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RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO

torrentfreak.com

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Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO

#51

Post by doc_gunthrop »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #11
jjones2 wrote: post #9

Always host software outside of US or *eyes jurisdictions. Think Truecrypt.

What happened to Truecrypt? Isn't that the one with the fundamental flaw that means everything it encrypted is trivial to unlock today? EDIT: this is a genuine question, I thought it had been unmaintained for ages and vulnerabilities had been found. My memory betrays me?

As others have mentioned, there is speculation about coercion from a certain 3 letter agency. Some have even suggested that the maintainers of TC left an encoded message to users:

> Using TrueCrypt is not secure as it may contain unfixed security issues.

Not Secure As. Whether this holds any weight, only the maintainers would know.

More info: https://grahamcluley.com/truecrypt-hidden-message/

Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO

#52

Post by Cloudef »

Would it be possible to capture video by using headless browser and rendering the video element & audio to file? Of course, this will induce some quality loss if encoded to lossy format again. But would effectively be "legal" as the tool would run the youtube's "DRM" and be not distinct from normal browser in any way. I guess the headless browser could maybe perhaps just download the stream to disk as well.

Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO

#53

Post by VonGuard »

Multicomp wrote: post #3

At some point all these exceptions to the dmca section 1201 do at some point indicate to me that we need to have the law updated to be more narrowly tailored rather than continuously apply exceptions to it which can later be taken away.

Speaking as someone who worked to get a 1201 exemption, and who personally shit in the MPAA, RIAA, and ESA's Cornflakes, I can confirm the 1201 process is stupid. Mainly because the RIAA,MPAA, and ESA always show up tp fight the exemption even when they know literally NOTHING about the exemption being asked for.

We petitioned for an exemption to allow museums and libraries to reboot old MMOs in closed rooms with no network connections. That's because we couldn't get anything more from the Copyright office. Still, the RIAA's lawyer was there to lie and not understand a god damn thing we said, and accuse us of making tools that could be used to pirate any MMO.

I begged for them to tell me where to find such tools, as it would make life so much easier. Their lawyers were complete imbeciles who seemed never to have touched a computer, yet here they were telling a group of game programmers what they could and could not do with their programs.

Fucking horrible people, all of them.

Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO

#54

Post by Qub3d »

benologist wrote: post #46
hyperbovine wrote: post #7

For me the best part of this article is the final subhead: > RIAA Efforts Backfire Basically every story written about RIAA since the Clinton administration :-)

About 400 million people pay monthly for access to music instead of listening to radio, occasionally buying albums or piracy so idk if anything really backfired...

I would argue this happened in spite of their efforts. The music industry was dragged kicking and screaming into the streaming world for a variety of reasons, among them the fact that with centralized platforms, artists have no reason to use labels for "discovery" purposes any longer.

Its long been known that the way to defeat piracy is to offer a better service. Its what Steam did, its what Netflix did.

Ironically, the fragmentation of those ecosystems is bringing it back. Piracy is the ultimate invisible hand on the entertainment distribution industry.

Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO

#55

Post by AshamedCaptain »

The takedown didn't backfire at all just because some people decided to publish on Twitter a tarball that still happens to be hosted in many other places so there is absolutely no risk of it getting lost.

The problem is that the project may not survive this.

Major distributions for example will no longer carry the project and likely refuse to touch it even with a ten-foot pole (think media codecs situation). It will be relegated to 3rd party repos. They will lose users, they will lose contributors. And how long until YT's (and/or the other supported websites) HTML changes more rapidly until the remaining manpower can't keep up?

Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO

#56

Post by [deleted] »

cookiecaper wrote: post #50
hyperbovine wrote: post #7

For me the best part of this article is the final subhead: > RIAA Efforts Backfire Basically every story written about RIAA since the Clinton administration :-)

Whatever the public perception is, they did indeed get Napster et al offline, which I think is the thing they cared about. Not sure that they interpret the Streisand Effect in the conventional way. If anything, temporary increase in usage of targeted tools helps them make the case that they're being harmed by said tools' existence.

[deleted]

Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO

#58

Post by throwaway2048 »

hyperbovine wrote: post #7

For me the best part of this article is the final subhead: > RIAA Efforts Backfire Basically every story written about RIAA since the Clinton administration :-)

The RIAA has been wildly successful, they exist as a body to take all the bad press for consumer hostile moves like this instead of companies like Sony, Universal, Disney and Warner, who are the companies who actually operate the RIAA.

Nobody at the RIAA cares you are angry about their moves, in fact they are likely glad that you are, and not the actual responsible parties.

Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO

#59

Post by CreepGin »

Do those German firms hold a monopoly on copyright claims or something?

Years ago I noticed all the Recent records on Chilling Effects (now Lumen) were originated from German. I dug a little deeper and found out one of the firms were generating thousands of records per day and some of the claims were simply mistakes because they used simple string matching algorithms to automatically report massive amount of google search results.

After some email exchanges, their CEO admitted to me that they only generate 5% wrongful claims and somehow he's proud of it...

Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO

#60

Post by cookiecaper »

rndgermandude wrote: post #19
jarbus wrote: post #2

Really good to see Nat Friedman working towards resolving this issue.

I disagree. This looks more like pandering than anything else. Friedman has nothing to lose by making public statements of support, but a lot of reputation to gain if people buy into it. Instead of taking it down in the first place, Friedman should have told the RIAA to shove it, deliberately opening Github up to liability with the intent to defend this in courts and create precedent should the RIAA file suit. Even l…

I'm not a lawyer but afaik the DMCA takedown process is prescribed by statute, and platforms must comply to qualify for the legal protections that make hosting user-generated content possible.

Friedman would certainly be removed by Microsoft if he jeopardized GitHub's legal protections by defying the mandated process, to say nothing of the potential of creating personal legal liability, both criminal and civil.

youtube-dl remains freely available off-GitHub (not to mention on the local disk of anyone who ran `git clone`). I just used it 10 minutes ago. There is no public good served by defying the law here, and there is no reason to put the whole kit and kaboodle on the line over it.

tl;dr, ignoring the DMCA process isn't just a "somewhat risky move". If we're going to break out the pitchforks, let's at least point them in the right direction: write your Congresscritters and tell them you want to see copyright law reform.

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