Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 646 posts

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#11

Post by crazygringo »

xeonmc wrote: post #3

In ten years time YouTube will be entirely inaccessible from the browser as the iPad kids generation are used to doomscrolling the tablet app and Google feels confident enough to cut off the aging demographic.

This is obviously not plausible. They're never going to shut off browser access on people's laptops. Watching YT at work is a major thing.

I have to assume you're joking, but I honestly can't figure out what point you're even trying to make. Do it think it's surprising that an ad-supported site has anti-scraping/anti-downloading mechanisms? YouTube isn't a charity, it's not Wikipedia.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#12

Post by reddalo »

I wonder why YouTube doesn't implement full DRM, such as Widevine, at this point.

Is it because it would break compatibility with some devices? Is it too expensive?

(not that I'd like that; I always download videos from YouTube for my personal archive, and I only use 3rd party or modified clients)

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#13

Post by vachina »

xeonmc wrote: post #3

In ten years time YouTube will be entirely inaccessible from the browser as the iPad kids generation are used to doomscrolling the tablet app and Google feels confident enough to cut off the aging demographic.

They’d need dedicated hardware to enforce any kind of effective DRM. Encrypted bitstream generated on the fly watchable only on L2 attested device.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#14

Post by hu3 »

BinaryIgor wrote: post #8
xeonmc wrote: post #3

In ten years time YouTube will be entirely inaccessible from the browser as the iPad kids generation are used to doomscrolling the tablet app and Google feels confident enough to cut off the aging demographic.

It's not YouTube though, but downloader :) "yt-dlp is a feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader with support for thousands of sites. The project is a fork of youtube-dl based on the now inactive youtube-dlc."

They know that. yt-dlp uses browser-like access to download.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#15

Post by easton »

nicce wrote: post #9
BinaryIgor wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not YouTube though, but downloader :) "yt-dlp is a feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader with support for thousands of sites. The project is a fork of youtube-dl based on the now inactive youtube-dlc."

I guess the point was that yt-dlp is only possible, because of the mandatory protocols you need in the browser. Moving to native app makes it much easier to prevent downloading and denying access to the unencrypted content.

I think these days yt-dlp is possible because they're relying on the infra YouTube has for their TV apps, which are html5 (ish) browser apps. so they'd also have to dedicate time to building native apps for every TV in existence, even if youtube.com went away.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#16

Post by reddalo »

crazygringo wrote: post #11
xeonmc wrote: post #3

In ten years time YouTube will be entirely inaccessible from the browser as the iPad kids generation are used to doomscrolling the tablet app and Google feels confident enough to cut off the aging demographic.

This is obviously not plausible. They're never going to shut off browser access on people's laptops. Watching YT at work is a major thing. I have to assume you're joking, but I honestly can't figure out what point you're even trying to make. Do it think it's surprising that an ad-supported site has anti-scraping/anti-downloading mechanisms? YouTube isn't a charity, it's not Wikipedia.

They can't shut off browser access, but they surely can kill all non-Chromium browsers.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#17

Post by ACCount37 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #4
xeonmc wrote: post #3

In ten years time YouTube will be entirely inaccessible from the browser as the iPad kids generation are used to doomscrolling the tablet app and Google feels confident enough to cut off the aging demographic.

The YouTube web app is so full of bugs it's almost unusable on a phone. Comments also disappear regularly on all platforms...

And the YouTube web interface is full of issues too. For example, livestreams had transient memory leaks for months already, thought to be related to their chat implementation.

In the meanwhile, YouTube spends its effort on measures against yt-dlp, which don't actually stop yt-dlp.

What the fuck is wrong with Google corporate as of late.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#18

Post by djoldman »

From

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/EJS

it looks like deno is recommended for these reasons:

> Notes

> * Code is run with restricted permissions (e.g, no file system or network access)

> * Supports downloading EJS script dependencies from npm (--remote-components ejs:npm).

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#19

Post by crazygringo »

reddalo wrote: post #16
crazygringo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obviously not plausible. They're never going to shut off browser access on people's laptops. Watching YT at work is a major thing. I have to assume you're joking, but I honestly can't figure out what point you're even trying to make. Do it think it's surprising that an ad-supported site has anti-scraping/anti-downloading mechanisms? YouTube isn't a charity, it's not Wikipedia.

They can't shut off browser access, but they surely can kill all non-Chromium browsers.

No, they can't. Way too many devices, including televisions, access YT via all sorts of browsers. Not to mention antitrust would be all over that. With their dominant browser share, getting people to switch to Chrome by removing access to YT for Firefox would get multiple governments filing lawsuits ASAP.

Re: Yt-dlp: External JavaScript runtime now required for full YouTube support

#20

Post by haunter »

reddalo wrote: post #12

I wonder why YouTube doesn't implement full DRM, such as Widevine, at this point. Is it because it would break compatibility with some devices? Is it too expensive? (not that I'd like that; I always download videos from YouTube for my personal archive, and I only use 3rd party or modified clients)

They are already experimenting with DRM on all videos in certain clients (like the HTML5 TV one) https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues/12563

Sooner or later, in the next couple of years, it will happen.

Post reply on HN