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The fact that copyrighted works were included in the readme shows it was intended for that use, and the RIAA complaint will likely stand up to any legal scrutin

• kzrdude 6y ago
  Should it stand up to legal scrutiny though? What does it matter if I play the beatles on youtube by watching in a web browser or watching an .mp4 file that I just downloaded? It's functionally the same.
  • marcinzm 6y ago
    The former gives money to the original content owner for every listen while the latter does not. Which is why you're able to listen to it on youtube without having to personally pay someone.
    • romanoderoma 6y ago
      It could but probably doesn't One could argue that YouTube success is mostly about unlimited access to illegal copyrighted material uploaded by some unknown person in some unknown part of the world After all the thing it's already on YouTube and on my HD after I watched it
      • Shared404 6y ago
        > YouTube success is mostly about unlimited access to illegal copyrighted material uploaded by some unknown person in some unknown part of the world Good point. I quite like that argument. Not that my opinion actually matters in this case.
      • ydlr 6y ago
        If the videos mentioned in the notice are hosted on Youtube without authorization, then the takedown notice should be sent to YouTube. If the videos were uploaded to Youtube with authorization, then accessing them through youtube-dl is not an example of the program being used for infringement. Either way, the purpose of the software is to download anything publically available from YouTube. Its purpose is not copyright infringement unless the purpose of YouTube is copyright infringement.
        • romanoderoma 6y ago
          That's exactly the point. The content is already available The monetisation of the content depends on a lot of different factors, many have monetized unauthorized content over the years, many received money from the same unauthorized content by faking clicks and views and many avoid paying YouTube in the form of ads by using ad blockers I believe youtube-dl users amount to a maximum of a single digit percent of the above (with the digit being between 1 and 2 with 2 excluded)
    • lutorm 6y ago
      Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984), also known as the “Betamax case”, is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which ruled that the making of individual copies of complete television shows for purposes of time shifting does not constitute copyright infringement, but is fair use.[1][2] The Court also ruled that the manufacturers of home video recording devices, such as Betamax or other VCRs (referred to as VTRs in the case), cannot be liable for infringement. How is downloading something from youtube for later offline viewing ("time-shifting") in any way different from recording a tv show?
      • larrik 6y ago
        The Betamax case was about stuff broadcast over public airwaves, whereas this is a medium that the RIAA barely tolerates, rather than the (ideal) main distribution channel. Seems like a big enough difference to me.
        • ethanwillis 6y ago
          The ruling there doesn't seem to rule out making copies of shows from a cable network, which are not exactly public airwaves in the same sense I think you mean.
        • throwaway17_17 6y ago
          I don’t see the fact that the RIAA dislikes internet based streaming as relevant to the analysis. Downloading a publicly available video transmitted over a nearly global communications network is directly analogous to recording a show to tape from a TV signal.
          • Reelin 6y ago
            The signal is broadcast (ie not under your control) and so the sole purpose being permitted there is time shifting. YouTube is an on demand stream. It would be comparable to recording a pay per view movie that you purchased. Is that legal? (The question isn't rhetorical, but I seriously doubt it.)
    • tartoran 6y ago
      Someone who is capable of downloading youtube videos can easily block ads and many do, not because ads are bad but because they are both excessive in any form possible and a malware spreading channel. I do too but don’t bother to download videos because it is still more convent to watch’em directly on youtube. But it seems those days are coming to an end soon, lets see
      • kzrdude 6y ago
        I watch youtube videos with mpv sometimes. That's not even downloading it. But it's using youtube-dl to stream the video :)
  • jdbernard 6y ago
    But it's not legally the same.
  • roywiggins 6y ago
    The intent matters. Browsers don't make it easy to get ahold of a copy of the file that you can share, youtube-dl does. Add that to a bad README and that's something that a court might treat very differently from a web browser. This is not far off from how it's legal to carry lockpicks but it's often not legal to carry lockpicks around with the intention of using them to commit a crime. Either way you're carrying the same lockpicks, but if the court decides that you were carrying them with bad intentions, you're in trouble.
    • tyzoid 6y ago
      But it's perfectly legal to screencapture a video platform in full-screen, and previous courts have ruled that recording a stream you otherwise have access to is allowed (the VCR/TiVo lawsuits). The question here is whether youtube-dl is a tool that allows for the bypassing of DRM, as the RIAA is asserting that youtube has DRM on their videos that prevent automated tools from scraping the website.
