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YouTube-dl is now part of GitHub/dmca.git

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Re: YouTube-dl is now part of GitHub/dmca.git

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relying on other countries can't ever be a long term solution. That pirate bay and scihub are still around, that their authors are walking around freely, is a miracle that should not be taken for granted. We need to work on fixing these problems in our own countries. We need to talk about the freedoms we care about, put a good brand to those freedoms and win popular attention and enshrine those freedoms into law. And…

"Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström were all found guilty and sentenced to serve one year in prison and pay a fine of 30 million SEK". I wouldn't call it walk freely.

Yeah, Sweden doesn’t allow for zeroing debts due to legal judgements in personal bankruptcy, IIRC.

This means that they were effectively sentenced to lifelong debt slavery. This is another dark part of the Scandinavian model that most aren’t aware of. Same system in Norway.

Re: YouTube-dl is now part of GitHub/dmca.git

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty much it though. In all honesty, we need a GH alternative hosted outside the US, in any place where absurd laws like DMCA don't exist.

What we really need is a decentralised git forge using something like ActivityPub. We cannot keep relying on companies to host open content for us.

Yes, like https://forgefed.peers.community/ which is exactly that.

Re: YouTube-dl is now part of GitHub/dmca.git

#133
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relying on other countries can't ever be a long term solution. That pirate bay and scihub are still around, that their authors are walking around freely, is a miracle that should not be taken for granted. We need to work on fixing these problems in our own countries. We need to talk about the freedoms we care about, put a good brand to those freedoms and win popular attention and enshrine those freedoms into law. And…

I agree in principle, but a much easier fix would be to host such code on a tor hidden service. That way the physical server can be located more or less wherever. Then we just have to normalize the use of Tor so that banning it becomes unthinkable ...

In other words, instead of trying to change the laws, which is the whole idea of a democracy, just give up on laws altogether.

Re: YouTube-dl is now part of GitHub/dmca.git

#134
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but as far as I recall, a site receiving a DMCA notice must immediately remove the stated content. The person who put the content up may then file a counter-notice, which, if uncontested may then be followed by reinstating the content. If contested, the process moves into the courtroom.

This is not a DMCA notice; A DMCA notice requires the identification of claimed copyrighted content and this document does no such thing. The document claims that youtube-dl is illegal for being able to download video and audio from YouTube but not for hosting copyrighted material in the repo or binary distributions. The RIAA is claiming youtube-dl is "circumventing DRM".

They do actually mention 3 specific copyrighted songs used as examples in the tests. Seems to me that was on oversight, and they should have only used open videos as tests in the repo. Similar to how Kodi can't use copyrighted material in app store screenshots or videos.

Re: YouTube-dl is now part of GitHub/dmca.git

#135
It's a fun hack, but to those thinking about streisanding the source: The strength of ytdl and other downloaders isn't their source code, it's the extensive library of scrapers that are tailor-made for individual sites.

The devs have to constantly maintain and update those to keep working when a site changes its design.

So if the takedown manages to stop ongoing development on ytdl then even existing copies will become mostly useless pretty quickly.

Re: YouTube-dl is now part of GitHub/dmca.git

#136

I think the long term solution for this problem is the developers of open source software like the bit torrent client, youtube-dl and other similar software will have to host their code outside of the reach of DMCA regualation. That will usually mean something like Github like site hosted in Russia, China or some other bloc where DMCA does not apply. Right now, lots of users in the US scientific community use Scihub…

Relying on other countries can't ever be a long term solution. That pirate bay and scihub are still around, that their authors are walking around freely, is a miracle that should not be taken for granted. We need to work on fixing these problems in our own countries. We need to talk about the freedoms we care about, put a good brand to those freedoms and win popular attention and enshrine those freedoms into law. And…

>Relying on other countries can't ever be a long term solution.

It is the only solution that can put any pressure on the US in a macro sense. The DMCA is a uniquely American creation, and it will remain in tact until the US starts losing intellectual capital to other countries. Such a thing is not likely to happen any time soon, but in a decade or two, the US will still be arguing which Larry owns the copyright to a header file, while China and others would have moved on to far more interesting challenges.

Re: YouTube-dl is now part of GitHub/dmca.git

#137
post #130
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t simply because of how Git works. You can configure Git to look in multiple places for repo objects. For whatever reason, the GitHub devs either didn’t know this, or they didn’t want to implement their forking and pull request systems this way. As someone else mentioned, this may be an intentional design to make it simpler to implement pulling down remote PRs from the destination repo.

> You can configure Git to look in multiple places for repo objects. What do you mean by multiple places for repo objects? Do you mean multiple remotes? The remotes are fully inside your local database if you run commands like git pull or git remote update, they are just not in your checkout. Commands like git show work on commit hashes in those remotes as well, even if it's not in one of your local branches. Or do y…

The feature’s called alternates. You can use it on-the-fly without modifying any repos by using the GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES environment variable.

If you want the effect permanently, there’s the .git/objects/info/alternates file. For HTTP remotes, there’s apparently a .git/objects/info/http-alternates file as well (no idea how that works though). I’m assuming these files allow multiple alternates as the environment variable does.

Re: YouTube-dl is now part of GitHub/dmca.git

#139
post #137
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can configure Git to look in multiple places for repo objects. What do you mean by multiple places for repo objects? Do you mean multiple remotes? The remotes are fully inside your local database if you run commands like git pull or git remote update, they are just not in your checkout. Commands like git show work on commit hashes in those remotes as well, even if it's not in one of your local branches. Or do y…

The feature’s called alternates. You can use it on-the-fly without modifying any repos by using the GIT_ALTERNATE_OBJECT_DIRECTORIES environment variable. If you want the effect permanently, there’s the .git/objects/info/alternates file. For HTTP remotes, there’s apparently a .git/objects/info/http-alternates file as well (no idea how that works though). I’m assuming these files allow multiple alternates as the envir…

Oh indeed, very interesting. Apparently the feature also existed since 2005, before Github (2008) so they could have used it from the start.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/36125713

Re: YouTube-dl is now part of GitHub/dmca.git

#140
The 17 USC (2)(c)(1)(C) safe-harbour protections apply only to hosting of infringing works, and neither youtube-dl nor its test suites infringe on any RIAA or member copyrights as averred in RIAA's notice.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512

The RIAA's letter does not claim infringement within the text of youtube-dl source or test suites, though it tries hard to appear so, but rather anti-circumvention of a "copyright protection mechanism", under §1201. That is also part of the DMCA, but falls outside the safe-harbour.

At best, youtube-dl's test suite may be infringing works when run, in which case infringement would accrue to the operator, presumably a tester or Github's CI/CD process. Even that argument is specious.

Given output is discarded, no permanent copy is retained, and the action is for research and development, and numerous Fair Use affirmative defence claims exist under §107, notably (1) and (4), test suite execution falls outside exclusive rights. Any one fair-use test is sufficient, or none at all. Test suite execution could be argued non-infinging under numerous theories, including reverse engineering, research, interoperability, all under §1201, or under general limitations on exclusive rights in §112, §117, or elsewhere.

This is where ... things get interesting...

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