YouTube-dl's repository has been restored • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#461

Post by wgjordan » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 7:24 PM UTC

Rather interesting that GitHub decided to restore access 1 day after receiving the EFF's counter notice, instead of waiting 10 days.

As a brief legal recap, in 1998 the DMCA added §512 [1] to US copyright law, which established a mechanism for shielding 'service providers' from liability for content posted by users (known as 'safe harbor'), but only as long as they follow formal procedures (known as 'DMCA takedown') to respond 'expeditiously' to remove content when they receive a notification claiming infringement, but also to restore access "not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days" after receiving a counter notification claiming the removal was a mistake.

In the post, GitHub implied they removed the youtube-dl repo after receiving the RIAA's formal takedown notice in order to 'comply with laws', and the law also required them to restore access after receiving the EFF's formal counter notice. However, the counter notice was sent yesterday and they restored access 1 day later, not waiting the legal minimum of 10 days. In restoring access so quickly GitHub isn't fully complying with §512, opening themselves up to liability if the RIAA decides to pursue legal action.

Perhaps a symbolic gesture to restore access a couple weeks before they would have been legally required to restore access anyway, but nonetheless interesting to see their willingness to set aside §512 safe harbor protections in the future if their reading of facts suggest a takedown claim doesn't have merit.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#462

Post by AntiImperialist » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

postingpals wrote: post #454

AntiImperialist wrote: post #443

I hope nobody actually believes this had anything to do with what it is made out to be in public (i.e. DMCA violation). Google owns a LOT of videos on YouTube. The fact that people are able to easily get them out and put it somewhere else threatens them. So, they used their friends to cook up this lawsuit. Unfortunately for them, this upset a lot of GitHub users and Microsoft didn't want to help Google while taking a…

There's no evidence that youtube-dl actually hurts youtube, you could just as easily say it makes people want to watch more youtube. There's also no evidence of any of the other things you said. What I think this comes down to is the music industry is coordinating attacks all over the internet (they do this on twitch too recently), in the hopes they'll get some money out of it. Not much more to it than that.

There's no evidence that youtube-dl actually hurts youtube

What do you mean there's no evidence? There's no evidence it doesn't hurt them either.

you could just as easily say it makes people want to watch more youtube

Not if videos are ripped and uploaded on Facebook, which has been a problem for them for past few years.

There's also no evidence of any of the other things you said.

There's no evidence against it either.

in the hopes they'll get some money out of it

From a guy who maintains an open source tool? Those guys sure have a lot of money.

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#463

Post by robertlagrant » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #452

seph-reed wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to share my most recent Amazon alt. This one is for books, and I was pleasantly surprised. Especially because that's where Amazon first entered the online market. Okay, here's the plug (I'm not affiliated): https://www.thriftbooks.com/

There’s always your local bookstore which most likely can order whatever book you want if they don’t have it.

Not very lockdown friendly.

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#464

Post by CivBase » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

thebean11 wrote: post #437

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So ... they didn't stand up for developers? Promise is not "standing up for".

Did you read the new policies? It sounds like in the future it will be way more difficult to get repos taken down with DMCAs, and even for legitimate ones they'll allow devs to respond or fix the repo before it gets removed. Maybe GitHub didn't nail it this time but in my opinion it takes some mental gymnastics to not see this post as a really positive turn from GH.

> it takes some mental gymnastics to not see this post as a really positive turn from GH.

So... why did the EFF have to step in here? GitHub deserves some credit, but I cannot give them all of the credit. As far as I can tell, this situation was at a stand still for the better part of a month until the EFF got involved.

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#465

Post by thewakalix » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #372

mox1 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rebuttal to your reasoning is in the letter. Basically a federal judge has previously ruled that utilizing a publicly available password is not circumvention of a copyright protection mechanism. The code containing the "sig" (as google calls it) or "rolling cipher" (as RIAA calls it) is available to anyone by viewing the JavaScript. This sig / cipher being public means it is not a copyright protection mechanism.

> 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.

