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I agree, ideally youtube-dl would remain obscure, but YT has been on to it for a long time. It's somewhat of an arms race right now. I have to update youtube-dl
by Udo 7y ago
I agree, ideally youtube-dl would remain obscure, but YT has been on to it for a long time. It's somewhat of an arms race right now. I have to update youtube-dl every few weeks or it will simply stop working.
I would not be entirely suprised if Youtube one day just requires actual browser DRM to work at all. That would likely break every single smart TV out there, which is probably the only reason why they haven't yet done it. However, as they progress further on their path away from amateur content towards corporate-only content, I'd say there is a decent chance they'll pull that switch eventually. And die shortly after, of course.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoWhich also sounds like a good reason to make copies of everything interesting on YouTube now, while we still can.
- Udo 7y agoIndeed. I'd go further and say that it's generally a good idea to make backups of all the cloud stuff you're using. The assumption that it'll always be there is fundamentally flawed. While there might well be outliers, companies who keep content archived for virtually ever, most platforms will go away at some point. Personally I think Youtube is a likely candidate for this. They may very well just remove all "legacy" content one day. They have absolutely no idea what to do with the platform, except offer it to music companies to feast on. They're at war with the majority of their content creators, I'd be very surprised if they didn't go for the nuclear option at some point - maybe after a large legal scandal...
- realusername 7y agoThat's exactly what I do, I make a copy of every video I watch.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoI'm inclined to start doing it too; I'll try to wire something up this week that saves to my NAS over LAN. From time to time, I browse my "Liked" / "Favourited" videos on YouTube to find something I've seen years before, only to discover that it's gone.
- mayeaux 7y agoFrankly I wouldn't mind making a browser extension that does exactly that, and then if you go back to a video you've already downloaded before it plays it from disk as opposed to from the network. Something I've thought about.
- mayeaux 7y agoI agree, YouTube-Dl already has 50k stars on Github, it's certainly not obscure anymore. Although I'm not suggesting breaking the TOS if people are going to be using it to archive content then the best bet is probably to have the content archived as quickly as possible rather than trying to keep youtube-dl lowkey (ship has sailed) so as to not trigger DRM from YouTube
- Mindwipe 7y ago> That would likely break every single smart TV out there, which is probably the only reason why they haven't yet done it. It wouldn't, support for Widevine has been mandatory in order for Google to let TV manufacturers have a YouTube app for about four years now, and if you play back a Google Play film on the YouTube application on your smart TV it's already using Widevine DRM.
- gdfasfklshg4 7y agoBut it probably isn't used in the YouTube apps and using it would require pushing an update. Smart TV manufacturers are not famous for pushing updates promptly.
- Mindwipe 7y ago> But it probably isn't used in the YouTube apps and using it would require pushing an update. It is used in the YouTube apps, for playing back Google Play film purchases and rentals inside YouTube. Google does not allow YouTube to be installed if the YouTube apps cannot call the requisite APIs.
- progval 7y ago> I would not be entirely suprised if Youtube one day just requires actual browser DRM to work at all. maybe not at all, but I definitely can see them offering the option to (some?) authors.