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

761–770 of 1001 posts

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

#761

Post by aww_dang »

ebg13 wrote: post #680
_23sd wrote: post #464

Worth noting the MPA already tried doing this to Popcorn Time, a BitTorrent client designed to provide a Netflix-like UX.[1] The Popcorn Time devs put in a counter-notice and the repository was back up a few weeks later when the period for the MPA to respond expired. The same thing will probably happen here because this is not one of the purposes of DMCA takedown letters, period. Even if there are inappropriate test…

Is there any chance that someone could sue them for filing illegitimate claims?

Yes, but it is more difficult than just spamming DMCA takedown requests. I was told I need to prove "tortuous business interference".

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

#762

Post by jhanschoo »

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…

This makes me wonder: if I fork the project into another product without such marketing it in this manner, and BFG away all troublesome uses (e.g. in the tests) the git history, it would then be legal, yes?

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

#763

Post by josmala »

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 use youtubeDL for music would probably fit the fair use in Finland. The fair use allows personal copies of legally licensed material but not redistribution of said copies to third parties. It has been used to defend a service where ISP records the specific shows from TV like a VCR and streams them to customers at different time. The ISP:s and representation of copyright holders made a compromise to avoid legal battle, where ISP:s limited the storage duration of said recordings to two years. ISP:s still had service they could sell, and avoid unnecessary legal battle. I'm not a lawyer. So not expert on matter, but just educated local.

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

#764

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

zeusflight wrote: post #755
zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #401

This should be about impossible to enforce? Every developer and everyone who has ever cloned the repo has the complete source tree with commits. I can think of a list of countries where United States laws are not a concern, I imagine that shortly this will be one of the most distributed repositories ever. It also shows again that while free services like Github are convenient, and truthfully their interface is the on…

I agree with your concept. The main problem though, is that each of those code hosting web app is a silo of its own. Any new contributor will have to create a new account for each of the self-hosted projects. Youtube-dl is one of those projects that can't survive in such an environment. Sourcehut is free from such requirements - but many complain about difficulty of email-based workflow. Another option is the upcomin…

There is also https://github.com/cjb/GitTorrent but I have not used it myself.

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

#765

Post by garmaine »

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…

Except it’s not in the README, it’s in an obscure unit test. That’s not marketing.

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

#766

Post by Arnavion »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #714
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…

how is this ironic?

Because the stereotype is that China is the one that bans the products of the Free West.

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

#767

Post by sjy »

ferdek wrote: post #482
varispeed wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is like your abusive partner brings up all the things they think you did wrong when they don't have any logical argument.

I believe the way you put it describes this part in the DMCA takedown notice the best way possible. Bringing up European laws on intellectual property and mixing it with US "copyright" is comical to me, especially after reading this [0] article on French law recently: > France doesn’t have copyright. Sorry for US readers, your “copyright” is nonsense that doesn’t apply here, though the word “copyright” can be seen mi…

There may be significant differences between US and EU copyright laws, but the anti-circumvention laws in question here are pretty consistent, as they implement the WIPO Copyright Treaty ratified by both the US and the EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-circumvention

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

#768

Post by hajile »

gamblor956 wrote: post #656
stingraycharles wrote: post #283

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…

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…

A unit test seems like fair use.

I don't know where tranformation would land as they are just streaming data and not actually viewing it.

It's (potentially) the whole content, but a case that was literally just uploading an entire video as-is with a different title was ruled fair use not too long ago, so this isn't itself damning.

The nature of the work seems irrelevant here as it's not viewed. It could easily be replaced with any other video -- even one owned by the repo creators.

Likewise, since they are unit testing rather than viewing the content, I doubt there is any commercial harm and the market overlap between video viewers and unit testers is zero.

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

#769

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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…

What did the readme say that has no legitimate use? Because even downloading Disney can be legitimate.

LockPickingLawyer teaches you how to do things that could be torts, but there are circumstances where those same actions are entirely legitimate. Tort generally needs the context to show that something is not legitimate; so the same applies here. AIUI copyright is not a situation of strict liability.

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

#770

Post by gkya »

nsgi wrote: post #293
jordigh wrote: post #86

I'm very scared by this. youtube-dl needs somewhat frequent updates as Google moves the youtube codebase around. I'm worried that the RIAA's next move, now that it's starting to get inconvenient to get youtube-dl, will be to make Youtube change in some way to make existing copies of youtube-dl no longer work. youtube-dl has been my primary way of getting videos since I learned about it. If the RIAA manages to kill it…

Do you have some sort of RMS-style setup? If so, I'm curious about your reasons for that and why mainstream browsers aren't an option for you

On top of what others said, I also like youtube-dl + mpv because it consumes a fraction of the memory Firefox + one YT tab consumes. My main browser is Qutebrowser where I don't login to Google stuff, for which I use a Firefox profile. So when I'm watching something long like a lecture from any of my playlists, I download it first, quit Firefox, and watch with mpv. If I watch on FF on a large screen the computer starts swapping and I have to go kill some apps.
Post reply on HN