These tools are available in several formats including desktop packages, apps for mobile devices, and more commonly browser-based tools. In mid-2012 YouTube owners Google, believed to be under pressure from the music industry, started to make life more difficult for web-based YouTube converters and some cases issued threats to sue.

While some sites decided to shut down, many others continued business as usual, including the German site YouTube-MP3, one of the largest YouTube ripping services around with around 30 million visits per month. The site has long insisted that it has a right to provide ripping services but having fought off Google it recently found itself up against fresh adversaries.

Three music companies under the umbrella of industry group BVMI challenged YouTube-MP3′s assertion that it operates legally and sued it in the Hamburg District Court. The companies said that while YouTube-MP3 claimed to be offering only a rip-and-download service, there were serious technical issues behind the scenes that rendered the site in breach of copyright law.

YouTube-MP3 claimed that users of its service could enter the URL of a YouTube video and have the site convert and churn out an MP3 for download. Apparently, however, that wasn’t always the way it worked. Once a video had been converted to MP3, that audio was stored on YouTube-MP3′s servers. If another user subsequently entered the same YouTube URL, no conversion or ripping was carried out. They were simply handed a copy of the previously stored MP3 for download.

In a statement sent to TorrentFreak, BVMI said that this was a clear breach of copyright law.

“Contrary to the common assumption that YouTubeMP3 is a streamripper that allows users to record songs from the Internet (much as cassette recorders were used to record music from the radio back in the day), in fact the online converter often simply made the pieces available for download without a license,” BVMI said.

BVMI said that by the time the case had arrived in court last month the owner of YouTube-MP3 had already signed cease and desist declarations and agreed to refrain from reproducing and distributing copyright content.

“The current case provides deep insights into the workings of so-called ‘recording services’
and exposes a trick that not only hoodwinks the rights owners but also misleads the users of
these services,” said BVMI Managing Director Dr Florian Drücke.

“Under the guise of private copying [YouTube-MP3] deceives people into thinking that
everything is above-board, even though the user – unwittingly – avails himself of an illegal download platform. We have for some time pointed out that the vague definition of ‘private copies’ encourages cat-and-mouse games in matters of streamripping, so a clarification at the political level is needed here.”

With the signing of the declarations the Hamburg District Court considered the case closed but ordered YouTube-MP3 to pay everyone’s costs.

TorrentFreak contacted the site’s owner for a comment but as yet we’ve received no response. Presumably life at YouTube-MP3 will continue, but without storing converted MP3s for subsequent download. The end result, of course, is that users of the site will still get ripped MP3s just as they did before, a point not lost on BVMI.

“One thing is clear: this platform, as well as most other streamripper sites, generate considerable advertising income that is not shared with the artists or their partners. This has nothing to do with fairness, nor does it fit with our current digital age, when many music sites – some of them free – can be used perfectly legally on the Internet,” BVMI conclude.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

This API, as it’s better known, provides web developers with access to certain YouTube features, but like many free gifts it comes with certain strings attached, aka the YouTube Terms of Service (ToS).

One of the countless resources to use the YouTube API is YouTube-MP3.org, a huge site which according to Google’s DoubleClick service pulls in 1.3 million visitors every day.

What YouTube-MP3 does is straightforward. At one end a user feeds the site with a YouTube URL and after a couple of minutes the site spits out a standalone MP3 file, perfect for ripping the audio from pop videos.

Needless to say these sites are hugely popular, particularly with the younger generation. Just last month TorrentFreak spoke informally with a small youth group about their current music consumption habits and without exception they were all using some kind of YouTube conversion service and listening to that music on their cellphones.

Google, however, are not impressed with the activities of YouTube-MP3. In a letter dated June 8 sent to the site owner ‘Philip’ and shared with TorrentFreak, Associate Product Counsel at YouTube Harris Cohen makes the company’s position clear.

Citing the ToS for YouTube’s API, Cohen insists that offering any kind of service that allows YouTube content to be downloaded (as opposed to simply streamed) is prohibited.

Furthermore, Cohen underlines the fact that to “separate, isolate, or modify the audio or video components of any YouTube audiovisual content made available through the YouTube API” is forbidden, as is externally storing copies of YouTube content.

Continuing to violate these restrictions, Cohen warns, may result in “legal consequences” for YouTube-mp3. The site has been given seven days to comply.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Philip told us that he sent a long response to Cohen providing him with details on YouTube-MP3, how the site services tens of millions of users, and asking for a call with YouTube to discuss the matter further.

YouTube, however, doesn’t appear to be in the mood for negotiation. Google has just blocked all of YouTube-MP3′s servers from accessing YouTube so currently the site has no MP3 download service to offer or indeed withdraw.

“We would estimate that there are roughly 200 million people across the world that make use of services like ours and Google doesn’t just ignore all those people, they are about to criminalize them. With the way they are interpreting and creating their ToS every one of those 200 million users is threatened to be sued by Google,” Philip adds.

Not surprisingly Google sees things from a different perspective. It says that part of its responsibility to people uploading content to YouTube is to give them tools to manage how their content is shared, monetized and generally displayed.

Some of those content owners, including the major record labels, frown on their music videos being used as a source for unauthorized MP3s, so they will welcome YouTube’s approach. Whether they prompted the action in the first instance is unknown.

Whatever the outcome in the case of YouTube-MP3, Google has a big task ahead if it is to end all similar services online. A simple search for “YouTube MP3″ with its own engine produces dozens of alternatives.

Just last year the world’s largest record labels sued another YouTube downloader site but getting Google to do the work at its root is probably much less costly.

Update: We have just been informed that Google may be targeting other similar services with the same message. If your site is affected, please contact us at the usual address.

Update2: The owner of YouTube-MP3 has just informed us that his site does not use the API, but obtains videos by other means.

Update3: Music-Clips.net received a letter from Google as well.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.