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Downloading a video should be “fair use” as recording a song from the radio

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Re: Downloading a video should be “fair use” as recording a song from the radio

#3
streamable.com just removed a random video of mine for “community guidelines”

I use the site to save random Twitter and Youtube videos. They aren’t publicly shared. Kind of disheartening to see a random video removed without knowing which one. And all for paying $108/year for a simple convenience.

Definitely downloading all of them and canceling.

Re: Downloading a video should be “fair use” as recording a song from the radio

#5
Considering that many countries take a copying fee -- which is intended to cover lost revenue from exactly this use case -- for cassettes, harddrives and other storage media, yes yes it should.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy

Re: Downloading a video should be “fair use” as recording a song from the radio

#8
The problem is that whether or not downloading a YouTube video can be fair use, the RIAA is alleging that youtube-dl is a copy protection circumvention tool. 17 USC 1201(a)(2) does not care about your fair use, it only cares about keeping copying tools off the market.

To bring this back into the home recording of radio, it'd be as if Congress decided to ban the sale of tape decks that could record radio transmissions[0]. That ban would work regardless of fair use.

This is why Section 1201(a)(2) needs to be struct from the law, BTW - your access to copying tools should not evaporate because of a lack of ability to enforce copyright on you.

[0] How this ban is actually implemented is immaterial, but perhaps radios can't have detachable speakers or audio out ports to hook a tape deck into, or tape decks have to only have an integral speaker and no audio in ports. This wouldn't stop home recording of radio but it'd be significantly worse.

Re: Downloading a video should be “fair use” as recording a song from the radio

#9
The hypocrisy of download defenders is exposed when re-distribution is the concern. Most content producers and publishers are fine with downloading as long as you don't re-distribute (which is theft), but we have no way of preventing that, so they are forced to close the download gate

Re: Downloading a video should be “fair use” as recording a song from the radio

#10
For anyone with self-respect, it is. Come get me, media-conglomerate scumbags.

Remember how they whined against DAT and basically had it killed (abetted by Congress), claiming that "perfect digital copies" would destroy their business? Meanwhile, everybody on the planet knew that essentially all "piracy" took place on double-cassette boom boxes in dorm rooms.

And sure enough, even when "piracy" went digital, it was in the form of lossy MP3s... far from perfect. So their story was a lie from top to bottom... but we've seen our "representatives" abet ever-greater crimes against consumers at their behest. The absurd tax on blank media, and the DMCA (and even more-egregious proposals since) stand as disgraceful examples.

Do you remember when Circuit City or Best Buy offered "every CD $10.99 or less?" The idea was to bring people into their stores, where they'd buy other stuff. But all of a sudden that deal disappeared. It turns out that the record companies threatened those retailers with financial sanctions (by withholding cooperative advertising funds) if they continued to offer those prices.

The record companies were sued for this behavior, which prosecutors said ripped off consumers for $400 million. Gee, this is the same figure that the record companies whined that Napster cost them. Karma is a bitch.

I still have the stub of my $13 settlement check from these assholes.

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