How journalists use youtube-dl • Hacker News Board

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#161

Post by Robotbeat » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 11:53 PM UTC

backtoyoujim wrote: post #148

neodymiumphish wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The process for a subpoena takes forever and isn't guaranteed. If I have a subject who has relevant video on a service like YouTube, and I decide to go the subpoena route, here's the process: - Find the exact video, document the URL, Content creator's account name, and video upload date. - Submit a preservation letter to Google to ensure the video will still be accessible when the subpoena is auctioned. - go to my pr…

"The process for a subpoena takes forever" No, it doesn't. And that "forever" are human rights that are established and should require a subpoena to contest.

I mean, we’re talking about publicly viewable stuff, here. Both the citizenry and law enforcement ought to have ways of archiving stuff like this.

(I can imagine lots of cases how this could be used to fight police corruption.)

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#162

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 11:53 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #96

neuronflux wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming the content is public, why would they need a subpoena?

Is availability on a locked, walled garden "public"? I think we can tell what the RIAA thinks about that.

[deleted]

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#163

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 11:54 PM UTC

I never use youtube-dl because it is almost always overkill and it is always breaking.

I write my own downloaders. The one I use for YouTube is currently less than half a page of shell script. I never download VEVO or other videos that have enciphered signatures (most videos I encounter on web pages don't), so there is no need for Python or any other slow scripting language and fiddling around with Google's Javascript player. Funnily enough, my scripts hardly ever break. When they do break because of some YouTube change (only once so far), I can fix them in a fraction of the time it takes for the yt-dl project to respond to user complaints and make necessary fixes.

I doubt the press nor anyone else really needs yt-dl if all they are doing is downloading unprotected videos.

Even if someone wants to download VEVO or other protected ones, they don't need youtube-dl to do it. It is trivial to get the download URL for these videos with any "modern" browser. For example, in Chrome, open Developer Tools Network tab, type "videoplayback" in the search box, copy one of the URLs (alt-click) and remove the &range= parameter from the URL.

I wonder if the RIAA will ever go after persons trying to make money by offering anti-circumvention services, e.g.,

http://api.gitnol.com/

I find all those websites trying to sell so-called "video downloaders" very annoying.

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#164

Post by brokenmachine » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 11:55 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #15

I used ffmpeg and audacity with youtube-dl to download and do file and spectrograph analysis on a faked political video. That analysis showing how the audio was spliced together may have killed the story before it got legs. In an era of fakes and deepfakes, we need tools like youtube-dl more than ever.

Did you post an article about it? I'd be interested to read it.

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#165

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 11:55 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #94

hiisukun wrote: post #73

I have friends in law enforcement who use youtube-dl to save copies of videos involving crimes or criminal allegations, from quite a few different social media and video sites. Speaking with them, it seems the associated metadata (json/xml?) and output log contain valuable information to go along with the video from an evidentiary perspective. Also the fact that youtube-dl has many test cases in the code goes towards…

Law enforcement already has an anti-circ exemption under 17 USC 1201(e), though a finding against youtube-dl would limit it's (or similar tools') availability and/or functionality. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201

Honest question: How is Section 1201 anything other than incoherent?

Suppose there is some legitimate non-infringing use of some material. Interoperability, law enforcement use, fair use, accessing public domain material which is distributed using the same technological measures, whatever.

You create and distribute a piece of software to interface with the material for those purposes.

It's the same piece of software as one designed for any other purposes, because the software has no knowledge of your intent and your intent has no technical effect on its operation.

If that is allowed, doesn't that make 1201 a dead letter? If you make the tool available for non-infringing uses, the tool is available.

But if that isn't allowed, doesn't that make 1201 a contemptible offense against all of those important interests? And possibly unconstitutional as a result?

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#166

Post by filmgirlcw » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 11:56 PM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #137

hiisukun wrote: post #73

I have friends in law enforcement who use youtube-dl to save copies of videos involving crimes or criminal allegations, from quite a few different social media and video sites. Speaking with them, it seems the associated metadata (json/xml?) and output log contain valuable information to go along with the video from an evidentiary perspective. Also the fact that youtube-dl has many test cases in the code goes towards…

It seems the referenced URLs in question in the source are part of unit testing. Aside: Wonder how gitlab handles DMCA requests.

It looks pretty consistent with GitHub

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/dmca/

For a self-hosted instance, obviously it would be different. In that case, I assume the notice would go to the webhost.

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#167

Post by renewiltord » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 11:58 PM UTC

megous wrote: post #143

renewiltord wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What even is the relevance of this? So host a youtube-dl repo and reject DMCA requests then. Github, as it so happens, is American so it has to listen to America.

Relevance is "Having said that, can we please stop pretending like any of us weren’t using this to infringe copyright?" I'm not pretending if I'm not violating, even if I'm downloading the copyrighted videos.

Well obviously it doesn’t apply to you then. I feel like this is really easy to understand.

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#168

Post by dang » Mon, Oct 26, 2020, 11:58 PM UTC

bigiain wrote: post #115

hiisukun wrote: post #73

I have friends in law enforcement who use youtube-dl to save copies of videos involving crimes or criminal allegations, from quite a few different social media and video sites. Speaking with them, it seems the associated metadata (json/xml?) and output log contain valuable information to go along with the video from an evidentiary perspective. Also the fact that youtube-dl has many test cases in the code goes towards…

Why was my first though here "I bet Palantir have their own fork of youtube-dl which they rent out to cops in a SaaS thing for the low low price of $ASTRONOMICAL-SUM-COMPARED-TO-ALL-THE-DONATIONS-THE-PROJECT-HAS-EVER-RECIEVED ???:

"Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

(I understand the environment variable convention but if you think about the reason for the above rule, it's clear what needs to take precedence.)

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#169

Post by jdofaz » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 12:00 AM UTC

filmgirlcw wrote: post #69

pstrateman wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember TiVo? Recorded TV and cut out the ads.

No it didn’t. You could skip ads with the remote at set intervals (notably, TiVo did not let you auto skip the ad even though they could have, but put 15 or 90 second intervals you could customize on the remote to get past the ads very quickly, but it recorded them). ReplayTV, which did more directly skip ads (via its remote, not via recording IIRC), was sued out of existence. Dish’s Hopper actually DID do ad-free re…

Later model TiVos can skip the whole break with a single button, newer models can auto skip https://explore.tivo.com/how-to/SkipMode

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#170

Post by jdofaz » Tue, Oct 27, 2020, 12:01 AM UTC

pwinnski wrote: post #24

comeonseriously wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The “you can see it but you must watch and ad” model... ... funds OTA television. Also funds YT. With OTA, it is okay to record OTA broadcasts using a VCR, so I'm not sure why youtube-dl would be different.

The different, Google would argue, is that YouTube-dl doesn't download the ads, while a VCR captures ads and content alike. But really, if the VCR were invented today, it would be made illegal.

Not if I paused recording during the break like I did as a kid