Recently, the Federal Court issued its judgment in Arista Records LLC et al. v. John Doe 1 et al., 2026 FC 801, granting a permanent injunction sought by a group of major record labels (including Sony Music, Universal Music, and Warner Records) against the anonymous “John Doe” operators of the stream ripping services y2mate.ws, ytmp3.lat, and savefrom.space. The stream ripping services allowed users to create or obtain a permanent, downloadable copy of audio or video content that is intended to be available only for streaming, by circumventing YouTube’s security measures and extracting the content. YouTube is authorized to provide streams of the labels’ recordings to the public but is not authorized to allow its users to permanently download those recordings.
The Court noted that performance rights and reproduction rights are treated as two distinct rights under the Copyright Act and that reproduction rights carry greater economic value because copies are permanent while streams are ephemeral. The Court found that the John Doe respondents infringed the labels’ copyright by authorizing their users to reproduce the recordings, by inducing infringement through statements of encouragement published on their platforms, and by enabling infringement through services whose sole function is making available unauthorized reproductions. The Court also considered its prior injunction precedents, including Bell Media Inc. v. GoldTV.Biz, 2019 FC 1432 and Bell Media Inc. v. John Doe 1, 2025 FC 133, and ordered the immediate deactivation of the stream ripping services and any related sites. Additionally, the Court permanently enjoined the operators from developing, operating, or promoting these or any similar services.
The judgment illustrates how Canadian copyright law treats the reproduction right as distinct from, and more economically valuable than, the performance right. For rights holders in the music, media, and streaming industries, the decision confirms that relying on the reproduction right may offer a strong basis for injunctive relief against infringing services, even when those operations are run anonymously from offshore domains.
The decision may be accessed here.