Der Ukraine-Krieg als Menetekel

Wir werden in einer Welt leben oder in keiner Welt: Russlands Angriff auf das Nachbarland markiert nach Ansicht von Experten eine Serie von Krisen

Wir werden in einer Welt leben oder in keiner Welt: Russlands Angriff auf das Nachbarland markiert nach Ansicht von Experten eine Serie von Krisen

YouTube Rippers Ask Google to Remove ‘Copycats’ From the Search Results

The operator of MP3Juices and YTMP3, two of the best-known YouTube downloaders, is taking action to protect these valuable brands. The sites have many copycats and competitors that use the brands’ keywords to attract search traffic. The operator wants this to stop and has asked Google to remove the ‘infringing’ sites from its search results.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

mp3juicesEvery day millions of people use YouTube rippers, tools that are often used to download music for free.

The music industry is not happy with these services. Stream-ripping is viewed as the largest piracy problem, one that’s more serious than those posed by torrent sites and direct download portals.

In response to this threat, the RIAA and its members have taken legal steps to shut down sites or have them blocked by Internet providers. On top of that, rightsholders have also sent hundreds of thousands of takedown requests to Google, asking the company to purge stream-rippers from its search results.

These DMCA notices can be pretty effective but since many of the targeted sites take countermeasures, it remains a game of cat and mouse.

MP3Juices and YTMP3 Take Action

This month, we learned that the proverbial mice are also getting into a takedown battle of their own. Apparently, the operator of two of the best-known stream-ripping sites, MP3Juices.cc and YTMP3.cc, is seeking help from Google as well.

As with most popular brands on the Internet, the ‘MP3Juices’ and ‘YTMP3’ keywords are used by third parties to attract search traffic. The official site is heavily downranked because it’s repeatedly targeted by rightsholders, so these ‘copycats’ often end up higher in search results than the original.

This is a problem for the operator, who wants to put a stop to it. And what better tool to achieve this than sending a DMCA takedown notice?

‘Brand Infringers’

The notice in question came in a few days ago and was sent by someone using the name Ryan Milne. The first request covers both ‘MP3 Juice’ and ‘YTMP3’ brands and 22 URLs that use these terms without permission.

“All the reported websites copied our brand name ‘MP3 Juice’ without any authorization. We request immediate removal of all the infringing URLs from Google index and help us to protect our copyrights. Thanks,” it reads.

mp3juices google

Interestingly, most of the reported sites don’t use any copied logos or other content that we could see, so any copyright infringement isn’t immediately obvious to us.

All sites do use the ‘MP3 Juice’ and ‘YTMP3’ keywords, but that would fall into the trademark infringement category. However, a search for the respective trademarks in the register didn’t return any results.

TorrentFreak reached out to the operator of the sites to learn more about the takedown request and the motivations behind it. Thus far, we have yet to hear back.

Google also seems to be puzzled by the notice. After a week, most of the URLs were still in the pending queue and the search engine eventually decided not to remove them. However, there is a similar “YTMP3” takedown request sent the someone named Hunter Kipling, which did result in the removal of nearly two dozen ‘competing’ URLs.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

"Net Voyny, Net Voyny – nein zum Krieg!"

Brief aus der Lübecker Straße, Berlin: Über eine überstürzte Abreise aus Tyoply Stan, einer Wohngegend am südwestlichen Rand Moskaus

Brief aus der Lübecker Straße, Berlin: Über eine überstürzte Abreise aus Tyoply Stan, einer Wohngegend am südwestlichen Rand Moskaus

The TikTok-Oracle deal would set two dangerous precedents

The agreement may provoke a global data storage melee.

The TikTok-Oracle deal would set two dangerous precedents

Enlarge (credit: Sam Whitney | Getty Images)

In August 2020, President Donald Trump dropped a bombshell executive order banning TikTok in the United States. Since then, as TikTok has competed against other Big Tech companies—growing among teen users while Facebook and others have struggled—its ability to survive in the United States has remained under a cloud of uncertainty. Would regulators step in and kill off a product that had become a staple form of communication for some 100 million Americans?

That cloud seemed to lift last week in the wake of reports that TikTok will enter into a data storage deal with Oracle. In the short term, the agreement would be good for US users, enabling TikTok to invest more of its resources and energy into improving its product, rather than wrestling with the government.

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Erdgas aus Algerien auf der Kippe

Die spanische Regierung will die Souveränität Marokkos über die Westsahara anerkennen, das erzürnt Algier. Sánchez’ Entscheidung kommt zur Unzeit. Das algerische Gas sollte die EU aus der Abhängigkeit von Russland befreien

Die spanische Regierung will die Souveränität Marokkos über die Westsahara anerkennen, das erzürnt Algier. Sánchez' Entscheidung kommt zur Unzeit. Das algerische Gas sollte die EU aus der Abhängigkeit von Russland befreien