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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

#951
post #537

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!

Hi Kim! They couldn't have done this. The 'infringing' links were in the test suite and were specifically tests for content from particular sources which had special links which required different techniques to download them. The test would not have been accomplished if they were pointed at links which didn't have the behaviour that was being tested.

One solution would be to load those links from environment variables, similar to how it's done with API access keys and other sensitive data. This would mildly inconvenience the devs by having to copy the links to those types of content by hand and set the vars before running the tests, but none of the "infringing" links would be present in the repo itself.

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

#952
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…

I just used windows-g to record upside down music video. Seems to work fine. mp4 file is in my captures video. Sound is great. How is that acceptable and this isn't? btw, Popcorn time is a bit different situation. I would say bit torrent is more the problem, or at least the people who upload pirated content. What is odd though is that it's the RIAA filing suit here and not google. Google has a real complaint, RIAA ce…

All this misuse of technology is going to bring back the kinescope.

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

#953
Even Google Research themselves use youtube-dl when assembling computer vision datasets. The only way to work on their data and reproduce the results is through youtube-dl, as video datasets are often only distributed as URLs and timestamps, and even the example codes use youtube-dl.

I wonder how this will impact the AI research community if there's some FUD around this tool.

Generally scraping is a gray area. I know researchers who scraped Google street view for large areas to train AI models without Googles approval and got hired by Google for their impressive AI skills instead of threatened.

I know researchers are a tiny group compared to consumers, but it's still interesting I think.

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

#954
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DMCA is a bad law, but you'd have a harder time arguing a general purpose web browser meets any of the following conditions: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201 (2)No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that— (A)is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a techn…

Reading (A) and (B), I cannot help but notice that it doesn't matter whether the primary purpose of the circumvention is to infringe copyright. It is enough that the software/service is primarily about circumventing the "technological measure". The technological measure itself doesn't even have to be primarily about preventing copyright infringement. It suffices that it effectively controls access to relevant works,…

It does, "ordinary course of operation" means "the most obvious use" and they took the tool as circumventing, looking at the test cases that are intended to succeed in circumvention.

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

#956

The actual content of the legal argument being made by the RIAA in this and associated documents is lying by omission at best, and arguably is straight up perjury. The only _concrete_ circumvention they level at youtube-dl is that it "circumvents YouTube’s rolling cipher". I looked into this more, and before I go into how totally bulshit it is that they've apparently conned judges into believing this, you should read…

Let me be clear, basically the "rolling cipher" is DASH/HLS streaming for automatic quality changing. This has been an argument RIAA has been making since 2016, but outside of the judgement in Germany (which is wrong). All they have had on it are default judgements where no-one has even tried to counter it in court.

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

#957
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Compared to youtube-dl and an offline media player like mpv, youtube's web interface is absolute garbage for consuming content. The only thing it's half-good for is discovery because it shows thumbnails of the videos and links to related videos. Useful things that I can't do on through youtube's web interface: 1 - archive videos (so many videos have been taken down and would be lost forever to me had I not had an off…

You have a point to some extent, it could be valuable to offer download buttons on a lot of videos. However, YouTube is only as valuable as the content it serves, and the content creators are the ones putting ads in their videos and who would be unhappy if there were download buttons on everything

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

#958
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 wonder what commit added those three listed examples (from three different music companies) to the README, and when. They're the worrying component as they show intent. In a dark universe timeline somewhere, the pull request for adding them to the README came from an RIAA employee.

I had the same thought so I checked the git history and it seems, if I’ve checked the right lines, they were added somewhere between 4-7 years ago.

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

#959
There are multiple extensions in Google's own Android Chrome stores for downloading videos from YouTube and everyone else. I just used a few to download and HLS stream that was having severe buffering issues.

It would seem hard to argue that Google is completely against it when they could be considered a contributor to the "problem". Providing apps that violate their own TOS. Not just source code, but actual apps/extensions.

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