    • curryst 6y ago
      > The intent matters. Browsers don't make it easy to get ahold of a copy of the file that you can share, youtube-dl does. Add that to a bad README and that's something that a court might treat very differently from a web browser. I can't say for YouTube specifically (I haven't tried, I suspect they have the talent to make it actually difficult), but browsers do make it remarkably easy to extract most forms of media from a website. Even websites that attempt to hide it have to embed it somewhere. Whether you feel like it's easier to install Firefox and figure out how to extract the media, or figure out how to install Python and pip and then run youtube-dl is up to you. There are likely even tutorials up by Mozilla somewhere about how to use the dev tools to pull an image (though I assume they're not stupid enough to do it on material they don't have rights to). There are many reasons one might want to use youtube-dl. Furthermore, there are many creators that either don't care or are happy that you're downloading their stuff. If we want to make analogies, every gun shop in America sells guns and human shaped targets. Do they have the intent to encourage people to murder other people? It is a tool that can be used for illegal purposes. They might even have examples of how you can do such a thing (as do gun manufacturers, lockpick manufacturers, security exploit announcements, etc, etc). Why would that make the tool illegal? The argument might hold if the only possible use of it is illegal; that puts it among the ranks of things we deem illegal to merely possess, like fully automatic weapons. I'm not buying the RIAA's argument that youtube-dl is so dangerous to society that we can't trust anyone to use it legally. > This is not far off from how it's legal to carry lockpicks but it's often not legal to carry lockpicks around with the intention of using them to commit a crime. No one has demonstrated intent. The publishers have demonstrated that it could potentially be used in an illegal manner (depending on your jurisdiction). They aren't going after someone who downloaded youtube-dl and is trying to use it to pirate things. They're going after the lockpick manufacturer because they have a tutorial on using their lockpicks on their site, and people could use that to commit crimes.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • gamblor956 6y ago
    It stands up to legal scrutiny, and Betamax case is not applicable. They have these things called "streaming licenses" these days, that are very different from "download licenses" because streamed data is not the same thing as a downloaded file even if they both use the same codec and are derived from the same source.
    • michaelmrose 6y ago
      This is a wholly imaginary distinction based on a triviality. Streaming IS downloading. Also how is the betamax case not applicable. The user of a VCR isn't "licensed" to record whats on their tv
      • gamblor956 6y ago
        No, it's a distinction that exists based on the differences in how the video content is consumed. It is irrelevant, legally, that one implementation of a streaming software may choose to download the streamed data to a temporary disc file, or that some content downloaders can structure the assembly of a partially downloaded file so that (some) content can be accessed before the download is fully completed. What matters is that a streamed file is intended to be consumed contemporaneously with the acquisition of the downloaded data however it is stored on the computer, and that caching for efficiency aside, each separate act of consumption involves a separate act of acquiring the content, whereas a downloaded file is intended to be downloaded once and consumed multiple times. Also how is the betamax case not applicable. The user of a VCR isn't "licensed" to record whats on their tv No, they are not licensed to record what's on TV. But the point of the Betamax case was that "time-shifted viewing" by a private viewer was deemed to be fair use because at the time broadcast TV content was transmitted on a fixed schedule and absent the private recording, was not otherwise consumable because many of these shows were not rerun or sold on cassette tape. Thus the court found that the Betamax had substantial non-infringing use (and indeed, that it's primary intended use was thus non-infringing). However, digital content is provided on demand so there is no need for "time-shifted" viewing, and so the reasoning from Betamax no longer applies. Moreover, many content owners now make the content available for "connectivity-shifted" viewing (aka, away from internet connectivity) via a downloaded content license. Thus, downloading that content from a streaming source is generally no longer protected by fair use. Consequently, using youtube-dl to download your favorite streamer to watch on a plane trip would probably be fair use because they probably don't make the content available for access-shifted viewing otherwise. But using it to download a music video would not, because the music and video owners make those available for download with a purchasable license. And the problem with youtube-dl is that they demonstrated that the primary intent of the tool was to download music videos, the evidence being that the README and parts of the code explicitly refer to downloading music videos subject to RIAA licensing. Under the Betamax ruling, this would be fine, because there are substantial legitimate uses...but the DMCA changed that and so it doesn't matter if there are substantial legitimate uses if the primary intended use was to violate copyright.
