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GitHub Warns Users Reposting YouTube-DL They Could Be Banned

torrentfreak.com

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Re: GitHub Warns Users Reposting YouTube-DL They Could Be Banned

#41
post #18

Technologists once again shocked that a policy issue cannot be solved by Technology. Tech solutions that are not aligned with the policy only work until lawyers and politicians catch up.

Then again pretty much any policy can be made unenforceable if a sufficient number of people decide to make it so. Technologists with their ability to automate are at a distinct advantage here again. I'm just waiting for youtube-dl to move development to Tor or i2p or another censorship resistant network - and ship with a built-in client to update from there.

Probably the lawyers will move on when the thing becomes hard enough to use and gets contained to few techies showing off to their few friends and calling it a victory.

The issue is that anything that scales needs an infrastructure and infrastructures can be extralegal only if they are not worth the time of the guys with the guns.

Re: GitHub Warns Users Reposting YouTube-DL They Could Be Banned

#42
post #9
post #3

Time for a (truly) decentralized version control system?

ForgeFed is a decentralized version control system under development. https://forgefed.peers.community/

This is what we need (recently learned about it).

I wish this had more traction and progressed more quickly. Though of course it is a good thing not to rush the specification.

Re: GitHub Warns Users Reposting YouTube-DL They Could Be Banned

#43
post #29
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No service provider is going to fight a specific case of DMCA for a third-party. How far do you think I'll get if I tried to file a bogus DMCA request for a Microsoft repo?

Not far because _Microsoft_ - the owner of the repo - will fight you on it. It happens that they own Github, but s/Microsoft/Oracle/ and you'll probably get the same result. The automated systems will take down the repo for a bit, then the owner of the repo will kick your ass in court. It just happens that youtube-dl doesn't have a large corporate owner, and the RIAA _is_ a large corporate entity, and so this is how…

>The automated systems will take down the repo for a bit

That seems unlikely, considering that would be a massive DDoS vector.

Re: GitHub Warns Users Reposting YouTube-DL They Could Be Banned

#44
Great. I posted two forks, if GitHub takes action then I've got standing to sue RIAA (under the declaratory judgement act), which I'd love to do pro se.

Btw, if anyone is associated with any fork that did go down and is interested in bringing a pro se case, feel free to contact me. I'm not a lawyer and can't give legal advice but I can help point you at some helpful laws and cases. I've been fighting false infringement claims in court for over a year on other issues. Also take a look at the complaint in https://torrentfreak.com/riaa-sued-by-youtube-ripping-site-o..., although it has some issues I noted at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24902619.

Re: GitHub Warns Users Reposting YouTube-DL They Could Be Banned

#45
post #5

People should move their youbube-dl repositories to servers hosted in Switzerland, where people are not criminalized when downloading content and making copies for personal use (even when copy protected).

I hate to break it to you but distribution of tools related to bypassing DRM/technical protection measures (which is what the RIAA takedown letter actually cited) is illegal in Switzerland and has been since 2006. Indeed, you can be sent to prison for it with a maximum tariff of a year in prison. https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19920251/...

youtube-dl does not circumvent any protection measures, so hosting it should not be illegal in any country, including Switzerland.

The only problem here is the absurdity of how the DMCA and similar works in the US, which allows companies to easily spam invalid claims and require content removed unless the victim puts in the work to prove the claim invalid. And, of course, that legal cases tend to be settled not moral and innocence, but by the lawyers paychecks.

Re: GitHub Warns Users Reposting YouTube-DL They Could Be Banned

#46
post #37

Some example comments in this thread: >"People should move their youbube-dl repositories to servers hosted in Switzerland, " >"Time for a decentralized version control system?" >"The nice thing about fossil" ... those well-meaning suggestions are missing the true difficulty : The community wants a (1) Schelling Point [0] for workflow/issues/discussions/PRs that's also (2) censorship resistant. So far, (1) and (2) con…

The hosting for the server is irrelevant if it is relatively stable (does not get compromised every few days) and you have alternatives to move to if it gets taken down.

The true single point of failure is the domain name, but sites like sci-hub seem to be able to manage that rather easily too. The domain name sometimes has to change but people still seem to be able to find it easily.

Re: GitHub Warns Users Reposting YouTube-DL They Could Be Banned

#47
post #37

Some example comments in this thread: >"People should move their youbube-dl repositories to servers hosted in Switzerland, " >"Time for a decentralized version control system?" >"The nice thing about fossil" ... those well-meaning suggestions are missing the true difficulty : The community wants a (1) Schelling Point [0] for workflow/issues/discussions/PRs that's also (2) censorship resistant. So far, (1) and (2) con…

You could always use a newsgroup for patches/issues/discussion. Those are notoriously hard to sensor and usually can be posted to/read by normal mail clients.

Re: GitHub Warns Users Reposting YouTube-DL They Could Be Banned

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to break it to you but distribution of tools related to bypassing DRM/technical protection measures (which is what the RIAA takedown letter actually cited) is illegal in Switzerland and has been since 2006. Indeed, you can be sent to prison for it with a maximum tariff of a year in prison. https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19920251/...

youtube-dl does not circumvent any protection measures, so hosting it should not be illegal in any country, including Switzerland. The only problem here is the absurdity of how the DMCA and similar works in the US, which allows companies to easily spam invalid claims and require content removed unless the victim puts in the work to prove the claim invalid. And, of course, that legal cases tend to be settled not moral…

>youtube-dl does not circumvent any protection measures

It does.

Re: GitHub Warns Users Reposting YouTube-DL They Could Be Banned

#49
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again pretty much any policy can be made unenforceable if a sufficient number of people decide to make it so. Technologists with their ability to automate are at a distinct advantage here again. I'm just waiting for youtube-dl to move development to Tor or i2p or another censorship resistant network - and ship with a built-in client to update from there.

Probably the lawyers will move on when the thing becomes hard enough to use and gets contained to few techies showing off to their few friends and calling it a victory. The issue is that anything that scales needs an infrastructure and infrastructures can be extralegal only if they are not worth the time of the guys with the guns.

If only there were a decentralized file sharing protocol that anyone can use to distribute source code and binaries...

Re: GitHub Warns Users Reposting YouTube-DL They Could Be Banned

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to break it to you but distribution of tools related to bypassing DRM/technical protection measures (which is what the RIAA takedown letter actually cited) is illegal in Switzerland and has been since 2006. Indeed, you can be sent to prison for it with a maximum tariff of a year in prison. https://www.admin.ch/opc/en/classified-compilation/19920251/...

youtube-dl does not circumvent any protection measures, so hosting it should not be illegal in any country, including Switzerland. The only problem here is the absurdity of how the DMCA and similar works in the US, which allows companies to easily spam invalid claims and require content removed unless the victim puts in the work to prove the claim invalid. And, of course, that legal cases tend to be settled not moral…

youtube-dl has circumvention code needed to download copyrighted music from major publishers, which have a slightly different cipher than the rest of the site. They even had integration tests for this code path.
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