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How journalists use youtube-dl
51–60 of 348 posts
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#52[Post deleted after 60 minutes. It has had adequate exposure.]
Under section 1201 anti-circumvention rules, unless Youtube-DL enters the US legal system & counter-notifies, Github/Microsoft face CRIMINAL liability charges with steep JAIL TIME and a half-million dollar fine.
I want to chew Microsoft out for this one, but the US-based copyright mafia have built themselves an unbelievably vicious draconian set of laws that prevent any sort of challenge, including those coming from scientific inquiry or examination. Anti-circumvention is the most world-hating corporate-owned-world flaming garbage that could be devised, and violating it comes with unbelievably mercilessly cruel criminal penalties.
The menace of this threat has silenced science & speech, has prevented mankind from examining the world about them, learning of it, & discussing it. We have outlawed knowledge, outlawed idea, literally criminalized knowing something about the world with steep jail time. This is a farce, of the highest order, one of the greatest shames the law has done unto itself.
Great recent thread from Doctorow on this: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/105090187888073250
I also recommend Bunnie Huang's "Why I'm Suing the US Government", https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4782
Anti-circumvention laws must be stopped.
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#53Youtube-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…
> did themselves a legal disservice by explicitly using copyrighted music video content as tests. They had no alternative other than not having tests for that particular functionality. The tests were testing youtube-partner specific functionality: the procedure needed to download content from some youtube partners is different. Moreover, the tests just throw away the downloaded material... it would be entirely reason…
The fact that they had to have tests set to get around certain partners — partners who, it could be argued, had different provisions to try to limit the download of their content - works against them.
In retrospect, it would have been much better to link to an external repo or site or source for the test file, rather than to have that as part of the GitHub repo.
ETA: you’re right that they were always going to go after something, but the action for GitHub to take down the repo wouldn’t be arguable if the test file wasn’t in the repo. It’s possible they would have gone to issues/comments within the project (another reason, in retrospect, to host that stuff separately), but in this case there was stuff in the source code that the RIAA can reasonably argue would lead to infringement.
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#54[Post deleted after 60 minutes. It has had adequate exposure.]
> that Microsoft/Github pulled youtube-dl offline by choosing to respond to a DMCA takedown order that is not procedurally valid.... The fact that Microsoft didn't tell the RIAA to go Disney themselves means that 100% of the blame lies at Microsoft's feet. No exceptions. What you said is clearly correct, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect any company to insert themselves in the middle of these disputes. At s…
Given the number of fraudulent DMCA takedowns that are created by bots and malicious actors, they absolutely have to be individually examined by competent legal counsel.
At one point Microsoft was issuing DMCA takedowns against (then) openOffice.org mirrors, allegedly on the grounds that any large file with a name that contained the word 'office' must be a 'pirated' version of MS Office. Taking these takedowns at face value would have ended the openOffice.org project and absolutely could not have been respected in good faith.
These kind of abuses are ongoing from multiple parties, including bots, copyright trolls, and crazed ideologues who file completely fraudulent DMCA takedowns to force anonymous personalities to disclose their identities. There is no alternative but to consider DMCA takedowns on legal merits because so many of them have no merits whatsoever.
Having the funding to do this 'at scale' is just as much a cost of doing business as paying for power and connectivity. If hosting platforms don't want to do this, then they should purchase an amendment to the DMCA to impose criminal sanctions on entities that serve fraudulent DMCA takedowns.
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#55YouTube 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.
I don't think it's any more complicated than that it's because they can't roll ads on videos that are downloaded. 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.
> I don't think it's any more complicated than that it's because they can't roll ads on videos that are downloaded.
That's certainly something they can do; they just don't do it.
Compare movies on VHS tapes, which all roll ads before actually playing the movie.
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#56Another valid use-case is to use the hardware acceleration with your native video player. AFAIK, mpv uses youtube-dl under the hood to play youtube videos. For a long time the video acceleration in browsers wasn't very good for Linux users, so we used players like mpv instead to watch high resolution content.
it still isn't. I can't watch 720p videos on my thin client with browser overhead, but I can with mpv.
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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... .
Distributing a tool whose primary purpose is circumventing DRM is forbidden by the DMCA. The DMCA was signed long after the home-taping precedent, so that precedent doesn't really speak to what is and isn't allowed under the DMCA. Fair Use rights exist but if a law says "this isn't fair use", then it's not.
The DRM argument would be relevant if youtube had any DRM. It does not, so it isn't.
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#58YouTube 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.
The copy-protection MAFIAA (a joke acronym, Movie and Film Industry Association of America, a hypothetical super-beast merger of the vicious & loathed RIAA and the MPAA) spent a while going after BitTorrent itself too, in a similar manner, as a potential tool for piracy.
Thankfully plenty of people were also using BitTorrent for things like distributing Linux distributions & creative commons material.
That, again, may perhaps save the day.
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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... .
Because this is about distribution, not a home copy. You could copy and paste the test code into a terminal window and download the video. That’s not the same as a home recording.
> Because this is about distribution, not a home copy. You could copy and paste the test code into a terminal window and download the video. That’s not the same as a home recording.
...yes, it is? What difference are you imagining?
Re: How journalists use youtube-dl
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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... .
Because this is about distribution, not a home copy. You could copy and paste the test code into a terminal window and download the video. That’s not the same as a home recording.
Downloading a video is not distribution. Uploading a video to others is.
Downloading a video is same as recording it to a VHS and serves the same purpose.