I’m so glad that Github is owned by Microsoft and that they don’t immediately comply with the takedown... /sarcasm
YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA
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Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA
#832Strategically / tactically, the most interesting aspect of the RIAA attack on youtube-dl to me is that it puts Microsoft on the spot to show its true colours. Is it Friend of Free Software, or Copyright Maximalist?
Yes. And since Microsoft and the RIAA are both in the contrived/artificial scarcity business, it’s pretty obvious to me what it’s going to be.
The propertied classes won’t let this crisis pass without using it as an opportunity to further enclose and plunder the commons even more for the working classes.
Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA
#833> We also note that the source code prominently includes as sample uses of the source code the downloading of copies of our members’ copyrighted sound recordings and music videos, as noted in Exhibit A hereto. For example, as shown on Exhibit A, the source code expressly suggests its use to copy and/or distribute the following copyrighted works owned by our member companies IMHO this wasn't the best move, I mean... t…
When the RIAA sued me for operating Aurous a few years ago they nailed me for exactly this. Using copyrighted album art and song names to advertise my FOSS meant to stream music from sources like YouTube didn't exactly win me any points in court.
Are the case's files on Recap and are you willing to share the name/results of the case?
Edit: I've googled and found relevant articles. I didn't realize how high profile this was.
Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA
#834Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to add a data point, but back when I still was working for a video distribution startup, we offered our customers the ability to directly import their video inventory from YouTube. They were the owners of the videos, it was just a convenient (and very popular!) feature for them to let us handle this import. We used YouTube-dl for this, of course. No way we could have done this easily without it. We imported hund…
I'm not a lawyer, but I am playing devil's advocate here. Did your customers own those video files or the rights to the video? If they are the authors and owners of the content surely they uploaded something to YouTube to begin with. Why is that not what they uploaded to your service? If they preferred to import YouTube libraries clearly YouTube was adding some value there.
> Did your customers own those video files or the rights to the video?
Not sure why that's relevant?
I often use(d) Youtube-dl to grab 1080p videos to watch once, not to keep them. eg as an alternative to Firefox
That's because YouTube itself recently seemed to change something about their streaming, such that some 1080p video's now stutter and don't work correctly.
So, I download them to a temp directory then watch with VLC instead. Then batch clean up the temp directory when it's getting full.
eg Youtube-dl is just another Youtube client, no different from a browser. If you're saying that watching media via Youtube-dl is different than watching it via Firefox... to me that sounds incredibly bizarre.
Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA
#835Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you are misunderstanding the legal argument. The DMCA Section 1201 specifically prohibits (among other things) technology that "is marketed ... for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." The example in the README is evidence of this. The argument is that youtube-dl is primarily used for breaking DRM not just that it could be used fo…
Hm, but youtube-dl doesn't break DRM. You can just get the video link from the dev tools panel when you open a youtube page. It doesn't let you download anything you wouldn't otherwise be able to.
DRM is ultimately mostly obfuscation. And access to the video fragments in YouTube is heavily obfuscated.
There's very little case law on what the exact level of protection required to qualify, but I wouldn't want to go to court defending myself offer it. It's very risky.
Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA
#836So if you did not fork youtube-dl but instead had cloned it, changed the repo to be the private nootube-dl and pushed it there - would github detect it was the same code and also take it down?
Yeah I’m interested to know too. Let’s hope not, it would be really 1984
Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA
#837[deleted]
Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA
#838It is a bit of a tough question. How would I feel about someone borrowing a book from a library and then photocopying it to keep a local copy? If the intent was to re-distribute then I would not feel comfortable allowing it. However, if the proposed remedy was to ban personal ownership of photocopiers I would not even consider that a valid approach. But would I expect I could keep my own photocopied version instead o…
Am I the only one who uses youtube-dl for downloading silly mp4s from Twitter and Reddit, and all the other aggregators? I mean, sure: some Youtube videos are copyrighted, and youtube-dl was originally made to download Youtube videos. But despite the project name, it's evolved beyond just that. Don't kill the whole damn project when the legal issues are limited only to certain backends to begin with.
Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA
#839Great. Alternatives to github please.
SSB-NPM (orig. Git-SSB)
Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA
#840Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty ridiculous. They might argue that a browser is a technological measure to protect a copyrighted work which youtube-dl circumvents since the DMCA is written so vaguely. Cases like this demonstrate why anti-circumvention litigation really has to go.
Except the licensing under which the copyrighted works are uploaded explicitly allow for access via a browser, so no you couldn't. That's like saying that a DVD player "circumvents" DVD encryption, or a key "circumvents" a lock. It's the intended use case.
You misread or misunderstood my comment. I'm saying according to the RIAA, the browser is the technological measure which the command line program is circumventing.