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YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

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

#631
What does it matter if I watch a song on YouTube or just dl the video. Mp4 and watch it, The riaa might say the reasons the videos are on YouTube is they promote the artist like old videos on MTV and someone gets paid ad revenue , In theory someone could just use a pc dl 1000s of videos put em on a pc and avoid watching ads Also video streams count to get a song in the charts and the riaa employs lawyers so they have to do something to justify their wages even if it will have no effect on the music marketplace or the behavior of the average music fan

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

#632
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It would be interesting to see _who_ added this unit test. I wouldn't be surprised if it was some RIAA lackey.

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

#634

Lesson learned: always use Creative Commons licensed data to demo your multimedia tools. Else people get the wrong idea. Some examples for youtube-dl might be: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqz-KE-bpKQ Big buck bunny * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ Sintel * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhWc3b3KhnY Spring In fact, youtube actually allows you to filter by CC, so there's never a reason not to!

In the case of youtube-dl, they couldn't do that. At least VEVO videos have an additional layer of "protection" — the direct links to video files require a signature of some sort IIRC. Downloading a non-DRM-ed video is as easy as making a request to https://www.youtube.com/get_video_info?video_id=aqz-KE-bpKQ and then following a link to the format you need, but with those music videos, that won't work. So the test ca…

Hmm, are you sure that link is correct? In firefox and chromium that gets me about 122K of not-very-easy-to-parse text.

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

#635
post #158
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…

Hm, but youtube-dl doesn't break DRM. You can just get the video link from the dev tools panel when you open a youtube page. It doesn't let you download anything you wouldn't otherwise be able to.

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

#636
post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add a data point, but back when I still was working for a video distribution startup, we offered our customers the ability to directly import their video inventory from YouTube. They were the owners of the videos, it was just a convenient (and very popular!) feature for them to let us handle this import. We used YouTube-dl for this, of course. No way we could have done this easily without it. We imported hund…

I'm not a lawyer, but I am playing devil's advocate here. Did your customers own those video files or the rights to the video? If they are the authors and owners of the content surely they uploaded something to YouTube to begin with. Why is that not what they uploaded to your service? If they preferred to import YouTube libraries clearly YouTube was adding some value there.

It doesn't matter how much value YouTube adds. It neither owns, nor does it assert that it owns, the copyright to these videos. Banks provide a value-add service for your money. They don't own your money. Value-add is not a valid legal test for copyright ownership.

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

#637
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…

> it uses examples in the README as an example of that: >> We also note that the source code prominently includes as sample uses as far as I can tell these videos are not referenced in the README, but instead in the youtube.py extractor file, which would go against the accusation that they were featured 'prominently'

It makes it worse lol. Using links to copyrighted materials in the tests meant to verify correct functionality?

It's "prominent" in the source code. They literally wrote out "Test VEVO video with video age protection" then linked to a Justin Timberlake song

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

I clicked on this ready to see some stupidity from the copyright industry but literally downloading from links to copyrighted music in your unit tests?

That's how you give the RIAA a way to take down your project. -

Actually seeing this made the comments made in the worst faith about how "they took it down because you can use it to download bad stuff, what's next?!?!" seem pretty dumb.

If that was the case Bittorrent... which makes youtube-dl look like a guy slinging tapes out of a van next to Naspter HQ...

wouldn't have been able to send them packing with a simple "we don't endorse piracy": https://venturebeat.com/2015/08/07/bittorrent-to-riaa-youre-...

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

#638
post #105
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…

"Napster could have been used for legal means as well, and it got destroyed in court."

But Napster was a service run by an organization.

youtube-dl is neither a service nor an organization. It's just some source code floating around the internet, to which volunteers contribute to.

A very different situation.

If anything, it's Youtube itself that's like Napster, and it's telling that the RIAA has gone after youtube-dl rather than Google.

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

#639
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.

Regarding this, does anyone know where the best place to hear from the main developers is? Youtube is bound to make a breaking change any day now, and as-is I have no idea where to look for updates to the project once this happens.

> Regarding this, does anyone know where the best place to hear from the main developers is?

Sure, their website https://youtube-dl.org/

But they don't seem to have updated it yet

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

#640
Courts have ruled betamax Vcrs were legal, its legal to record tv shows and movies to watch them at a later date. Even though in theory Vcrs could be used for the purposes of piracy. Just because a device might be used to pirate content does not mean its can be banned. Like bittorrent is used by many non profits to distribute Open source software like Linux distro iso, s
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