• Santosh83 6y ago
  No it doesn't follow at all, any more than had the repo owners included a couple of public domain recordings in the repo then the conclusion that the tool was clearly intended to download public domain recordings.
  • asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    You may feel it doesn't matter, but it does in fact matter to the entities where decisions are made on matters like this: the courts.
    • Aeolun 6y ago
      I guess that means those decisions are then based more on emotion than facts?
      • asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
        If you would put aside your emotions for a second, you would see that this is clearly just an issue of different priorities and values -- on both sides. And the side that has the power has priorities that presumably, given your phrasing, disagree with yours. I understand that can be frustrating and that that frustration might lead you to questionable rhetorical devices, but it won't change the fact of the situation.
      • JohnBooty 6y ago
        From a practical perspective, it's hard to wish for or imagine a legal system that doesn't rely upon judicial interpretation of intent. An example would be causing the death of another human being. Would you want all four of these incidents to be treated the same from a legal perspective? - A surgery, which is known to have a 50/50 chance of success even at the hands of an excellent surgeon, goes poorly and the patient dies. - A serial killer spends six months plotting the murder of his victim before executing them. - A shoving match breaks out at a bar. Somebody slips, falls, hits their head on the ground, and dies. - You accidentally frighten somebody by sneezing in a quiet library. They have a heart attack and die. From a purely logical perspective, these are literally the same thing. A person dies! Realistically speaking, any legal system needs to consider intent.
• Nextgrid 6y ago
  Can't it be trivially reinstated then by removing any references to copyrighted content? youtube-dl has plenty of legitimate uses beyond just copyright infringement.
  • rhizome 6y ago
    Which is why RIAA is trying to kill the code itself.
    • dylan604 6y ago
      Cure the disease not the symptom
      • bigbubba 6y ago
        The very premise of copyright itself then.
  • rhino369 6y ago
    They can't fully un-ring that bell. The RIAA will always be able to argue infringement was the purpose since they used copyrighted examples.
    • saagarjha 6y ago
      Plus they've advertised themselves as having that capability. I suspect that even after the removal the RIAA will argue that the fact that the ability to download copyrighted material, which is something that the project itself said it could do in the past and has not been modified, makes it continue to be illegal.
      • Reelin 6y ago
        I don't think that's quite how it works. It's not (generally) capability that matters but rather intent. The RIAA would of course argue that examples of infringement in the test cases or readme demonstrate intent. A reasonable response to that might (or might not, depending on the context) be that infringement in those specific cases was never intentional but instead purely by accident. If the infringement in this case ends up appearing to be intentional, it would probably make for a very uphill battle to argue that the tool itself was only intended for legitimate use cases. Edit: Of course, it's reasonable to ask - if it's legal for YouTube to distribute the content, does using youtube-dl suddenly make it illegal? Is it a violation of copyright to record a pay per view stream? What about a publicly available stream paid for by ad revenue?
• stingraycharles 6y ago
  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 hundreds of thousands of videos like this. I suspect there are many more legitimate uses of YouTube-dl than you would expect.
  • sterlind 6y ago
    As another data point, I used youtube-dl to download thousands of videos that were part of a cipher puzzle. It would have been infeasible without it.
  • larrik 6y ago
    Yes, which makes this very sad that a simple slip-up can make it very difficult to come back from this.
    • II2II 6y ago
      I would hardly call this a simple slip-up. It is known that the software could be used to infringe copyrights and other open source projects make it clear that they do not support copyright infringement even when it is clear that their software can be used to do so. (If I recall correctly, Kodi and Calibre are two examples.) Meanwhile, youtube-dl has a test for that specific use case.
      • ixwt 6y ago
        I feel that is rather thin legal grounds, if the examples are what dictate legality. The fact that I can change some text that does not change the function of code, or what can be done with it, to suddenly make it more legal does not sound like very great legal basis.
