Some Canadian-registered music sites sites have landed on America’s sh*t list
The US Government is putting together another Notorious Markets report, which names companies, websites, apps, and nations that it believes to be extreme violators of American copyright. In other words, piracy and counterfeiting.
The Recording Industry Association of America has a dog in this fight, of course, so they’ve submitted a document featuring sites vexatious to them. Many of them are stream-ripping sites, websites that allow audio to be captured from streams such as YouTube and Spotify. I quote:
“As noted in the 2019 Special 301 Report, “[s]tream-ripping, the unauthorized converting of a file from a licensed streaming site into an unauthorized copy, is now a dominant method of music piracy, causing substantial economic harm to music creators and undermining legitimate online services.
“The distribution of permanent downloads of files from streaming services deprives the record companies and artists of streaming revenue by eliminating the need for users to return to YouTube and other licensed services every time they listen to the music.
“They harm premium streaming services that offer tethered downloads for off-line listening. Streamripping services also undercut pay-for-download sites like iTunes, Google Play, and Amazon by providing permanent downloads for free.
“The overall popularity of these sites and the staggering volume of traffic they attract evidence the enormous damage being inflicted on the U.S. record industry.”
The RIAA is keeping tabs on more than 200 such sites such as Flvto.biz (based in Russia) and 2Conv (also based in Russia).
A couple of Canadian sites are on this list, too. There’s ZippyShare, which is registered in Canada but hosted on a server in France and run by a dude in Poland. It apparently saw 1.2 billion visits in the last year.
Then there’s Mp3va, which is also registered in Canada but hosted in Russia and perhaps Cyprus. It looks like a legit storefront but is actually illegally selling full music files for around 15 cents apiece. An album can be had for $1.50.
This makes for some fascinating ready. Go here for the full document.
