Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

861–870 of 1001 posts

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#861

Post by trevyn »

tuco86 wrote: post #708
Santosh83 wrote: post #7

How can a program be in violation of DMCA? Is a knife in violation of the criminal justice system because some people use it to kill and therefore no one can use it anywhere, ever? How ridiculous.

I don't get why you where downvoted. the analogy is pretty accurate. knifes are utilities which can be used to kill. guns are made for killing only. There are plenty of legitimate uses for youtube-dl. There is even fair use in the US. How can i make fair use, eg. remix or a commentary if i can't access the videos outside of youtube.

>knifes are utilities which can be used to kill. guns are made for killing only.

What is a bowling ball made for? What are bows and arrows made for?

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#862

Post by skrebbel »

sneak wrote: post #858
skrebbel wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't do this. This is how gamergaters destroyed people's lives. It starts with a little bit of doxxing and it ends with well meaning humans (who you happen to disagree with) hiding on their high school friend's couch, two states away from their families.

What GG did was illegal, everything GP suggested is harmless (and legal). You should not conflate the two. Creating negative consequences for poor choices in society is a great and effective tool that should be used more often.

Yeah, vigilante justice by an angry internet mob, what could possibly go wrong?

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#863

Post by taywrobel »

Kliment wrote: post #856
skrebbel wrote: post #851

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't do this. This is how gamergaters destroyed people's lives. It starts with a little bit of doxxing and it ends with well meaning humans (who you happen to disagree with) hiding on their high school friend's couch, two states away from their families.

I get that, and yeah it's bad. But there's also a deep frustration with how these fuckers can do this stuff and get away with it. So how does one push back?

If they’re willing to fight it, help pay their legal fees. Win in court, set a better precedent.

That is how change happens in the world, not by trying to ruin the lives of individuals emblematic of a flawed system but quite likely perfectly decent people in and of themselves.

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#864

Post by trevyn »

jncraton wrote: post #308
skottk wrote: post #254

Not a lawyer, software guy working in licensing & copyright for 20+ years. Was paid for a few years to talk about this stuff with tech and publishing people. They're requesting the takedown under 17 U.S. Code § 1201 - Circumvention of copyright protection systems. [ https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201 ] It's a few paragraphs of the actual law at stake here. There's no much to it. Essentially, they're argu…

> The file sharing cases of the early 2000's have drawn some lines around the noninfringing use defense, though. Napster and Grokster both claimed, in court, to support noninfringing uses. However, both products promoted their products as offering free access to copyright-protected works, and the courts took notice of that in both cases-- I believe that the Grokster opinion may have noted that Grokster had never ment…

What? It just needs to host the Git repo in a country that does not care about these sorts of things.

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#865

Post by odensc »

quotemstr wrote: post #488
_23sd wrote: post #464

Worth noting the MPA already tried doing this to Popcorn Time, a BitTorrent client designed to provide a Netflix-like UX.[1] The Popcorn Time devs put in a counter-notice and the repository was back up a few weeks later when the period for the MPA to respond expired. The same thing will probably happen here because this is not one of the purposes of DMCA takedown letters, period. Even if there are inappropriate test…

It's interesting how many Github counternotices (e.g., [1] [2]) seem completely justified yet link to repositories that are no longer on GitHub. I wonder what happened. [1] in https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/05/2020-05-0... someone forked a permissively-licensed project; the original author made the project-closed source, then issued a DMCA takedown against the fork. That's clearly bogus: you can't re…

Those repos have a 404 response, which means the user decided to delete it themselves for whatever reason. Repos taken down from DMCA return 451 (unavailable for legal reasons).

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#867

Post by choeger »

This fight against software is growing into bizarre forms. What's next? cURL?

I really wish there was some kind of retribution in the typical OSS licenses. You censor free software, free software censors you. I think these organization would think twice to take down a project if they would immediately lose access to Linux, Apache, Python, et. al.

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#868

Post by Bellamy »

josmala wrote: post #763
jchw wrote: post #4

Note that RIAA is making this takedown because the software CAN be used to download copyrighted music and videos, and it uses examples in the ~~README~~(unit tests, see correction[1]) as an example of that: > 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…

The use youtubeDL for music would probably fit the fair use in Finland. The fair use allows personal copies of legally licensed material but not redistribution of said copies to third parties. It has been used to defend a service where ISP records the specific shows from TV like a VCR and streams them to customers at different time. The ISP:s and representation of copyright holders made a compromise to avoid legal ba…

Why not host youtube-dl in Finland?

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#869

Post by hadcomplained »

I sometimes imagine how wonderful it'd be if there were a viable alternative to the Web that is decentralized and infeasible to censor, only to realize that how great it is for the freedom, is the exact reason why it doesn't exist. It's just too inconvenient for those in power. That might be why Tor was funded by the government. Its primary functionality is to strengthen the existing Web, rather than to be some competing force to the Web.

Re: YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

#870

Post by mulmen »

mola wrote: post #859
mulmen wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the RIAA perspective it seems clear this tool was created to download copywritten material. You can disagree with the law or think the tool has other valid uses but the intent of the tool author seems clear here. The author of the tool should have chosen a better example in the tests to at least maintain plausible deniability.

People use it for many purposes. Researches downloading public domain material etc. Does any camera manufacturer showing a camera filming a live concert in some promotional video needs to worry?

Yes, obviously there are legitimate uses. That’s not the point. The point is the actual codebase of YouTube-dl features copyright infringement as a test case. RIAA is using this to make the case that the tool is designed to aid in copyright infringement.

That seems like a reasonable argument given the evidence and the DMCA. I’m not defending the DMCA or RIAA here.

Post reply on HN