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Stream-ripping site Yout gets web-blocks in Brazil dropped

By | Published on Tuesday 1 June 2021

Yout

The stream-ripping site that has sued the record industry in the US has also successfully had a web-blocking order issued against it in Brazil overturned, for now at least.

Usually it’s record companies that sue stream-ripping operations, which are accused of enabling copyright infringement by helping people turn temporary streams into permanent downloads. But last October Yout sued the Recording Industry Association Of America, accusing the US trade body of misrepresenting the service it provides when trying to get Google to delist the Yout.com website from its search engine.

However, in Brazil last year, things were proceeding in a more normal fashion, with music industry group APDIF formally complaining about Yout and other stream-ripping services – including Flvto and Y2mate – resulting in web-blocking orders being issued against those sites by a court in the country. Those orders, of course, force internet service providers to block their customers from accessing targeted sites.

According to Torrentfreak, the operator of Yout wasn’t too happy about that development and hired lawyers to investigate what had led to the web-block order being issued.

Helped in part by references made to the Brazilian action by the RIAA in its response to the US lawsuit, those lawyers discovered that the web-block had been secured by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Brazil, which was investigating the stream-rippers based on the complaint by APDIF.

It turned out the PPO had requested a 180 day web-block while it investigated Yout et al, which it reckoned were facilitating copyright infringement by allowing people to circumvent digital rights management protections employed by the streaming platforms that were being ripped.

With those 180 days now up, Yout’s lawyers requested that the web-blocks be formally lifted. The PPO then requested that the blockades be extended while it continued to investigate, but the São Paulo Criminal Court ruled that an extension was not justified because prosecutors had so far failed to file any criminal charges against Yout et al.

As a result, the PPO was obliged to alert ISPs in Brazil that they no longer needed to block their users from accessing Yout and the other targeted stream ripping sites. Meaning those temporary web-blocks are no longer in force.

That said, the PPO’s investigation is still seemingly ongoing and, if it were to file charges, it would presumably seek a new web-blocking order from the courts. However, Yout’s legal team told Torrentfreak: “We are confident that Yout’s activities cannot be included in the same category of conduct attributed to other website owners, as its tool is lawful and its usage falls within the very exceptions provided by copyright law”.



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