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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

#651

Post by saddlerustle »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #556
eli wrote: 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…

But what is being circumvented? As far as I'm aware there are no controls put in place that are being circumvented. Edit: I'm also curious why the riaa would have standing at all? Even assuming there is some protection being circumvented, it's not the riaa's control that is being circumvented.

A german court ruled youtube's obfuscation of video request signatures is an effective technological protection measure. YoutubeIE._decrypt_signature in youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py bypasses this.

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

#652

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#653

Post by mdaniel »

KhoomeiK wrote: post #382
yamrzou wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-on-the-Blockchain?

https://github.com/cryptix/git-remote-ipfs#readme is pretty close, I think

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

#654

Post by pmoriarty »

bleepblorp wrote: post #344
google234123 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a copyrighted music track as the example in the README is really stupid or just shows a total lack of respect for copyright.

Copyright law is illegitimate and should not be respected. The stupid thing is hosting youtube-dl in the Untied States.

"The stupid thing is hosting youtube-dl in the Untied States. "

It's not like a million people don't have youtube-dl's source code.

It can be hosted anywhere in the world in a heartbeat, and by now probably has been a thousand times over.

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

#655

Post by Paianni »

Unless the RIAA is actually going to take the owner of youtube-dl's domain to court, there's nothing (for now) stopping yt-dl from setting up another development platform of some sort. DMCA takedowns are cause for concern but they're not quite the be all and end all of a dispute.

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

#656

Post by gamblor956 »

stingraycharles wrote: post #283
larrik wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Right, but that's not the heart of the matter.

It's one thing if a tool designed for legitimate archiving use results in incidental violation of copyright.

It's another thing entirely, legally, if a tool is designed for violating copyright. In such case, it doesn't matter if there are also legitimate fair use uses of the tool.

And that's what the README showed: that youtube-dl was built primarily to violate copyright.

EDIT: based on other comments, it turns out the offending evidence was in the unit testing code not the README file, which legally makes it a bit worse than if it had just been in the README file.

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

#657

Post by a1369209993 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #425
black_puppydog wrote: post #295

Your weekly reminder that 1. You should not have your development process on a centralized platform, at least not if you're doing anything that smells of copyright issues 2. If you do host on a centralized platform, have regular, decentralized backups of code and issue tracking. 3. Also, avoid US-centric hosting for this kind of thing. But really, refer to 1.

> at least not if you're doing anything that smells of copyright issues Or lets people communicate. Or broadcasts news. Or can filter messages or news. Or directly applies encryption to anything. Or is related to accounting. Or can be indirectly linked to health services. Or, well, you get the idea.

Or in plainer terms: 1. You should not have your development process on a centralized platform, period.

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

#658

Post by [deleted] »

pmoriarty wrote: post #638
larrik wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#659

Post by Asooka »

NegativeK wrote: post #341
pengaru wrote: post #175

Considering youtube-dl isn't doing anything a web browser accessing these sites can't do, essentially serving as a headless web browser with a convenient CLI, I don't see how this could possibly have a leg to stand on. It's like serving Mozilla a DMCA takedown for FireFox. I however welcome the highly visible reminder that github should only be used as a mirror at most.

There's an obvious difference between a browser that, in normal use, doesn't allow storing of streaming video, and a tool that does and isn't supported by Google at all. Yes, you can download the full video with a browser. Yes, you can use wget or curl to do that. But youtube-dl's community was dumb enough to give clear cut examples of downloading copywritten material, which is obviously not what the RIAA or probably…

You can right-click->save-as the video link in the network panel of dev tools of either Chrome or Firefox. Google's own browser lets you save youtube videos with a few clicks. Also taping TV and radio is legal as well, even though the receiving device doesn't offer that functionality, unlike Chrome.

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

#660

Post by saddlerustle »

josteink wrote: post #245
chabad360 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but regardless, according to RIAA, youtube-dl is circumventing the "DRM" built into YouTube, and therefore they're violating anti-circumvention parts of the DMCA. Therefore a DMCA claim can suffice to take it down. Perhaps if youtube-dl used different examples (i.e. videos not protected by anti-circumvention) perhaps they could have avoided this.

Incorrect. DRMed YouTube-content cannot be downloaded using YouTube-dl. Only regular content.

Videos with obfuscated request signatures can be downloaded by youtube-dl. A german court ruled this is an effective technological protection measure.
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