Streamripping-Is it illegal??

[CyiPherX]

So whats the current take on ripping streams??, is the RIAA going to break down my door??, can online radio stations tell if im ripping?

The reason i ask is that i ripped some streams from a certain online radio station, then i tried to go back again today, and i cant connect to the stream, so i checked their help section, and it says that no stream ripping is allowed, and users that do this will be banned for 48hrs, the website lets you check to see if your ip addess is on the banned list, which mine was.

So how do they know if im ripping a stream, and is a record kept of songs that you have ripped, so that you can be traced back through your ip address??

Lots of questions:confused:

CyiPherX

[gord]

i guess its kinda like taping the radio and like taping the radio they shouldn't be able to check if you are 'ripping the stream'. i guess it depends on what program you are using.

all in all though, unless the song is releaced into the public domain, its illegal.

[Kvark]

It should be impossible to tell wheter or not you are ripping since you download the stream in both cases. In theory it is possible that the music player voulentarily sends a warning message to the server if you save the stream but I would expect that only from Windows Media Player and other DRM friendly programs.

Web browsers tell all web servers they visit which browser program it is so the server can send a version of the page that works with your browser (if the web designer was smart enought to make a non-ActiveX version). Maybe music players do the same and the station bans players that are typically used for ripping.

I'd expect this to be governed by the same laws that regulate recording of classical radio and TV broadcasts. Those laws are different in different countries.

[CyiPherX]

After doing some more research today, it turns out that when using the streamripper programme, it by default reports itself as "Streamripper" to the server.

By adding the prefix of -u xmms to the end of the line, it then reports itself as the xmms programme or whatever programme you wish.

So therefore you can fool the server into thinking that you are just a regular user, and server bots that keep an eye out for the ripper programmes, no longer ban you :rolleyes:

CyiPherX