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YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

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Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#411

Post by jrochkind1 »

gitlab.com has their DMCA processing workflow online (as they do most of their policies and workflow documents, which is awesome and few if any other companies are as transparent).

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/security/opera...

My reading of it is that under that gitlab workflow youtube-dl would still be down. Unless/until "there was a valid counter-notice and no response has been received from the plaintiff within 10 days of the counter-notice being forwarded". (Unclear what happens if there is a valid counter-notice and a response from plaintiff HAS been received, the workflow stop there!). This did not happen here, github reinstated without either a formal counter-notice (that EFF letter is not formatted like one), and definitely without waiting 10 days for a response from plaintiff.

Gitlab's workflow there is a totally typical DMCA workflow, it's not bad it's just normal. It's the workflow more or less spelled out in the DMCA itself, arguably what the DMCA requires for the host to get "safe harbor" status. (I don't entirely understand how Github can get away with what they have done and say they are doing going forward, honestly. It's think it's a potentially risky move for them opening them up to lawsuits from the copyright holders; of course they know they have deep pockets to defend themselves too).

The DMCA is actually pretty terrible in it's real-world contemporary effects. That's general, not about github, or github's fault. You are right to think it's awful. But it's not about github. People seem to be really chomping at the bit to assume that github has somehow acted especially poorly (for those who want to protect people against DMCA takedowns) -- to me the reverse seems to be true.

I think both github's actual current actions and most especially their proposed new workflow go way beyond what most of their peers (including gitlab) do to resist/slow down/stop DMCA takedowns.

I'm not sure how github garnered so much bad will, that people are so eager to paint them in a bad light. They clearly have garnered a lot of bad will from developers though, at least on HN; every thread about github has people piling on to suggest extreme levels of unethical behavior from github.

I do not believe it is justified here.

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#412

Post by jedberg »

RonanTheGrey wrote: post #364
disown wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A million dollars is a million dollars. Not if you are a company worth $1.6 trillion dollars. But that $1 million dollars probably bought them a lot more in free press. To put it into perspective, it would be like someone worth $1.6 million giving a homeless person $1, filming it, putting it on youtube and profiting off of it. > Thanks Microsoft/Github. Is this real? Edit: Of course the downvotes. Not sure if emplo…

There's now a bulwark between developers and bad actors attempting to use Github and the legal framework against them. It is very probably that outside actual, valid legal justification, what the RIAA tried will never be tried again, thanks to the presence of that fund. Put a price on that .

But the EFF was already there and already doing that work.

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#413

Post by monokh »

OJFord wrote: post #407
jtbayly wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You already have to sign in to view some videos, don’t you? Does YT-dL not have a way to handle those right now?

Do you? I've never tried to watch any that have required it. Maybe there's Red-only content that isn't advertised/recommended to non-subscribers?

Content with a certain age threshold triggers login. The last time I looked at this, embedding these videos was still possible without logging in. So there are definitely ways in accessing the content without authentication.

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#415

Post by [deleted] »

MauranKilom wrote: post #382
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whenever you watch a video you are downloading it. Why is this comment downvoted? It's highlighting one of the most common misunderstandings that laypersons have regarding video download/streaming. Most people think that you can "view" content on the internet without downloading it. In this context, a tool which purports to "download" content, you know... sounds like it's nefariously doing something that the "viewi…

This may be completely true in a technical sense, but that's not how the law works (see https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 ). And while the same bits pass through your connection, this equivalence already breaks down right away: There is clearly a difference between persisting a media file to disk vs having it ephemeral in browser memory.

[deleted]

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#417

Post by nonbirithm »

jtbayly wrote: post #404
toyg wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sig / cipher being public means it is not a copyright protection mechanism. I can see this as ending up with Youtube being forced to require sign-ins. Massive expense for Google. Then Youtube-dl adds one parameter for the password, and we're back to square one.

You already have to sign in to view some videos, don’t you? Does YT-dL not have a way to handle those right now?

It does, but it's broken.

https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/23860

The developers are not responding to the issue, and from what I understand it is borderline impossible to fix, because there is an entire security team behind the Google login protection. The only workaround is to login with a browser and copy the cookies from it to youtube-dl.

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#418

Post by qw3rty01 »

mr_mitm wrote: post #250
crumbshot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And not even purged from the repo, it's still in the history if needed. Seems like the copyright holders making a big fuss over nothing really.

The way I read it, the test cases weren't really the problem. The RIAA was alleging that the purpose of youtube-dl is to circumvent DRM and they try to back this statement up by pointing out that copyrighted works are being downloaded in the test cases. Here is a bit of a discussion about it by seemingly knowledgeable people: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/57421/is-youtube-dl-... > > the source code expressl…

Hmm they seem to be taking it from the approach that RIAA was sending a takedown on the grounds that youtube-dl was infringing on the copyright of their members, but that doesn't seem to be what the actual takedown claims. Instead it's requesting takedown on the grounds that youtube-dl is breaking protection measures in violation of 1201, and the answer given doesn't really address that except to say that breaking protection measures isn't infringement (which wasn't what they claimed in the first place).

EFF represented youtube-dl to get the repository reinstated, and their lawyers instead tried to prove that YouTube doesn't have DRM, and that the test cases provided were neither suggesting other people to infringe, nor infringing themselves (falling under fair use). The full response is here: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/11/2020-11-1...

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#419

Post by jedberg »

I appreciate that Microsoft is trying to help developers out and I appreciate their $1MM fund.

But why not just donate it to EFF for the work they already do in this area? When you donate to EFF you can specify which programs you want to fund. I don't entirely understand why they created a new fund.

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