With numerous pirate websites attracting staggering numbers of monthly visitors—ranging from 10 to 90 million—it’s evident that the debate over popularity holds little weight. However, when juxtaposed with platforms already deemed illegal by copyright holders, figures as high as 200 million monthly visits seem trivial. In a recent case, a lone YouTube-ripping domain saw an astonishing 343 million visits last month and continues to surge in popularity. This begs the question: who shoulders the blame for such rampant piracy?

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) highlights the persisting challenge of unlicensed music availability, labeling it a concern for the entire music ecosystem. In its 2022 ‘Engaging With Music’ report, IFPI reveals that nearly one-third of individuals admit to resorting to illegal or unlicensed means to download and stream music. This issue has burgeoned over the years due to its convenience and ease of access.

Stream-ripping, identified as the primary form of online music copyright infringement by IFPI, involves the illicit practice of converting streamable content into downloadable files. While this definition encompasses all platforms offering licensed content, the majority of stream-ripping occurs through YouTube-ripping tools.

These tools, available as software or accessible via dedicated websites, offer a straightforward solution for users seeking to extract audio from online streams. However, legal actions have been taken by major recording labels in various countries to combat these platforms. Denmark notably became the first country to outlaw stream-ripping, leading to the blocking of platforms like flvto, ytmp3, yt1s, y2mate, and savefrom.

Despite these legal measures, traffic to ripping sites remains significant, with some domains attracting extraordinary numbers of visitors. For instance, yt1s draws 15 million visits monthly from its .com domain, despite being blocked in India. Y2mate, on the other hand, boasts over 117 million visits to a single domain, with another variant receiving a substantial portion of its 3 million monthly visits from India, where certain y2mate domains are blocked.

Other ripping platforms, such as Savefrom, also witness massive traffic, with 113 million visits recorded in a single month. Moreover, one ripping platform surpasses the traffic of popular streaming site Fmovies, further highlighting the scale of stream-ripping activity and its impact on the music industry.

Traffic aside, the ssyoutube.com domain is interesting for other reasons too.

SSYoutube Skillfully Dodges Takedown Notices

Despite being categorized as illegal by the music industry, ssyoutube manages to evade significant attention in Google’s Transparency Report, largely due to its unique setup. Since 2018, the domain has been the subject of only seven takedown requests, resulting in the removal of just eight URLs.

As illustrated above, ssyoutube seems to actively block visitors from the UK, a tactic reminiscent of Y2mate’s actions in 2021, possibly in response to legal pressures from the music industry, though no official confirmation has been made public.

Despite receiving relatively few regular DMCA notices, ssyoutube has been targeted by numerous DMCA anti-circumvention notices from the UK’s BPI, some of which link it to savefrom, a platform mentioned earlier. However, one might wonder if all this effort, time, and money amount to more than a temporary solution.

Who bears responsibility for this issue, and what measures can be taken to address it? With the music industry making the majority of its content available at reasonable prices, if not for free, it’s challenging to attribute the phenomenon of ripping to the labels’ failure to adapt to the market. In essence, it’s unclear what more could have been done.

Moreover, combatting this problem is costly for the labels. Apart from the resources already allocated to general anti-piracy efforts like DMCA notifications, implementing per-country site-blocking injunctions incurs significant expenses. When it comes to addressing the circumvention issues related to YouTube-ripping platforms, these costs escalate further. Yet, the legal expenditures don’t end there.

In a desperate bid for solutions, major labels are turning to legal action against DNS providers such as Quad9 and Cloudflare, implying their culpability in the rampant piracy facilitated by stream-ripping sites and their users. Similarly, a hosting provider in Germany faces legal scrutiny simply for linking to youtube-dl, software widely used by ripping sites today. Will shifting blame to yet another intermediary truly resolve this issue?

But what about YouTube itself? Amid discussions of massive ‘pirate’ platforms and debates over stream-ripping legality and technological circumvention, YouTube rarely finds itself implicated as a party in the growing conflict, ready to ensnare any and all intermediaries.

If DNS providers or hosting companies are faulted for not doing enough to combat piracy committed by unrelated parties, could YouTube be next? Despite assertions about systems effectively controlling access to copyrighted works, YouTube’s ‘rolling cipher’ lacks efficacy.

While legal interpretations may attempt to redefine the term “effective” under the DMCA, they do little to deter users from ripping billions of tracks from YouTube. The platform hosts virtually every song in the world without a robust copy protection mechanism, and it’s licensed to do so.

A single site garnering a third of a billion visits in a month is staggering, but it pales in comparison to the efforts expended in pursuing DNS providers and hosts under claims of insufficient piracy prevention.