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The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press

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Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press

#31

Post by nitwit005 »

This seems to be starting with the assumption that it's possible to prevent people from downloading the videos. That is a false assumption. You can, after all, just play the video and record it. Even if the entire machine playing the content is flawlessly locked down, you can just record the output.

The efforts at DRM done by companies like Netflix is done because the companies that licensed the content demand it. That doesn't mean the DRM works. You can find torrents of all those shows.

Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press

#32

Post by tshaddox »

superkuh wrote: post #3

Youtube is a youtube downloader. Everything is a downloader. It's literally impossible to interact with a thing without downloading it and having the data. The difference is that the data is usually deleted later (a silly practice done to trick the lawyers into believing the world is like they think it is, hiding actual reality that would confuse and enrage them).

The word "download" is used in two senses. The first is the broader sense you're referring to, where it means "to receive data." The second sense means to collect all the data from a particular file or dataset and store it locally, as opposed to "streaming." That second sense is the one clearly being used when referring to "YouTube downloaders."

Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press

#33

Post by AceJohnny2 »

molticrystal wrote: post #23

The claim that Google secretly wants YouTube downloaders to work doesn't hold up. Their focus is on delivering videos across a vast range of devices without breaking playback(and even that is blurring[0]), not enabling downloads. If you dive into the yt-dlp source code, you see the insane complexity of calculations needed to download a video. There is code to handle nsig checks, internal YouTube API quirks, and const…

I also don't buy this argument about YouTube depending on downloaders:

> They perform a valuable role: If it were impossible to download YouTube videos, many organizations would abandon hosting their videos on YouTube for a platform that offered more user flexibility. Or they’d need to host a separate download link and put it in their YouTube descriptions. But organizations don’t need to jump through hoops -- they just let people use YouTube downloaders.

No, organizations simply use YouTube because it's free, extremely convenient, has been very stable enough over the past couple decades to depend on, and the organization does not have the resources to setup an alternative.

Also, I'm guessing such organizations represent a vanishly small segment of YouTube's uploaders.

I don't think people appreciate how much YouTube has created a market. "Youtuber" is a valid (if often derided) job these days, where creators can earn a living wage and maintain whole media companies. Preserving that monetization portal is key to YouTube and its content creators.

Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press

#35

Post by charcircuit »

skinnymuch wrote: post #30
charcircuit wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downloading videos is a premium feature of YouTube and doesn't delete the data.

Can you access those downloads?

Yes, there is a downloads button in the app to see your downloaded videos.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/11977233

Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press

#36

Post by grugagag »

nitwit005 wrote: post #31

This seems to be starting with the assumption that it's possible to prevent people from downloading the videos. That is a false assumption. You can, after all, just play the video and record it. Even if the entire machine playing the content is flawlessly locked down, you can just record the output. The efforts at DRM done by companies like Netflix is done because the companies that licensed the content demand it. Th…

Yeah, you can capture HDMI stream with a cheap card so basically everything is ultimately copyable, however that brings in some friction. Some people prefer the easiest option, even if that showers them in advertisments and distupts their attention.

Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press

#37

Post by mongol »

There is also a program called streamlink. I have found it good to find Live streams at Youtube, since those often changes. For example, if a TV channel has a live stream at a certain Youtube URL, a few weeks later, it may be at a different URL. But streamlink can sometimes find it, just by looking at the Youtube channel

Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press

#38

Post by nativeit »

charcircuit wrote: post #35
skinnymuch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you access those downloads?

Yes, there is a downloads button in the app to see your downloaded videos. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/11977233

I'm pretty sure they meant, can the videos be accessed as files in the filesystem, which to my knowledge they cannot.

Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press

#39

Post by ThunderSizzle »

adocomplete wrote: post #29
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #22

> Google needs YouTube downloaders. They perform a valuable role: If it were impossible to download YouTube videos, many organizations would abandon hosting their videos on YouTube for a platform that offered more user flexibility. Or they’d need to host a separate download link and put it in their YouTube descriptions. But organizations don’t need to jump through hoops -- they just let people use YouTube downloaders…

Also, if you upload a video to YouTube you can download it from YouTube Studio at any time, so that doesn't add up at all. YouTube just doesn't make this available via API, but you've always been able to manually from YouTube Studio download your uploaded videos.

That sounds brutal if you have 5 years of daily uploads or something like that. At some point, if you want your entire catalog, that becomes a very sucky process.

Re: The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press

#40

Post by hayksaakian »

molticrystal wrote: post #26
ameliaquining wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument the article is making is that if they really wanted YouTube downloaders to stop working, they'd switch to Encrypted Media Extensions. Do you think that's not plausible?

Many smart devices that have youtube functionality(tvs, refrigerators, consoles, cable boxes, etc), have limited or no ability to support that functionality in hardware, or even if they do, it might not be exposed. Once those devices get phased out, it is very likely they will move to Encrypted Media Extensions or something similar, I believe I saw an issue ticket on yt-dlp's repo indicating they are already experime…

for example I think feature length films that YouTube sells (or rents) already use this encryption.
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