More than 10 days after a federal court judge orders MP3 Skull to immediately shut down, surrender its urls, and pay $22 million in damages, the site remains totally live and untouched.
On February 24th, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) won a permanent injunction against Mp3 Skull. Alongside that ruling, they also won a $22 million damages award.
The purpose of that order was to force the immediate shutdown of the site, and to curb further piracy damages.
Now, more than 10 days later, mp3skull remains online and fully functional, with the mainline mp3skull.com redirecting to mp3skull.mn.
So far, not one person representing the pirate site has even responded to the massive lawsuit.
‘Take down, stay down’
In a stern decision issued last month by the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the illegal mp3 download hub was not only ordered to cease operations immediately, but also cease control of a variety of mp3skull domains. That hopscotch of shifting domain names includes mp3skull.to, mp3skull.cr, mp3skull.is, and mp3skull.yoga, among others.
Currently, the mainstay .com destination remains completely functional, though it is shifting traffic to .mn as of February 26th. That redirected site is identical to the stripped down directory offered on the .com extension. That site offers downloads from Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Adele, Coldplay, Lil Wayne, Twenty One Pilots, and Fetty Wap readily available.
Surprisingly, Google has now stripped the domain from its search results, a removal that appears to coincide with the injunction. Earlier, the site — and it’s ever-shifting list of domains — were easily found through a simple Google search, though this appears to be a rare case of ‘take down, stay down’ response the industry is desperately lobbying Congress to enact.
That said, Google results are opening the lane for a myriad of copycats. And that’s a common occurrence following the shutdown of a major piracy brand name. That has certainly been the situation surrounding Grooveshark, a site that is still spawning innumerable clones based on its considerable brand recognition and lingering Google search traffic.
Grooveshark was officially shuttered in April of 2015.
According to the RIAA, Mp3skull has received more than 3 million DMCA takedown demands since 2011. “Since 2011, various copyright owners have sent piracy notices on more than 3 million illegal files available through the site,” the RIAA updated last October.
“This is a site that has routinely been among the top recipients of such notices over the past four years.”
“According to the RIAA, Mp3skull has received more than 3 million DMCA takedown demands since 2011”
Which, of course, is outrageous.
But it’s nothing compared to the total number of takedowns sent to Google during the same period.
The internets are full of badness!
“So far, not one person representing the pirate site has even responded to the massive lawsuit initiated by the major labels.”
epic lulz
This is something, this is nothing.
Go, skull, GO!
Stealing from artists, and ignoring laws. Sounds like a healthy society to me.
Not stealin from you
I’m an artist and music writer and I used and approved of mp3 skull teh governments have no right to the internet just the people in their individual contries
Van Nobody
Has the Internet been an overall benefit or detriment? Not an easy question.
You could say that about literally any technology. The problem lies in the human beings who decide how to apply the technology. We have a long track record of making very poor choices in this regard.
What to do about the sites that do not even respond to the takedown notices?
or do not even offer a way to contact them with a takedown notice?
What a debacle!
You mean that they only offer a toolbar for Chrome?
I agree!!
yep
Haha, stupid RIAA is clueless. The internet will find a way. Haven’t they figured that out yet? They’ve been beating the same stodgy drum now for nearly 2 decades. Time to find a way to co-exist and monetize your medium another way than through content ownership. At least when Napster went down they won an obvious victory. The guys at MP3Skull just don’t even give the slightest f*ck about their paper victory, nor should they.
So damn stupid. As posted above, people will find a way. Gees I guess I should be locked up too. Since cassette tapes first came out Iv’e been recording music off the radio. Then off my records. TONS of free stuff over the decades.
Mind you I don’t sell it. It’s all for my own use. This is no different. If you can play it, you can record it. If it’s out there, people will download, and eventually offer it for free. The music industry needs to find some other way because relying on selling recordings isn’t going to last.
The Grateful Dead actually liked it when people found and copied their music. And their concerts were all sell outs. They knew what worked.
Viva la skull. And when all the morphs of skull are gone, I’m sure there will be the femur, or the coccyx. lol. Yea that would be cool.
why on earth does the riaa not just put up a website with ALL their content, charge 10 bucks a year to the billion users, and just TAKE the 10billion dollars, let the site track what was used and divy it up to the owners. so much more money to be made and no lawyers.
We free people are fed up against this oppressive, tyrannical debt-based system called FED! I say fuck it! Fuck the FED! Corporations are already rich, why become concern if they lose paper money? Damn it… Ugh, I’m sure there are _those_ who are obsessed with shekels that we should also thank for this…