The owner of a US-based YouTube download site has been convicted — in Brazil

Yout is an online utility that lets users download copies of videos from various sources, including YouTube. Founder John Nader insists that the service Yout offers doesn’t break the law — but a Brazilian criminal court disagrees.

File sharing blog TorrentFreak reports that last week, a judge of the 12th Criminal Court of São Paulo issued a ruling against Nader, imposing a hefty fine for violating Brazil’s copyright laws.

Judge Eva Lobo Chaib Dias Jorge’s Portuguese-language ruling asserts that Yout exists primarily as a means to circumvent video platforms’ security features in a way that violates the rights of copyright owners — that it’s a tool for piracy. The ruling itself doesn’t mention a specific monetary figure, but TorrentFreak‘s calculations put the fine Nader faces at about $55,000, USD.

This is the latest development in a years-long legal process, the report says. The Public Prosecutor’s Office of São Paulo filed a complaint against Nader in 2021. The next year, Nader refused an offer to suspend criminal prosecution of the case, which would’ve seen Yout’s proprietor pay a fine of about $400,000, among other concessions.

Nader has long pointed to the 1984 Supreme Court case Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc, as providing the legal precedent under which Yout operates. In the “Betamax case” (so called for the Sony-developed video tape format), the court ruled that making personal recordings of TV shows for the purpose of “time shifting” (i.e., to watch them later) constitutes fair use and does not infringe copyright. Yout’s attorneys unsuccessfully argued along similar lines in the lead-up to Nader’s conviction in Brazil, comparing the platform to an online DVR.

Nader is expected to appeal the court’s ruling. For now, TorrentFreak reports that Yout.com is currently being blocked by Brazilian ISPs.