The latest front in the music industry’s battle against ‘stream-ripping’ sites is in Australia. These sites, which enable people to convert (for example) YouTube videos into downloadable MP3s, have been a bugbear for the global industry for some time now.
News site The Industry Observer reports that the Music Rights Australia body is applying for an injunction that would force ISPs to block their customers from visiting stream-ripping sites – backed by industry body APRA and the local divisions of the three major labels.
“These no fault injunctions are used to block the worst of the illegal sites which undermine the local and international music industry,” said a spokesperson for Music Rights Australia.
While some major stream-ripping sites like YouTube-MP3 have been taken offline following action from the music industry, ISP-level blocks are likely to face opposition from internet-rights campaigners, who see a number of legal uses for stream-ripping technology besides piracy (an argument familiar from the days when peer-to-peer filesharing was the hot piracy topic).
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