL Internet access, the area I lived in lacked those advantages. I was too far away from the telephone exchange to enjoy ADSL and copper thieves had been stealing copper wires along the way to it for years, causing telephone service outages from time to time and making the telephone company replace those wires with weaker and thinner wires, knowing they would likely be stolen again. This had been going on for several years at that point.

This meant my only choice for home Internet access so far had been a dial-up connection and a 56k V.90 modem. In fact, connection quality was so poor I had to limit the modem to 33.6 kbps mode so the connection would be at least stable. Actual download speeds rarely surpassed 4 KB/sec. YouTube was gaining popularity then to the point it was purchased by Google at the end of that year.

👀 👉🏼 https://rg3.name/202011071352.html

#youtubedl #foss #origins #riaa #dmca #takedown #thinkabout
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Youtube-dl is back again - repository has been restored on GitHub

👀 👉🏼 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl

#youtubedl #copyright #RIAA #takedown #github
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Court Orders Telegram To Block Pirated Movies, TV Shows and Music

A court has ordered Telegram to block access to pirated movies, TV shows and music following a lawsuit filed in Israel. Local anti-piracy group ZIRA complained that the messaging platform does not properly respond to takedown notices, contrary to Telegram's claims that it does. Telegram is now working with rightsholders to implement the injunction.

Last November, the RIAA and MPAA nominated popular messenger app Telegram for inclusion on the USTR’s ‘notorious markets’ list, claiming that the platform doesn’t do enough to combat piracy.

A month later, the EU added the service to its own ‘Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List’, noting that along with other social media platforms, Telegram “lags behind” in respect of efforts to combat piracy.

This opinion is shared by Israel-based anti-piracy group ZIRA. Last year, ZIRA – which represents local media companies – took its complaints to court, hoping to force Telegram to take a more serious approach to infringement mitigation.

https://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-telegram-to-block-pirated-movies-tv-shows-and-music-210210/

#tg #telegram #court #order #block #pirated #movies #music #riaa #mpaa #piracy #watchlist
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