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RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO
221–230 of 292 posts
Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
IME, most YouTube videos do not use any technological measure to prevent using any TCP client, not simply Google's Javascript player compbined with a web browser, to download the video. Moreover I have observed that for most YT videos Google's player uses "progressive download", i.e., a number of successive HTTP requests with incremented Range headers, not "streaming". Thus, for most videos, there is no need to circu…
I believe a court in Germany has already ruled on the rolling cipher being a technological restriction (and that is referenced in the complaint). The point of the technological measure (together with TOS) is to make the intent clear. youtube-dl could probably have been fine without implementing the cipher decryption function but since it did and had a test suite to check and flag if it doesn't work, it made itself a…
Any standard user agent would "circumvent" the "protection" in exactly the same manner. If Firefox used that page as a test case for its JS engine, would that make it primarily designed for circumvention?
The point of the rolling cipher is that you can't access the video without running their JS. youtube-dl did exactly that, just as any user agent would.
Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO
#223> By now it is clear that the RIAA’s takedown notice backfired badly. With the ‘Streisand Effect’ in full swing, there are now probably more copies of YouTube-DL online than there ever were. Did it though? Sure, the Streisand effect caused more distribution of youtube-dl, but that's never really been an issue. Open source software as widely used as youtube-dl is mirrored in a hundred different places. The issue here…
It annoyed me enough to put me back into a buying position. I looked at Gitlab pricing after paying Github every month for a long time (hey, Business Guy: we'll switch in a heartbeat) and I started thinking about what it would take to host code in a decentralized fashion.
In a free market it is important that when you are displeased with a supplier that you truthfully tell that supplier why you are displeased (ideally very vocally) and are actively considering alternatives. It is one of the few early-warning signals that might change their behaviour.
But ideally, just stop giving them money immediately and tell them, but mention that you are willing to change your mind if they change their behaviour. And if they vascillate too often between what is right and what is profitable, inform the entire system even if it is a great personal expense. As long as it benefits the system, you will come out okay in the end.
Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you might be right, but I also don't know how viable this was before the DMCA. I have never been able to get youtube-dl to work with (both ubuntu / mint) distro packages. The packages always fall out of date due to youtube changing things, and you need to download it directly from the youtube-dl website regardless.
Repo packages moved slowly, pip or building from source was often the only way of reliably getting it to work.
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Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe a court in Germany has already ruled on the rolling cipher being a technological restriction (and that is referenced in the complaint). The point of the technological measure (together with TOS) is to make the intent clear. youtube-dl could probably have been fine without implementing the cipher decryption function but since it did and had a test suite to check and flag if it doesn't work, it made itself a…
Any standard user agent would "circumvent" the "protection" in exactly the same manner. If Firefox used that page as a test case for its JS engine, would that make it primarily designed for circumvention? The point of the rolling cipher is that you can't access the video without running their JS. youtube-dl did exactly that, just as any user agent would.
Well if it actually went to a court case, I'm sure either RIAA's lawyers or the defence lawyers would subpoena Google to disclose the split of downloaded videos between protected and not protected videos and then we'd actually know. It is likely RIAA would have already done some sense check of usage already using metered PC panels before even stirring up this particular hornets nest.
Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO
#226Another way to help is to improve IPFS and Federation protocols, for example for Gitea[1][2] or GitLab[3][4]. Or just sponsor them[5].
The source code for ForgeFed[6][7] might be also of interest for improvement.
[1] https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/1612
[2] https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/9045
[3] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/6468
[4] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/33665
[5] https://opencollective.com/gitea
Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who uses youtube-dl for all the videos online, it's presence in any repos isn't as important as it may seem, because it breaks from time to time for some websites and you need to update it in order to keep using it, which is only easy if you keep it in your home directory so you can just run youtube-dl -U once it breaks.
I completely disagree. I have been using for example NewPipe from FDroid which is autobuild regularly as native Android program. I would no longer expect FDroid now to keep doing this if they risk a DCMA letter that takes out their entire repo. And I would assume a shitton of users use yt-dl code through another GUI application, rather than directly through an EasyInstall/virtualenv/whatever. And will most py repos s…
NewPipe has their own fdroid repo already, so that shouldn't cause any serious issues
Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
IME, most YouTube videos do not use any technological measure to prevent using any TCP client, not simply Google's Javascript player compbined with a web browser, to download the video. Moreover I have observed that for most YT videos Google's player uses "progressive download", i.e., a number of successive HTTP requests with incremented Range headers, not "streaming". Thus, for most videos, there is no need to circu…
> Section 1201, specifically referenced in RIAA's letter, requires that the circumvention software be "primarily" designed for circumvention. It's arguable youtube-dl is not primarily designed for downloading the minority of YT videos that use the rolling cipher, or whatever "protection" Google may choose to offer the minority of YT accounts that want to use YT as a distribution channel for commercial content, e.g.,…
Inside the source of the Javascript player (base.js) was a function to transform (update) the value of the video signature (s) parameter. All you had to do was look at base.js and duplicate the string operations used to produce the updated s, whatever they were. No need to use Javascript. yt-dl chose to use Python. Only a minority of videos used this "technological measure". Most videos on YT do not require a continually updated s; the value of s stays the same.
2017: https://tyrrrz.me/blog/reverse-engineering-youtube
2015: https://github.com/bitnol/CipherAPI
2014: https://gist.github.com/kl/9070523
2014: https://api.w3hills.com/ytcipher
Regarding the "bookmark" comment, there is no way to "bookmark" any YT download URL because all YT download URLs (not just ones that have a changing signature) include timestamps; as is typical of download URLs on video sites, they have an expiration. Generating URLs that expire is not done as a means of copyright-related "access control"; the purpose has to do with caching.
Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s about awareness, not distribution. How many people learned youtube-dl exists due to news about its takedown?
Their comment was not about distribution, but on going development. It's easy for an individual site to break youtube-dl, and it happens often. Awareness/distribution don't matter if: A) there is no central repository for updating the project//distributing updates B) threat of legal action deters maintainers from the project
It's a miracle that OSS ever was developed by large groups of people before github existed. /s
Re: RIAA’s YouTube-dl takedown ticks off developers and GitHub’s CEO
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the alternatives are groups associated with authoritarian regimes, pishing groups and mobs?
Git can be cloned via HTTP and it's so easy to set up that people have accidentally done it. There are loads of web shops that accidentally disclosed source code by way of having their Git deploy repo in their Apache webroot. You could literally "git clone http://poorsuckersblog.com/ " and get everything.
That domain appears to be unregistered, don't know if anyone is looking for a good domain -- if so, you may have found it.