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How is using youtube-dl different to using a "VCR" and recording OTA television?
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.
ReplayTV was sued and went out of business before it could be fully adjudicated. Dish was sued over its Hopper DVR that auto-skipped ads and ultimately had to settle. TiVo won some of their lawsuits but because it didn’t do automatic commercial skipping of the recordings, was spared her wrath of the networks like Replay was. (TiVo was ultimately ruined by the cable companies who sought to introduce their own inferior DVRs that they could charge a monthly fee over.)
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Uni....
I've never understood why they don't offer a download option for such videos: the likes of youtube-dl is the only way to get a copy, and it's perfectly legal.
Likewise for public domain videos.
My 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 c…
There's a fork of youtube-dl seems to be pretty active: https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc
Youtube-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…
Downloading copyrighted videos, just like home taping, is legal. There was a supreme court case deciding that the latter is legal. I have yet to hear any reasoning why "home taping, but on the internet" would not fall under that same precedent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive... .
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.
Recorded TV and cut out the ads.
YouTube even offers a Creative Commons feature, such as on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUY01kW8p2o : if you scroll to the end of the description it reads: License Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed). I've never understood why they don't offer a download option for such videos: the likes of youtube-dl is the only way to get a copy, and it's perfectly legal. Likewise for public domain videos.
youtube-dl et al are niche enough that it doesn't put a real dent in their ad business, but making it more convenient with a Download button might.