OLG Hamburg: Uberspace liable for hosting Youtube-DL
The Higher Regional Court has rejected Uberspace's appeal against the lower court's ruling that the provider may not host Youtube-DL.
(Image: Shutterstock.com/Chubo - my masterpiece)
Another legal success for the music industry in the dispute over the youtube-dl.org website and the Youtube-DL program library for MP3 downloads that was once linked to it: The Hanseatic Higher Regional Court (OLG) has rejected the appeal of the responsible host provider Uberspace. This was announced by the German Music Industry Association (BVMI) on Tuesday. The higher court thus confirmed the controversial ruling of the Hamburg Regional Court. This court ruled at the end of March 2023 that the Mainz-based company youtube-dl.org may no longer host the content. It ordered the defendant to discontinue the service. Uberspace complied with this order in August 2023 after the plaintiffs had paid the required deposit of 20,000 euros.
The German offshoots of the three major international labels Universal Music, Warner Music Group and Sony Entertainment sued Uberspace in early 2022 for hosting the site. In essence, they argued that The linked software tool allows countless stream ripping services to download music from licensed platforms such as YouTube by circumventing technical protection measures – and thus unlawfully. In addition, Uberspace accepts payments for the open source project.
The OLG has now also confirmed that Uberspace boss Jonas Pasche must refrain from helping third parties to circumvent "effective technical protection measures" of sound recordings by the artists represented by the labels Mia, Wincent Weiss and Robin Schulz. The lower court also found that Pasche was basically obliged to pay damages for unauthorized downloads through the use of YouTube-DL, provided that users had downloaded the software via the disputed website. It assumed that the program was mainly used to download content from YouTube, for which a technical instrument called "Rolling Cipher" was used to make such downloads more difficult or prevent them.
A threat to freedom of expression and information
René Houareau, Managing Director of Legal and Policy at the German Music Industry Association (BVMI), sees the OLG ruling as "a further judicial clarification and warning". Hosting companies should not rely on "simply being able to escape liability".
The Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF) supported Uberspace's appeal against the regional court ruling. It spoke of a further attempt by the music industry to use the pretext of copyright law to drive lawful network activities such as download tools into illegality. The GFF argued that the download tool did not circumvent any effective copy protection measures. There are countless people and organizations that rely on tools such as youtube-dl for their work –, for example for journalistic purposes, to preserve evidence or for creative techniques. The regional court also disregarded the principle that host providers are only liable following a warning if there is a "clear infringement". Ultimately, the freedom of opinion and information is endangered if providers block content on demand.
Further legal steps still open
Pasche expressed his disappointment with the OLG decision to TorrentFreak. The OLG has not allowed an appeal. However, Uberspace could challenge this decision with an appeal.
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The controversial website only served as a business card for the YouTube-DL program library, which has been contested for years: it offered a link for downloading and further development via the source code hosting platform GitHub. YouTube-DL allows users to download videos or just their audio track as an MP3 from YouTube and other video sharing platforms. This makes it possible to watch videos offline, rip songs from videos and convert broadcasts into audio podcasts to take with you.
YouTubeDL is still available on GitHub, where it also has its own website. The US Music Industry Association (RIAA) initially had the library blocked there in the fall of 2020 based on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). However, following protests, the platform, which belongs to Microsoft, restored the directory as there was no apparent violation of the DMCA.
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