Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 1001 posts

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#501

Post by ehsankia »

eli wrote: post #158
jchw wrote: post #4

Note that RIAA is making this takedown because the software CAN be used to download copyrighted music and videos, and it uses examples in the ~~README~~(unit tests, see correction[1]) as an example of that: > We also note that the source code prominently includes as sample uses of the source code the downloading of copies of our members’ copyrighted sound recordings and music videos, as noted in Exhibit A hereto. For…

I think you are misunderstanding the legal argument. The DMCA Section 1201 specifically prohibits (among other things) technology that "is marketed ... for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." The example in the README is evidence of this. The argument is that youtube-dl is primarily used for breaking DRM not just that it could be used fo…

It definitely was very sloppy of them to show examples on actual copyrighted material. Couldn't they have simply put examples of public domain content?

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#502

Post by rozab »

yamrzou wrote: post #215
aquova wrote: post #139

While its good to get a backup of the source code, youtube-dl is one of those projects that quickly becomes useless as Google mixes stuff around within YouTube, which they like to do. Without an active developer base, the project will quickly become less and less effective, which is one of the big concerns IMO about this lawsuit.

What if collaboration on opensource projects (i.e. hosting, issues and their comments) was decentralized instead of relying on a central entity like Github? That would keep the developer base active and make DMCA takedowns ineffective.

Git seems like a great candidate for hosting through TOR; it's super low bandwidth. I often find myself wondering why DMCA'd fan projects don't just switch to anonymous TOR hosting. Obviously it's not bulletproof, but if it's just copyright holders you have to worry about and not state actors then it seems like a great solution.

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#503

Post by grishka »

warp wrote: post #377
adrianmonk wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, does the fact that YouTube doesn't supply a download feature constitute a "technical protection measure"? From the RIAA's point of view, it works to their benefit that a download link doesn't exist, and it may be something they like, but that doesn't mean that's why. It could just as easily be that a download feature doesn't exist because YouTube wants you to keep returning to their site if you want to rewatch…

There is a "Download" button in the mobile Youtube apps (if you're paying for Youtube Premium).

Except it doesn't give you the actual file, it's still only playable offline through the app (unless you have root I guess).

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#506

Post by lelandbatey »

15155 wrote: post #480
lelandbatey wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concrete action they're accusing youtube-dl of is that it "circumvents YouTube’s rolling cipher". The RIAA has used this same complaint to have other sites/tools taken down. I've looked into the implementation, and it turns out the Youtube is at most merely rearranging the characters of the CDN url of the video, and they send you JS code in the page to correctly arrange the characters of the URL so you can downlo…

Sounds like the next step should be: "embed a JS interpreter and use Google's own code."

That is in fact, exactly what youtube-dl is doing. They download the JS code provided by Google, then use regexes to figure out which function is the function that Google provides for un-arranging the characters, then they load Google's JS into an interpreter and provide it with the Google supplied URL to get the original signature. See the code here:

https://gitlab.com/HacktorIT/youtube-dl/-/blob/master/youtub...

So yeah, Youtube/Google is doing (basically) nothing to protect the content, and for the absolutely token obfuscation they do use, they also provide you with the way to get right back to directly accessing the data without any protections.

The RIAA is lying in saying that Google is using technical protections, and they're lying in saying that youtube-dl is doing anything other than what Google tells them to do in order to access videos.

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#507

Post by rozab »

tbabej wrote: post #329

The removal of youtube-dl is a loss to the open source community. I hope this does not set a precedence going forward and that authors re-establish themselves (and the bug tracker, which had immense amount of information). At the same time, this lead me to browse the Github's DMCA repo, which has some real gems. For example, this DMCA takedown of repo with copied course assignment of a different student and did not c…

Seems like that student has admitted in the most public and irreversible way possible that they have distributed their coursework online, almost certainly in contravention of academic policy.

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#508

Post by ehsankia »

aylmao wrote: post #311
aquova wrote: post #139

While its good to get a backup of the source code, youtube-dl is one of those projects that quickly becomes useless as Google mixes stuff around within YouTube, which they like to do. Without an active developer base, the project will quickly become less and less effective, which is one of the big concerns IMO about this lawsuit.

I imagine someone can re-publish it on Github without it being taken down if they rename it, change the README and/or add some disclaimer saying this tool shouldn't be used to download copyrighted works. Collaboration to keep it up to date hopefully follows soon after.

This would definitely be a good time for a rebranding, the tool is now very far from its original "youtube-dl" purpose.

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#509

Post by rmrfstar »

dvt wrote: post #458

Oh the irony of cloning a banned repo from a Chinese git mirror... c:\Users\david\dev\git λ git clone https://gitee.com/mirrors/youtube-downloader.git Cloning into 'youtube-downloader'... remote: Enumerating objects: 98560, done. remote: Counting objects: 100% (98560/98560), done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (30542/30542), done. remote: Total 98560 (delta 73037), reused 90045 (delta 66441), pack-reused 0 Receiv…

Were the developers in the habit of signing commits, or do we just have to assume that the gitee mirror is 100% legit?

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#510

Post by adkadskhj »

larrik wrote: post #105
jchw wrote: post #4

Note that RIAA is making this takedown because the software CAN be used to download copyrighted music and videos, and it uses examples in the ~~README~~(unit tests, see correction[1]) as an example of that: > We also note that the source code prominently includes as sample uses of the source code the downloading of copies of our members’ copyrighted sound recordings and music videos, as noted in Exhibit A hereto. For…

The fact that copyrighted works were included in the readme shows it was intended for that use, and the RIAA complaint will likely stand up to any legal scrutiny. Just because it can be used for legit purposes too won't matter in the slightest. I mean, Napster could have been used for legal means as well, and it got destroyed in court. The only chance tools like this have legally is when infringement is an "unintende…

Curiously, what do scrapers (aka "readers") have to worry about with this topic?

Eg, i'm making an archiver and reader combination that, for personal use, archives stuff in a Git-like store. Yet, Git (and Git-likes) can also be used to distribute.. so hypothetically i could use this software to scrape and distribute content.

My intention is primarily to make news articles/etc searchable, archived, etc. Yet i'm sure NYT would have something to say about my test cases scraping their site.

.. the world is interesting.

Post reply on HN