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Origins of the youtube-dl project

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Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project

#51

Post by intricatedetail »

Mizza wrote: post #50
greggman3 wrote: post #3

I don't know if this is related or not but back when Flickr was popular in like 2005 or 2006 my friends and I were uploading pictures of our events there (they're all still there AFAIK. We'd upload them to either our own accounts or for certain events to a shared account. One shared account is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sourpower/albums I wanted copies of those pictures and the easiest way to get them was th…

I have a very similar story! I maintain a similar project for SoundCloud called SoundScrape: https://github.com/Miserlou/soundscrape which I started for a similar reason, to save my own 'likes' and tracks that I've made and my friends have made. SoundCloud made this very easy, as they had an API which exposed the endpoint MP3/WAV location in a field. The tool used an API key provided by SoundCloud to fetch the respon…

Did they at least provide an API that allowed to download your own account? I think they should have such feature thanks to GDPR.

Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project

#52

Post by intricatedetail »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #34
greggman3 wrote: post #3

I don't know if this is related or not but back when Flickr was popular in like 2005 or 2006 my friends and I were uploading pictures of our events there (they're all still there AFAIK. We'd upload them to either our own accounts or for certain events to a shared account. One shared account is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sourpower/albums I wanted copies of those pictures and the easiest way to get them was th…

> Like many topics today, there is often absolutely nothing you can say that will convince someone else your intensions are not bad. Sometimes it's better to not even try. Acting is always the more powerful move. Just do your thing. You wrote an awesome program that downloads stuff, they got offended and banned it. You've already accomplished your goal so you let it go... But if you cared enough you could just write…

Funnily enough IP laws do little to protect authors, it's more like a framework to make money for big organisations who pretend they protect authors' interests.

Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project

#53

Post by M2Ys4U »

deepspace wrote: post #21
michaelmior wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I can understand your frustration, I also understand the frustration of photographers and other creators trying to make a living who have their work stolen. Their anger was wrongly directed at you, but it is a real problem.

I would argue that the "stealing" does not happen at the time of download; after all the photos are free to view on Flickr as many times as you want, and your browser needs to 'download' them in order to show them to you. Saving a copy to your own hard drive for offline viewing does not fundamentally change that interaction. It is only when you re-publish the photos that it becomes theft of intellectual property.

Either way it's not "theft", as the original owner of the exclusive rights to copy (etc.) the work still has those rights.

After all that's what the "property" in "intellectual property" is - the bundle of exclusive rights. Owners of those rights aren't deprived of them by somebody copying the works over which the rights exist.

Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project

#54

Post by throw0101a »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #30
greggman3 wrote: post #3

I don't know if this is related or not but back when Flickr was popular in like 2005 or 2006 my friends and I were uploading pictures of our events there (they're all still there AFAIK. We'd upload them to either our own accounts or for certain events to a shared account. One shared account is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sourpower/albums I wanted copies of those pictures and the easiest way to get them was th…

This story clearly illustrates the purpose behind "web APIs". To limit access. As a user (not a web developer), I personally never saw the practical point of web APIs; I have always just "scraped the HTML". Many times the solutions I write outlive the corresponding "API"; IME, often the non-API method of data retrieval is more robust and reliable than using the so-called API. YouTube used to have a freely accessible…

> YouTube used to have a freely accessible search API.

Twitter used to have RSS/Atom feeds for each account so you could follow someone without a client, just a regular old news aggregator.

Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project

#55

Post by boogies »

throw0101a wrote: post #54
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story clearly illustrates the purpose behind "web APIs". To limit access. As a user (not a web developer), I personally never saw the practical point of web APIs; I have always just "scraped the HTML". Many times the solutions I write outlive the corresponding "API"; IME, often the non-API method of data retrieval is more robust and reliable than using the so-called API. YouTube used to have a freely accessible…

> YouTube used to have a freely accessible search API. Twitter used to have RSS/Atom feeds for each account so you could follow someone without a client, just a regular old news aggregator.

AFAIK they still do, just without any way to find it except by digging into the channel page’s HTML to find the channel_id and then constructing the feed URL from that (“https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=$channel...) — or (edit) using something like https://github.com/rss-bridge/rss-bridge that presumably does something like that under the hood — so I guess scraping for an undocumented API.

Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project

#56

Post by qw3rty01 »

woofie11 wrote: post #36
a1369209993 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume others are downvoting because they assume you already know, but DMCA takedowns apply to active distribution of actual copyrighted content (like a mp3 containing music), not to tools that puportedly are for the purpose of enabling infringment. If the RIAA wanted to take down a tool, the not-illegal method would be to file a lawsuit against the developers, recieve (or preferably be denied, since their case has…

To be clear, what the RIAA did isn't illegal. They sent a letter. I'm allowed to send a legal demand letter to you demanding 5 donkeys and a cow for having an insulting username, and even phrase it in Very Intimidating Ways. You're also welcome to ignore it. I can even file a law suit. I won't win (and you can then ask the judge for legal fees), but I'm not doing anything illegal. What github did probably wasn't ille…

Hmm this isn't really true, DMCA takedown requests aren't just a "legal demand" in the sense that anyone can file them, it actually is illegal to file an invalid DMCA takedown request. My point is that the RIAA's DMCA takedown request was valid. (IANAL) The law is also a lot more nuanced than how you described, since the hypothetical case would probably be thrown out with legal fees covered due to anti-SLAPP laws, but if it didn't fall under that, you probably wouldn't be able to recover legal fees without some sort of counter lawsuit.

Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project

#57

Post by RonanTheGrey »

Mizza wrote: post #50
greggman3 wrote: post #3

I don't know if this is related or not but back when Flickr was popular in like 2005 or 2006 my friends and I were uploading pictures of our events there (they're all still there AFAIK. We'd upload them to either our own accounts or for certain events to a shared account. One shared account is here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/sourpower/albums I wanted copies of those pictures and the easiest way to get them was th…

I have a very similar story! I maintain a similar project for SoundCloud called SoundScrape: https://github.com/Miserlou/soundscrape which I started for a similar reason, to save my own 'likes' and tracks that I've made and my friends have made. SoundCloud made this very easy, as they had an API which exposed the endpoint MP3/WAV location in a field. The tool used an API key provided by SoundCloud to fetch the respon…

> I was very angry at the time since all my my music got deleted, but these days I'm just sad. Things like this have little by little destroyed all of my enthusiasm for technology. I want to be a carpenter now.

When I was a kid, I watched with wonder and delight at all the amazing things we were doing and inventing. We were poor so I didn't get much tech, but I always marveled at it. I saved up for ages to buy one of those personal organizers that were all the rage in the mid 90's. I saw myself as part of a world working together to build a brighter future for all of us, and I think I wasn't alone in that.

It is true that the seeds of many issues we face today were already firmly planted in those days and that it was unrealistic. But there is value in dreams because dreams tell us who we want to be and give us the engine to get there.

Today, I couldn't care less about tech, actively see it as a negative influence on human life, and understand the Amish and Luddites alot better.

I'm currently planning to build a farm out in the middle of nowhere and then Apple can have its fiefdom, Google can own everyone's data and control what people think, they all can tell people what they're allowed to say as our new overlords and I just won't care at all.

Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project

#59

Post by throw0101a »

boogies wrote: post #55
throw0101a wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YouTube used to have a freely accessible search API. Twitter used to have RSS/Atom feeds for each account so you could follow someone without a client, just a regular old news aggregator.

AFAIK they still do, just without any way to find it except by digging into the channel page’s HTML to find the channel_id and then constructing the feed URL from that (“ https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=$channel... ) — or (edit) using something like https://github.com/rss-bridge/rss-bridge that presumably does something like that under the hood — so I guess scraping for an undocumented API.

You are talking about Youtube: I am talking about Twitter.

Re: Origins of the youtube-dl project

#60

Post by boogies »

throw0101a wrote: post #59
boogies wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK they still do, just without any way to find it except by digging into the channel page’s HTML to find the channel_id and then constructing the feed URL from that (“ https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=$channel... ) — or (edit) using something like https://github.com/rss-bridge/rss-bridge that presumably does something like that under the hood — so I guess scraping for an undocumented API.

You are talking about Youtube : I am talking about Twitter .

Oops, my bad. https://nitter.net/ is a nice alternative Twitter frontend with RSS feeds btw.
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