How journalists use youtube-dl
freedom.press
How journalists use youtube-dl
1–10 of 348 posts
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#2youtube-dl has so many uses. This DMCA stuff is outrageous.
I hope they put it up onn a Github-like site outside the US.
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#3My two big uses cases for youtube-dl:
1) Downloading videos to use later in editing for analysis pieces / editorial videos.
2) Download videos that may disappear in a "No longer available" blackhole.
The 2nd is incredibly useful and telling when you go back, look up videos by their ID, and see what has been deleted. I'd also recommend changing the OUTPUT format to include the channel name or Twitter account, so you can easily see if an account or channel has been censored/banned.
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#4I never downloaded videos from youtube until this came up. Didn't realize how easy it was.
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#5Indeed, it should be good practice for any journalist to download copies of online material they are reporting about (not just video, but anything), for the case that they are being deleted or altered. In the old world, you had a piece of paper or a document that you could store somewhere. An URL is not a way of storing the content, it can always disappear.
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#6Another valid use-case is to use the hardware acceleration with your native video player. AFAIK, mpv uses youtube-dl under the hood to play youtube videos. For a long time the video acceleration in browsers wasn't very good for Linux users, so we used players like mpv instead to watch high resolution content.
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#7I hope developers are working with someone to fight back against RIAA trolls.
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#8oh no the beloved profession journalism, very sad!
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#9Youtube-dl had some good notes in their README about legitimate uses and an explanation about how they tried to avoid adding sites that specialized in infringing content, but they really did themselves a legal disservice by explicitly using copyrighted music video content as tests. That will not help their argument at all. Youtube-dl absolutely has important and completely legal uses, reporting being among them, but the law doesn't care whether it CAN be used for legal purposes. The law only cares if the tool was "primarily designed" or "marketed" or "has only limited non-infringing purpose."
On the other hand, I'm no lawyer, but I think there's a (possibly bad) argument that youtube-dl does not violate 17 USC §§1201(a)(2)(a) because it does not circumvent any technological measures to control access to any content. The video is transferred entirely in the clear to any anonymous users that request it. Youtube-dl makes no false claims or breaks no cryptography or encryption. What measure is in place that is being circumvented?
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#10We're lucky it wasn't forced off an app store on a locked platform. Then we'd be begging some corporation to be allowed to run it..