        • II2II 6y ago
• adkadskhj 6y ago
  Curiously, what do scrapers (aka "readers") have to worry about with this topic? Eg, i'm making an archiver and reader combination that, for personal use, archives stuff in a Git-like store. Yet, Git (and Git-likes) can also be used to distribute.. so hypothetically i could use this software to scrape and distribute content. My intention is primarily to make news articles/etc searchable, archived, etc. Yet i'm sure NYT would have something to say about my test cases scraping their site. .. the world is interesting.
  • Reelin 6y ago
    I think the recent LinkedIn case established that it is legal to scrape anything which is publicly available (ie no login required). Redistribution would be a copyright violation, but the scraping itself is legal. I'm not sure what that means for youtube-dl though.
    • arvindamirtaa 6y ago
      The same argument can be made for video that's also publicly available. Not to mention, youtube has it's own Download function in the mobile apps, even for copyrighted content. So there's that.
      • Reelin 6y ago
        > youtube has it's own Download function in the mobile apps, even for copyrighted content Wait, seriously? I had no idea. I would think the presence of such a feature would severely undermine the RIAA's case.
        • tyzoid 6y ago
          It does, but it's only available for those who have a subscription to youtube premium. As such, I assume the RIAA will try to argue that it doesn't fall into the same bucket that youtube-dl does, since the method of accessing the site is different (scraping the site, vs a sanctioned API)
• thrownaway954 6y ago
  This is exactly the point. All they had to was use their own videos for the tests and readme and the dcma takedown would probably never would have happen. Plausible deniability.
• young_unixer 6y ago
  It beats me why they'd use those videos as examples knowing how finicky copyright law is.
  • dboreham 6y ago
    Lack of legal awareness / advice?
    • dane-pgp 6y ago
      Perhaps the SFLC[0] should be actively seeking out popular Free Software projects and pre-emptively auditing them for legal issues such as these. That must be a more cost-effective (and crowd-sourceable) process than actually fighting a legal case against the RIAA. [0] https://softwarefreedom.org/ https://softwarefreedom.org/
• pmoriarty 6y ago
  "Napster could have been used for legal means as well, and it got destroyed in court." But Napster was a service run by an organization. youtube-dl is neither a service nor an organization. It's just some source code floating around the internet, to which volunteers contribute to. A very different situation. If anything, it's Youtube itself that's like Napster, and it's telling that the RIAA has gone after youtube-dl rather than Google.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • michaelmrose 6y ago
    It's not even clear that youtube-dl vs watching in the browser is any different from watching on tv vs using your vcr to record which has long been legal.
    • traviscj 6y ago
      In this case, it "steals" the ad revenue that the copyright tries to protect, no? Or am I thinking about this incorrectly?
      • tyzoid 6y ago
        This is an argument copyright owners tried to argue with VCR and later TiVo, as it lets them skip out on the ads.
      • michaelmrose 6y ago
        Nobody can steal their own attention
  • arvindamirtaa 6y ago
    RIAA definitely does go after Google. They file countless DMCA takedowns on videos that re-upload content from official accounts. Unlike Napster, Google just complies and hence doesn't have much of a case against it like Napster did.
  • 6y ago
• pnathan 6y ago
  Intention is a component of the law. Youtube-dlc apparently intended to assist in infringing the copyright. We're still fighting over the color of bits. It's all a bit technically bozo, but, sigh.
• theknocker 6y ago
  This is not analogous to Napster. Napster is a protocol. youtube-dl is an HTTP client that the RIAA just happens to dislike.
• polote 6y ago
  > The fact that copyrighted works were included in the readme shows it was intended for that use How could that be true? if the YouTube link in the test case was a video of farmer on his truck would that show it is intended for that use? No. YouTube dl is made to download any YouTube videos it has not been made to download specifically Taylor Swift music videos, it just has just been picked as a test case as any other YouTube videos could have been
  • arvindamirtaa 6y ago
    While I agree with the point, a strong case can be made that the music video in the README and the test case were a poor choice. A silly home video, preferably uploaded by the maintainers themselves would've just given RIAA's claim no teeth.
    • m-p-3 6y ago
      Or content from the public domain.
  • saagarjha 6y ago
    It was however a very poor choice, given that they could have picked something better.
• lgregg 6y ago
  We might as well ban screen shots because it can illegally reproduce photography stills. /s
  • remram 6y ago
    Android allows applications to disable screenshots while they are running, as a form of DRM.
