jwz also had his youtube downloader script out there - but that was apparently not the start of youtube dl
Origins of the youtube-dl project
11–20 of 66 posts
Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project
#12Long live Youtube-dl.
Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
gitlab isn't evil. One of my short life lessons is that, in general, when I do business with evil, sketchy, or nasty organizations or people, I generally come out behind. If the good guys have an inferior product and charge double, I'll sometimes pick the bad guy. And more often than not, I get burned, costing me tenfold what it would have cost to just go with the high-integrity choice in the first place. I'm not lea…
I've been using GitLab for a while now. GitHub did many, many decisions that I found sketchy.
Gitlab enforces DMCA requests. If you're a reputable company wanting to do legit business in the USA you have to follow the process, it really isn't up to Github or Gitlab unless they want to lose safe harbor status.
Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project
#14I don't know if this is related or not but back when Flickr was popular in like 2005 or 2006 my friends and I were uploading pictures of our events there (they're all still there AFAIK. We'd upload them to either our own accounts or for certain events to a shared account. One shared account is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sourpower/albums I wanted copies of those pictures and the easiest way to get them was th…
While I can understand your frustration, I also understand the frustration of photographers and other creators trying to make a living who have their work stolen. Their anger was wrongly directed at you, but it is a real problem.
Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been using GitLab for a while now. GitHub did many, many decisions that I found sketchy.
Gitlab enforces DMCA requests. If you're a reputable company wanting to do legit business in the USA you have to follow the process, it really isn't up to Github or Gitlab unless they want to lose safe harbor status. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/dmca/
It's pretty easy, just find a reputable company somewhere outside of the US.
Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project
#16I don't know if this is related or not but back when Flickr was popular in like 2005 or 2006 my friends and I were uploading pictures of our events there (they're all still there AFAIK. We'd upload them to either our own accounts or for certain events to a shared account. One shared account is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sourpower/albums I wanted copies of those pictures and the easiest way to get them was th…
While I can understand your frustration, I also understand the frustration of photographers and other creators trying to make a living who have their work stolen. Their anger was wrongly directed at you, but it is a real problem.
It's basically over now; since photographers don't have a cartel backing them like film or music, and photos are so easy to copy, everything is basically everywhere.
Newspapers will routinely rip off photos from social media, sometimes in the face of explicit non permission.
Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been using GitLab for a while now. GitHub did many, many decisions that I found sketchy.
Gitlab enforces DMCA requests. If you're a reputable company wanting to do legit business in the USA you have to follow the process, it really isn't up to Github or Gitlab unless they want to lose safe harbor status. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/dmca/
As well they should! Following the laws is part of not being sketchy.
github went way above-and-beyond here. It is under no obligation to:
1) Enforce an invalid DMCA request
2) Take down forks and repos from other users, without DMCA requests
3) Threaten to ban users
DMCA has a simple, neutral process. github receives a request. It's required to take down that specific tool if it's a valid request (NOT everyone who forked it). The developer who owns that repo can then put that up. At that point, github brings that repo back, and gives the RIAA means to file litigate against the developer. It's inspired by the concept of a common carrier, where github would be acting as a neutral party, not a thuggish policeman-for-hire.
If github ignored DMCA requests, I wouldn't do business with them either. I expect them to be a neutral third party, as the law dictates.
Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project
#18Damn, freshmeat.net... I used to visit that site every day in the early 2000s, and I'd totally forgotten about it.
Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project
#19TIL the project was started by a fellow Spaniard! Very nice write up, kudos!
Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project
#20I don't know if this is related or not but back when Flickr was popular in like 2005 or 2006 my friends and I were uploading pictures of our events there (they're all still there AFAIK. We'd upload them to either our own accounts or for certain events to a shared account. One shared account is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sourpower/albums I wanted copies of those pictures and the easiest way to get them was th…
While I can understand your frustration, I also understand the frustration of photographers and other creators trying to make a living who have their work stolen. Their anger was wrongly directed at you, but it is a real problem.
While I agree with you that photographers are hurt by having their photos copied I'm not convinced my app was a problem. I personally doubt anyone was using it to bulk download copywritten photos and somehow use those photos. I could be wrong but I believe most people that steal photos still them a few at time. Basically they're making some article, they need a related photo, they search, grab a 2 to 5 and stick them in their article. They'd do this with the browser, not my app.
My app didn't let you search by keyword, only by user. Further it didn't remove watermarks or do anything else. If photographers put their photos on flickr and they care about stealing they usually both watermark and only put relatively low-res versions there and you have to pay them for high res versions.
If flickr provided logs that showed bulk download and further some proof that even with bulk download that it was actually affecting professional photographers and not just a few geeks collecting some pictures they liked then I'd be more inclined to buy into their ban but without that I'm pretty confident the ban had no basis in reality.