Background
Eleven major record labels — including Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Canada, Warner Music Canada, Arista Records, and affiliated entities — brought an application against anonymous operators running stream-ripping platforms under the Y2MATE, YTMP3, and SAVEFROM brands (specifically y2mate.ws, ytmp3.lat, and savefrom.space). The applicants hold ownership or exclusive Canadian licences over extensive catalogues of sound recordings. The respondents operated services that circumvent YouTube’s security measures to allow users to permanently download audio or video content that YouTube is only authorised to stream, thereby converting ephemeral streaming performances into permanent, downloadable copies without the rights holders’ consent.
The application was brought under s. 44 of the Federal Courts Act and s. 34(1) of the Copyright Act. Canadian ISPs — including Bell Canada, Rogers Communications Canada, Telus Communications, TekSavvy Solutions, Videotron, Eastlink, Cogeco, Saskatchewan Telecommunications, and VMedia — were named as Third Party Respondents, consistent with the site-blocking framework developed in prior Federal Court decisions. The John Doe Respondents did not appear, and the applicants undertook alternative service through contact and abuse email addresses associated with the platforms’ domain registrars.
Justice Fothergill situates the case within an established line of Federal Court site-blocking judgments, including Bell Media Inc v GoldTV.Biz (2019 FC 1432, aff’d 2021 FCA 181, leave to SCC refused), the 2022 follow-on orders in GoldTV and Rogers Media Inc v John Doe 1, and most recently Bell Media Inc v John Doe 1 (Soap2day) (2025 FC 133). The court noted that reproduction rights — which attach to permanent copies — carry greater economic value than performance rights, which attach to ephemeral streams, making stream ripping a particularly significant form of copyright infringement.
The Court’s Holding
Justice Fothergill granted a permanent injunction and declaratory relief. The court declared copyright to subsist in the sound recordings listed in the applicants’ schedule and confirmed each applicant as the owner or exclusive Canadian licensee of the relevant rights. The John Doe Respondents were declared to have infringed the applicants’ rights in three distinct ways: (a) by directly reproducing the sound recordings and authorising their users to do so without consent, contrary to s. 18(1) of the Copyright Act; (b) by inducing users to infringe the applicants’ reproduction rights through statements of encouragement published on their platforms; and (c) by enabling users to make unauthorised reproductions by providing platforms whose sole function is to facilitate such copying, contrary to s. 27(2.3) of the Copyright Act.
The John Doe Respondents were ordered to immediately deactivate the Y2MATE.WS, YTMP3.LAT, and SAVEFROM.SPACE platforms and any other Y2MATE-, YTMP3-, or SAVEFROM-branded platforms under their authority or control. A permanent injunction restrains them — and any persons, companies, or entities associated with or affiliated with them — from developing, operating, maintaining, promoting, or supporting those platforms or any similar services, and from operating or hosting the associated internet domains (including spowload.cc) or directing third parties to do so. The respondents are also permanently enjoined from reproducing, authorising reproduction of, inducing infringement of, or enabling infringement of the applicants’ sound recordings.
The court validated service of the Notice of Application on the John Doe Respondents by the alternative means employed. Costs were awarded to the applicants against the John Doe Respondents in an amount to be quantified later; no costs were awarded against the Third Party Respondents. The judgment expressly preserves the right of any John Doe Respondent to seek to stay, vary, or set aside the judgment.
Key Takeaways
- Stream-ripping platforms that circumvent YouTube’s technical measures to produce permanent downloadable copies of streamed recordings infringe copyright owners’ reproduction rights under ss. 18(1) and 27(2.3) of the Copyright Act, both directly and by authorising, inducing, and enabling user infringement.
- Canada’s Federal Court site-blocking framework — first established in GoldTV and consistently applied since — extends to stream-ripping services, compelling major ISPs to participate as Third Party Respondents in the enforcement mechanism.
- Alternative service on anonymous (“John Doe”) operators via contact and abuse email addresses published by domain registrars is sufficient and will be judicially validated where operators fail to appear.
- Permanent injunctions in this context reach not only the named platforms but also any rebranded or successor services under the respondents’ authority or control, and the associated domain infrastructure.
Why It Matters
This decision extends Canada’s growing body of site-blocking and stream-ripping jurisprudence to one of the internet’s most-used categories of copyright circumvention tools. Y2MATE and similar platforms attract hundreds of millions of users globally who use them to convert YouTube streams into downloadable MP3 or MP4 files — a practice that directly undermines the licensed download and streaming revenue that rights holders depend on. By granting a permanent injunction that covers not just the named domains but any similarly branded successor service, Justice Fothergill signals that Canadian courts will apply broad, forward-looking relief to prevent respondents from simply relaunching under new domain names.
For rights holders worldwide, the decision reinforces Canada as a jurisdiction willing to grant meaningful injunctive relief against anonymous infringers using the ISP site-blocking mechanism — without requiring identification of the operators before judgment can issue. For ISPs, the no-costs ruling against Third Party Respondents continues the established pattern of treating carriers as neutral enforcement conduits rather than culpable parties. Practitioners advising music industry clients or platform operators should note the court’s tripartite infringement analysis — direct reproduction, inducement, and enabling — as a template likely to be applied in future stream-ripping and similar circumvention cases.