WTF?! The music industry has long had a contentious relationship with YouTube. In addition to arguments that the Google-owned company doesn't pay artists enough for the use of their music or allow them full control over how it's used, the piracy issue is often brought up. DMCA notices are regularly sent out, and one music company went so far as to request a Wikipedia article on YouTube downloaders be delisted.

For a few years now, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been sending takedown requests to Google for the company to remove YouTube ripping sites, which allow, among other things, audio to be ripped from YouTube videos and saved as music files.

The RIAA says YouTube-ripping platforms violate the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) – Nintendo used the same argument to stop the Dolphin emulator's Steam release. The notices resulted in Google delisting the homepages of major YouTube-ripping platforms, though the sites in question tend to just switch to new URLs.

TorrentFreak reports that the music companies have expanded their crusade against YouTube ripping beyond the sites that facilitate it. A small French indie label called Because Music, which started sending thousands of takedown requests asking Google to remove over 10,000 links to ripping sites last year, also wants a Wikipedia entry about the practice removed.

Courtesy of TorrentFreak

A notice that Because Music sent to Google last week asking for specific URLs to be delisted includes Wikipedia's "Comparison of YouTube downloaders" page, as it links to ripper sites that the music industry is pursuing.

Other sites on the list that mention or link to YouTube downloaders include a Facebook page from a traffic analytics company, a Trustpilot review, and an uptime status checker. There are also Chrome and Firefox add-ons, a Softonic page that lists YouTube downloaders, and even a Soundcloud page that mentions Yt1s.com.

The Wikipedia page has yet to be affected by the notice, though a couple of links named by Because Music are no longer indexed. It seems unlikely that Google will entertain the request, especially as it could set a precedent for others.