    • hilbert42 6y ago
      It's not a problem on a rooted phone, irrespective of what app developer decides or wants. And as I've mentioned, at a pinch, just photograph the screen with another device. These days, just about anyone can copy anything that the DMCA covers despite any attempts to protect it. The answer is elsewhere, that is copyright laws have to be updated to be equitable to everyone. Unfortunately, it's dinosaurs like the RIAA who are standing in the way stopping it.
• michaelmrose 6y ago
  Napster wasn't merely a tool it was a centralized service that provided an index of infringing files and where to get them. It both directly assisted in the act of infringement it profited from same. You used the words "unintended side effect" in quotes but I am unaware of where that comes from while I am familiar with the term "substantial non-infringing use" and "contributory copyright infringement" Youtube-dl neither assists nor profits from copyright infringement and it possesses arguably non infringing uses. - You can download non infringing videos. Youtube-dl works on a variety of sites beyond youtube - If you feed mpv a url it will transparently use youtube-dl to handle fetching the media for playback. Unless you specifically tell it to this does not permanently save the video and is not materially different from watching the video on firefox. Mpv incidentally uses far less resources for decoding video even with newly added hardware decoding in linux. - You can consume the same video you are allowed to access on a different device or in a situation wherein you lack network access. For example one could watch and then delete a youtube video one wanted to watch on the train where you lacked internet access. This is analogous to format or time shifting which have been deemed fair use.
• kashif 6y ago
  A knife can be used to cut bread also.
• Alex3917 6y ago
  > The fact that copyrighted works were included in the readme shows it was intended for that use, and the RIAA complaint will likely stand up to any legal scrutiny. This. FWIW Grokster is the relevant case law here, not Napster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,_Ltd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,....
• tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  Distributing something that downloads copyrighted content isn't the problem though - the problem is "circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access". If the media provided by YouTube were DRM'ed and youtube-dl would be e.g. extracting the decryption key, this would make sense. Is that what youtube-dl is doing though?
• jk700 6y ago
  > The fact that copyrighted works were included in the readme shows it was intended for that use It's an alternative web browser for videos, of course it was intended for copyrighted works, just like Chrome is. I don't understand your argument, is creating alternative web browsers illegal in the US somehow?
• Adutude 6y ago
  From my perspective it kind of seems like YouTube-dl is like a knife, it can cut your food, but it can also be used to kill someone. In the case of YouTube-dl the knife was included with instructions on how to kill someone, so it was deemed a potential "murder weapon". What if someone sold a car and included instructions on how to run over pedestrians? Should the car no longer be sold, or should the instructions be removed? My point here is that banning all of something based on the fact that the something could be used to commit illegal acts, when that same something also has legitimate legal uses, is a slippery slope. These days the RIAA pretty much lives on that slippery slope.
• mapgrep 6y ago
  I followed the Napster trial closely. Napster’s argument that it had legitimate use was demolished because it had an ability to monitor the specific use of its service on an ongoing basis. That is, it could see queries from users as they happened. In fact, this ability was at the core of the service since Napster relied on a centralized search index maintained by the company. The court ruled this gave the company a more active role in contributing to infringement than the precedent Napster was trying to use (which involved VCRs - the Betamax case). The courts remedy (at least at the preliminary injunction phase) was not to shut down Napster but to force it to comply with search blacklists provided by the record companies. youtube-dl obviously is not a service so had no ability to monitor ongoing use. IMO it would have a much stronger case for legitimate use. IANAL
• PrinceKropotkin 6y ago
  > The fact that copyrighted works were included in the readme shows it was intended for that use Just because copyrighted works are on youtube and are seen as an example of youtube content does not mean the software was built with the express intent to violate copyright. That just doesn't follow.
• eyelidlessness 6y ago
  Just an anecdata point but I was one of the people who used Napster for legitimate purposes (I used it to distribute music I created, gaining small recognition that wasn’t something I could’ve achieved otherwise with my music and my means and other technologies available). The thing that was disappointing in the fallout was that it caused many years of evasion tactics that made finding a comparable distribution multiplier very difficult. For my own use, I stopped caring about making music for others and trying to find a way to get an audience, and I happily play and write music now for my own joy and amusement, but I hate to think how many artists really struggled to find an audience the same way and came up short