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How journalists use youtube-dl

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251–260 of 348 posts

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#251
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it still isn't. I can't watch 720p videos on my thin client with browser overhead, but I can with mpv.

What browser are you using? Google has been known to make YouTube perform worse on browsers that aren’t Chrome.

I tried firefox, chromium and chromium-vaapi (which gives a slight improvement).

Hardware is a HP T610.

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#253

I left a comment about my own non-infringing use cases of the tool earlier — and I think it’s important that the non-infringing use cases get mentioned. Having said that, can we please stop pretending like any of us weren’t using this to infringe copyright? Most of us weren’t distributing anything, but I think most of us were aware this was at the very least a grey area, if not outright infringement. I’m a huge fan a…

I don't think this necessarily infringing copyright. There were court cases around timeshifting / tivo that OKd this.

https://www.playon.tv/blog/playon-legal

As long as you don't rebroadcast copyrighted material, you should be fine.

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#254
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has zero interest in free downloads. They are in bed with the music industry which makes them some ad dollars and their client thinking is sub-zero. Thats because the public is not the client, the advertisers are. If I worked at Google I would be scratching myself behind the ears and take a long big look at what the company has become.

I suspect there's at least a small dose of ultra privilege of googlers involved too. The same way governments and bureaucrats fuck up things like Covid responses, because they can't even imagine people not having 9-5 office jobs which are totally suited to WFH, and then blithely implement disease protection schemes failing to account for low income and precariously employed people, many of whom are working 3 jobs to…

Youtube makes money on advertising. You can’t put modern ads into a downloaded video. I don’t think the ultra-privilege of Googlers factors into this particular decision.

(Also if you live in Mountain View, you’re stuck with a Comcast cable modem and a 38mbps max upload speed even when paying for their “gigabit” plan. But you'll only get 10-15mbps during the peak hours of the work day.)

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#255
post #99

I run a simple service that syncs a private YouTube playlist and publishes it as an audio-only podcast feed. When I come across talks that I find interesting, I save them to the playlist, so I can listen to them while walking, exercising, etc., because I find it much easier to absorb new information if I can move around. This has been a huge boon to me personally, and I'm very worried about losing it.

You won't lose it. The tool is open source so either you or someone else can (and will) maintain a fork. You can't stop these things.

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#256
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine YouTube would argue this isn't a legitimate reason since they provide YouTube Premium as a paid subscription which includes as one of its perks the ability to download material for viewing offline.

Then you’re violating YouTube’s terms of service, sure, but the tool you’re downloading with is not unlawful because you’re violating YT’s terms

Exactly. I don't see people running around issuing complaints about knives and how they should no longer be allowed, yet can be, and have been, used to literally kill people.

I know it's a bit of a childish argument for me to make, but I think ultimately it comes down to money in this case.

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#257

I left a comment about my own non-infringing use cases of the tool earlier — and I think it’s important that the non-infringing use cases get mentioned. Having said that, can we please stop pretending like any of us weren’t using this to infringe copyright? Most of us weren’t distributing anything, but I think most of us were aware this was at the very least a grey area, if not outright infringement. I’m a huge fan a…

The only thing I use it for is via Tartube to download videos from my young nephew's channel. He's enthusiastic about making YouTube videos, but doesn't understand the nuance of copyright law or the ToS.

For example, the first thing he did after I helped him set up OBS was to fire up a game + Spotify to make a live stream. I had to explain to him why he's not allowed to stream music like that. He doesn't do it now, but there's still a decent chance his channel that gets 5 views per video will get struck or banned for a similar misunderstanding in the future.

He doesn't know much (under 10) beyond using the Windows Game Bar or OBS to upload something and doesn't have a bunch of spare storage, so he doesn't keep copies of videos anyway. I download them so if he gets banned I have an archive and can help him set up a new channel on another platform.

I know it'll be easy for someone to say "do X, Y, and Z" then, but the reality is that it doesn't take much for it to become "not fun" for younger kids and the opportunity to encourage them to learn valuable skills like video editing, etc. are lost when they lose interest.

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#258
post #158

Software Freedom Conservancy are asking Microsoft to resign from the RIAA over the youtube-dl takedown demand: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2020/oct/26/microsoft-github-...

Did Microsoft make a decision here? I thought it was DMCA takedown which legally requires immediate removal.

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not in law enforcement myself, but do some online investigations, and like many others in my field we use YouTube-dl to save a copy of video evidence relevant to a case we are working on. It can be instrumental for archiving the evidence if it is ever removed or taken down, can also be used to grab extra info (CC text log is one example) and then manually searched for specific strings. This tool has made ma y in…

How is this significantly different than placing a video camera in front of a screen? Yt-dL is surely nicer and more convenient, but from an evidence standpoint, a one time $500 (to go wild) setup should have you covered, no? (Mourning the loss of ytdl myself but trying to be realistic)

Eek, the thought of that makes me cringe. I guess it would be passable in some circumstances, but I can imagine a bunch of reasons why it would be miserable or useless:

* the quality drop; recompressing, non-matching frame rates, non-matching resolution--all the same goes for audio. You're very likely clipping (losing) data. This is assuming you're doing screen-capture. If you're literally video taping a monitor you will get moiré in the video, room tone in the audio, losing any stereo separation, and other audio/video artifacts.

* performance; must be done in real-time, cannot queue up multiple sources. This is likely the biggest efficiency killer and makes things 100x more labor intensive.

* reliable Internet; if you get a blip or have a slow connection you have to hopefully catch it and start over. With youtube-dl you can pause, resume, confirm even on the slowest, spottiest connections.

* metadata, organizing, indexing; likely hand-typed separately, prone to error, prone to not knowing if you've done that video already.

* Chain of custody; grabbing the original video allows you to prove two identical copies match (using file hashes or other comparisons) screen recording makes that difficult to impossible to confirm--maybe with fancy AI you'd have to run by the courts?

Re: How journalists use youtube-dl

#260
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RIAA has shown They haven't shown anything. They made a claim. We'll know what rules we have to play by if it comes to a court ruling.

I mean, GitHub took it down, no?

Why would that have any bearing on the validity and legality of RIAA's logic?
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