Spain

[ES] Spanish Court shuts down “stream-ripping” websites

IRIS 2019-5:1/10

Miguel Recio

CMS Albiñana & Suárez de Lezo

A recent judicial order issued by the Juzgado de lo Mercantil (Commercial Court) nº 11 of Barcelona has ordered that seven “stream-ripping” websites be shut down. The judicial order was requested by the Asociación de Gestión de Derechos de Propiedad Intelectual (AGEDI).

The judicial order was issued three months after the lawsuit was filed by AGEDI.

The Commercial Court ordered precautionary measures preventing access from Spain to seven “stream-ripping” websites. The websites in question are flvto.biz, flvto.com, flvto.co/es, flvv2mp3.org, flv2mp3.com, flv2mp3.by, and 2conv.com.

Under the order, Internet service providers (ISPs) must continue to block access to these websites until the administrators of the infringing websites - including their domains, subdomains, IP addresses, URLs, and proxies or any other technical mean of conversion to MP3 - now or in the future, either (i) request the producers of the phonograms for the appropriate licence or (ii) cease their infringing activity.

This judicial order means that traffic in respect of millions of visits from users in Spain will stop. In this instance, users had been obtaining audio content from legal platforms such as YouTube and converting it into permanent copies of songs, without obtaining the necessary copyright licence and other rights from the owners and without remunerating them. The songs downloaded had been converted to MP3 files, allowing users to listen to them at any time free of charge. This technique is known as “stream-ripping”.

The two main blocked pages reached the 215th (flvto.biz) and 895the (2conv.com) positions in the ranking of national websites.

This is the third such court order that AGEDI has obtained within the last two years. The previous orders were delivered against piracy websites as well, such as search engines with links to cyberlockers or P2P protocols. Under the orders several websites, such as Exvagos.com, Masquetorrent.com, Isohunt.to, 1337x.to, Limetorrents.cc, Torlock.com. Torrentfunk.com y Extratorrent.cd, were shut down.

According to the 2018 Music Consumer Insight Report, published by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), 40% of users in Spain practice “stream-ripping”, the main illegal download technique. This is higher than the global average of 32%.