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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers Legal Top Stories
Record industry forces file-hosting service DBR.ee offline
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 29 May 2019
While stream-ripping may still be the music industry’s top piracy gripe, that won’t stop the record industry from going after other online platforms that facilitate the distribution of unlicensed music.
And to that end various record industry trade groups have successfully forced offline a file-hosting service called DBR.ee, which stored plenty of unlicensed tracks, including pre-release material.
Initially it wasn’t clear why the DBR.ee website had gone down, but the domain name now forwards to a joint message from the Recording Industry Association Of America, Music Canada and the globally-focused International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry.
That message reads: “This site has been shut down following legal action for copyright infringement. Making available copyright protected music on the internet without authorisation from the copyright holder is illegal. Wilful, commercial scale copyright infringement could lead to criminal conviction. Illegal music services exploit the work of artists and pay nothing to those creating and investing in music”.
We knew that DBR.ee was on the US record industry’s target list already, because it was among the sites mentioned in a subpoena secured by the RIAA earlier this month. That court order requested that internet services company Cloudflare provide the American labels group with contact information for a number of its clients, including DBR.ee.
It is thought that the person behind that particular file-hosting platform was based in Canada, hence why other record industry trade groups got involved. A spokesperson for the IFPI told Torrentfreak: “DBR.ee was responsible for large scale copyright infringement of music content. On behalf of our member record companies, IFPI, RIAA and Music Canada identified and contacted the site operator who has now agreed to shut down the site completely and not to infringe sound recording rights in the future”.
Sites like DBR.ee are usually linked to by online forums where users share information about illegal sources of music and movie content. Similar file-storage set-ups – and the forums that link to them – are also likely on the RIAA’s current anti-piracy target list. Indeed similar sites were listed in that aforementioned Cloudflare subpoena, as well as other court orders secured by the trade body, some of which have recently gone offline.
