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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

#131

Post by Rochus »

eznzt wrote: post #86
junon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where? Can you show me the code?

YouTube uses encrypted signatures as a way of hiding the URL of the video. https://github.com/l1ving/youtube-dl/blob/master/youtube_dl/...

It's like closing the door and hanging the key next to the door for all to see. Definitely not an effective technical measure to protect the house.

EDIT: And not to forget that Youtube hosts many CC-BY licensed videos which explicitly allow unlimited use (incl. decryption if necessary), and that Youtube has contracts with copyright collectives in most countries so for any user it is save to assume that the video is legally uploaded (and thus download and store for personal use is legal in most countries).

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

#132

Post by mkl95 »

apocalyptic0n3 wrote: post #105
mkl95 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if it was a bit tongue-in-cheek. The RIAA can now call Github out whenever they have an argument for them enabling downloads of copyrighted content through their repositories. And Github is expected to fix it for them.

I'm not sure how this is any different than how it's been for years now. GitHub has been complying with DMCA takedown requests since 2011[1]. What precedent needed to be set here? The RIAA could always do this and GitHub has been complying with it (because they legally have to). 1: https://github.com/github/dmca/

A lot of the things listed on the DMCA repo (if not most of them) are not software that could be used to download content, but the literal content you could obtain using them, such as textbooks, proprietary fonts, and so on.

By taking down youtube-dl, Github has opened a window for copyright trolls to speculate about what a repository is used for, and take it down if one of its use cases involves downloading copyrighted content.

I can see how it's legitimate to take down a repository with the sole, explicit goal of downloading copyrighted content, but youtube-dl is widely used by journalists to preserve uncopyrighted content.

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

#133

Post by crtasm »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #121
gambiting wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github hosts tonnes of bittorrent clients - should those be taken down too? After all, bittorent can be used for downloading content illegally!

The supposed claim wasn’t that it could be used for piracy (despite many here parroting that claim), but that they advertise that it could be. I haven’t read the actual claim, but it seems they’re basing their argument on a block of test code that uses a video containing RIAA copyrighted music. It’s sketchy at best, but there’s a reason BitTorrent clients make no mention of piracy sites at all ; The MPAA and RIAA are…

Perhaps bittorrent clients don't mention specific sites but there's no end of related projects that do, e.g. expand the three "Supported ___ Trackers" lists on https://github.com/Jackett/Jackett

I'm not aware of any notices filed against that specific project.

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

#134

Post by iso1210 »

jononor wrote: post #128
colejohnson66 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard this over and over, but I never understood it. How is Git supposed to be decentralized when you push and pull from one place? Would you just set up multiple “origins” with each one pointing to a head maintainer’s computer (and named appropriately)? Because that sounds like a massive pain compared to a centralized system like GitHub. Of course, there is the benefit of a VCS built on the idea of decentraliza…

"Fully offline capable" would be a better term than "decentralized" when describing git. But, one relatively decentralized workflow that git has good support for is sending patches via email (git format-patch, git am). I believe the Linux kernel still does a large amount of its collaboration that way.

As does ffmpeg. Some more recent developers seem incredulous.

https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/pull/153#issuecomment-15416...

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

#135

Post by thethethethe »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #119
AlexandrB wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> >"Time for a decentralized version control system?" I have to laugh at this one. Git is a decentralized VCS, that was effectively re-centralized (via Github) for the sake of convenience.

I’ve heard this over and over, but I never understood it. How is Git supposed to be decentralized when you push and pull from one place? Would you just set up multiple “origins” with each one pointing to a head maintainer’s computer (and named appropriately)? Because that sounds like a massive pain compared to a centralized system like GitHub. Of course, there is the benefit of a VCS built on the idea of decentraliza…

> I’ve heard this over and over, but I never understood it. How is Git supposed to be decentralized when you push and pull from one place?

Git is a _distributed_ version control system, not a decentralized version control system. This simply means that users of the repository download the entire repository onto the machine they are making changes from. Distributed version control systems have no opinions on whether the source of truth for a given repository is decentralized, distributed, or centralized.

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

#136

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #119
AlexandrB wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> >"Time for a decentralized version control system?" I have to laugh at this one. Git is a decentralized VCS, that was effectively re-centralized (via Github) for the sake of convenience.

I’ve heard this over and over, but I never understood it. How is Git supposed to be decentralized when you push and pull from one place? Would you just set up multiple “origins” with each one pointing to a head maintainer’s computer (and named appropriately)? Because that sounds like a massive pain compared to a centralized system like GitHub. Of course, there is the benefit of a VCS built on the idea of decentraliza…

With git, "push/pull from one place" is merely a usage/behavior convention by collaborators. Nothing about git requires push or pull, and nothing about git requires that you only use a single "canonical" repository.

The key point about git is that every copy of the repository is semantically equivalent to every other copy. The one on your local machine is a fully fledged repo just like the one on your colleague's machine and just like the one on github or wherever else a "canonical repo" is hosted.

This is utterly different from older systems like svn or perforce, where the "central server" is semantically distinct from whatever you have on your machine.

At any time, you could decide that a different instance of the repo is canonical (shared push/pull), and that's what make git decentralized.

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

#137

Post by toomuchtodo »

ikeboy wrote: post #99
varispeed wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you have a stand to sue RIAA if GitHub would have blocked your account? I think you may only have a claim against GH, but I have not read T&C well enough, but I can imagine they would have an entry enabling them to block anyone for any reason. I don't think you could do anything about it.

RIAA made a claim that some content violates their rights under DMCA, which in this hypothetical causes my account to be blocked. I can bring a case under the declaratory judgement act against RIAA, asking a court to decide whether the content is actually infringing. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaratory_judgment I may also have a tortious interference claim, although damages are likely negligible so it's pro…

Be the squeaky wheel. Thanks for your efforts.

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

#139

Post by bfrydl »

AlexandrB wrote: post #112
jasode wrote: 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…

> >"Time for a decentralized version control system?" I have to laugh at this one. Git is a decentralized VCS, that was effectively re-centralized (via Github) for the sake of convenience.

I think it's likely that's the joke.
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