Youtube wasn't behind the DMCA takedown, though. Do they even care about youtube-dl?

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#466

Post by kzrdude » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

CivBase wrote: post #292

Why did the EFF have to step in here? What did the EFF letter provide that GitHub couldn't have figured out itself? If GitHub really was "standing up for developers", why couldn't Microsoft's own army of lawyers figure this out? If youtube-dl (or any OSS project) continues to use GitHub, I hope they have a backup plan ready at all times. Even if GitHub truly is on the right side, they've proven themselves to be a lia…

EFF put their credibility in this, and I think that was a strong signal.

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#467

Post by feanaro » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

TechBro8615 wrote: post #212

ryanar wrote: post #184

It seems like EFF fought for youtube-dl and GitHub used their letter as legal firepower to bring the repo back online. If GitHub were fighting for the developer they would have funded the attorney, right? Though from their blog post it does look like they are taking steps to fund defense in the future as well as other steps to improve the situation. Reading EFFs claim is pretty interesting, they state that saving a c…

AFAIU the argument is more that youtube-dl is effectively a web browser and doesn’t do anything that a web browser doesn’t do. Further, it does not include any “secret” key for DRM circumvention like might be bundled with e.g. Chrome in the case of Widevine, where browser vendors agree to protect the secret key.

I called this a couple of times[1][2] so it is nice to finally see someone else make this argument. It seems obvious to me.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25006577

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24997072

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#468

Post by pilif » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #372

mox1 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rebuttal to your reasoning is in the letter. Basically a federal judge has previously ruled that utilizing a publicly available password is not circumvention of a copyright protection mechanism. The code containing the "sig" (as google calls it) or "rolling cipher" (as RIAA calls it) is available to anyone by viewing the JavaScript. This sig / cipher being public means it is not a copyright protection mechanism.

> 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.

Or they just start to use Wildvine protection for their videos

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#469

Post by donmcronald » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #408

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So ... they didn't stand up for developers? Promise is not "standing up for".

They reinstated the repo without going through the usual DMCA counter-notice process. Which would require youtube-dl to file a counter-notice, and then to wait some amount of time for the original complainer to respond, before reinstating the content. I think there are few if any major other hosts who would have done this -- although perhaps with the example set here, more will going forward? Honestly, I don't totall…

Yeah. The way I understand it GitHub is really putting their money where their mouth is. The easy way out is to push the liability onto the user by making them file a counter-notice. This way GitHub is taking on some liability.

I'm guessing youtube-dl might be a really strong case for GitHub if they'd happen to get sued, so it makes a lot of business sense to take a stand on it. The get much needed goodwill from the developer community and get to send a strong message they're not interested in being the messenger for weak DMCA claims.

GitHub/Microsoft management deserve credit for recognizing the long term value (to them) of pushing back hard against frivolous DMCA claims.

Re: YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

#470

Post by jsmith45 » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #411

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 p…

The normal safe harbor protections and takedown procedure specified by law does not apply to claims under section 1201 like this one was. This also means no safe harbor protections against being sued for redistributing section 1201 infringing works either. There is instead an "innocent violation" clause that offers extremely limited defense that could apply to sites like GitHub or gitlab, but which would become void upon being informed of serving up a work that infringes section 1201, which practically means if such a site is so informed, it will take down the work immediately, as otherwise they become liable.

GitHub has voluntarily instituted its own takedown procedures for violations of that section, and therefore do not actually need to strictly follow the procedure outlined in the law. Instead they can chose their own procedures for handling these claims based upon percieved likelyhood of being sued and being found liable.

Mircosoft is likely fairly confident that the RIAA will not sue them over this, since the other RIAA members (the Labels) all know that if Microsoft chose to enforce their huge pool of rarely enforced software patents against the labels and distribution mechanisms (like Spotify) the harm to their bottom lines would be many thousands of times larger than any harm to their bottom line from youtube-dl could ever be. Heck even just a more thorough than typical Mircosoft Software audit would likely be more costly to the labels than youtube-dl.