In many countries it is not a gray zone. It is explicitly legal.
Do you mean "a third-party website, accessing a copyrighted work on e.g. Youtube, making a copy of it, and distributing that copy to a user who requests it?" Because I'd be curious to see why/where this is "explicitly" legal.
But note the distinction from "a user accessing a copyrighted work on e.g. Youtube, then making a copy of it on her own computer for personal use."
While writing, I meant making a copy of streamed content. However, I do indeed completely fail to see how a website doing what you describe could be illegal.
> "a third-party website, accessing a copyrighted work on e.g. Youtube, making a copy of it, and distributing that copy to a user who requests it?"
That describes exactly what a browser does. Accessing Youtube and downloading the video for private use is legal, so is converting that video to audio only. There is no copyright violated, because users (in Germany) have the right to make copies. Why should it matter with which tool the copy is made?
Now, there was a recent criminalization of pirate video streaming sites. But there the argument of the court was that it is visible to the user that the content is illegal/unlicensed. That's not the case with Youtube.
I don't see any legal argument for the illegality of sites like youtube-mp3.
> Why should it matter with which tool the copy is made?
I don't know for sure, but I would think it matters if the tool is a third party's website (again, not on the user's computer).
To me, it seems like the difference between setting a TiVo to record a TV show for you (like using your browser or youtube-dl to access Youtube), versus asking a neighbor who has the same cable package to record the show for you and hand you a copy. Now if that neighbor is a for-profit business, that sounds more similar to the YouTube-mp3 site. And that doesn't sound like it would be legal (for the site to operate. Nothing illegal about what the user is doing).
Also, to be clear: I'm not happy that the YouTube-mp3 site is shutting down, I don't think there's anything immoral about what it does, and if I were making the rules then it would be perfectly legal. I'm just trying to understand the issues at play.
Being a for-profit business is more likely to change the equation. On the other hand, that's not that much different than selling a VHS recorder.
Actually, discussions like this are a good example why we need a copyright reform. But the issue there is that every time that was tried in the last years, it was used to add more uncertainty and less rights (in the proposals). We would need the contrary.
Copies for private use are as such not a gray area, but explicitly legal. I fail to see how a site that helps making those copies could be illegal in any way. There was a court fight in Germany over the backups the site was doing, but it is telling that it was only about that, not the core functionality, and that this current attack on peoples right was launched from an US court.
Personal use is allowed and nothing should be pay.
Only commercial use, need to pay for reuse, broadcast song.
This is a fair-use, blaming end-user people is so stupid.
Now Youtube, and all BIG one make a lot of money but are muscian more rich? NO, it's even more hard.
Are people still foled by major and music stolen by these compagny? Yes, welcome slavery 2.0
People that don't have money to fight now can just shut up against these big compagny even with small youtube channel you can see people stole video for each other, like the last one you get a kid stole another kid video after 2 days. He have stolen 40 videos, same content, same title, etc.
Do we agree to live in a such world, when you can't do something with value added? Sure we need to protect the right but in a same for every musician. Every musician should have the same right to protect their music but that's not the case.
Also I don't think we need to pay to give service. Example. I have a bar, people listen to some music ok, but why I need to pay? I make a free adversting of that music? It's not that enough? I don't earn money with that music, I earn it with the bar.
The same can apply with movie. We need movie that can come from another place that hollywood and there big industry of movie, they are all crap but sell because like pop music it's what generate revenue.
The European Union Copyright Directive explicitly allows member states to have legislation allowing copies for private uses. Germany for example makes use of that exception. It is allowed to make copies of copyrighted works for personal use (with some restrictions). In exchange we pay a special tax on storage media which goes to right holders (for example 36€ on a smartphone).
That topic is far away from my area of expertise but we had some high-profile court cases regarding private copies and if there had been any way to shut that down via the Berne Convention it would surely have been tried.