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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 vide

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
      I don't know whether I agree that it should be thin legal grounds for a couple of reasons, even though I do agree that changing a few lines of text that doesn't alter the function of the code makes the argument sound sketchy. Here's why I am not sure whether I agree: The text in question is described as being part of a test. It is highly suggestive that at least one developer wanted to consider cases where the rights holder may be more assertive (e.g. with potential protection mechanisms), which implies intent. Granted, I don't know what the actual intent was. Only the people who added that text and accepted the commit can know that. Intent is important when laws are broken. In the minor instances, it may determine whether the law is even enforced. In more significant violations, it may be considered when evaluating legal recourse or damages awarded. While I am uncomfortable with the law being fuzzy, I am also uncomfortable with it being absolute. The latter is especially true when you consider that it is far too common to create laws that protect singular interests.
mulmen 6y ago
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.
- murgindrag 6y ago
  A copyright is for a creative work, not for a set of bits. It's unlikely transcoding a video added anything creative to the process.
  - mulmen 6y ago
    Yes I am aware that the bits are not what is copywritten and I am not suggesting Youtube has any right to the content itself. But using youtube-dl to download content from a competitors site is taking advantage of the functionality on that competitors site to add value to your own product. It could still be in Youtube's interest to prevent this from happening. I'm asking why you would expect a competitor to make your own product more compelling for your customers. This is a further example that Youtube-dl is there to circumvent the intended functionality of Youtube.
    - patmorgan23 6y ago
      But YouTube is not the one taking legal action here, The RIAA is.
      - mulmen 6y ago
        I understand that as well. I am saying it is possible to imagine a scenario in which someone looks at Youtube-dl as something other than a totally harmless aid to users. Youtube has legitimate reasons to try and prevent people from downloading content from their site. Youtube-dl is clearly there to enable people to do that. Rightsholders can use this as another argument that Youtube-dl violates (or is designed to violate) the DMCA. I'm not defending the RIAA or DMCA here but I can understand their argument and why they are making it.
gamblor956 6y ago
Right, but that's not the heart of the matter. It's one thing if a tool designed for legitimate archiving use results in incidental violation of copyright. It's another thing entirely, legally, if a tool is designed for violating copyright. In such case, it doesn't matter if there are also legitimate fair use uses of the tool. And that's what the README showed: that youtube-dl was built primarily to violate copyright. EDIT: based on other comments, it turns out the offending evidence was in the unit testing code not the README file, which legally makes it a bit worse than if it had just been in the README file.
- maxander 6y ago
  The kicker is that if their demo examples had been something like that, or e.g. students downloading copies of free lectures, or etc, the RIAA would have much less of a case. No actual code would have had to change. If you have a tool which skirts (bad, overreaching, probably constitutionally invalid) laws, be smart about how you present them!
  - yebyen 6y ago
    If this content is freely available, why can't we take a fair use copy? That is not a violation of copyright. (Even if it is entertainment / not educational.) Those are the terms of the deal, we made when we enshrined copyright into law. If you can show it to me, then I am allowed to take a copy. (Is it not? I thought that DMCA law itself was written to skirt around this fact of law.)
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      If this content is freely available, why can't we take a fair use copy? That is not a violation of copyright. Making a copy on its own is not fair use. What matters is the reason for making the copy. If you are making an connectivity-shifted copy (aka, for viewing away from internet access) there could be a fair use argument to download content from a streaming site that is not otherwise available for offline consumption. But the flipside of that: if there is a way to access the content in a way that fair use is not implicated (i.e., because the copyright owner makes the content available for that use case such as offline viewing, even if payment is required), then generally fair use does not apply. Remember: fair use is a defense to violating copyright, and it must be reasonable under the circumstances. Not wanting to pay for a license for your intended use case is generally never considered reasonable. If you can show it to me, then I am allowed to take a copy. That has never been the law, at any point in the history of copyright, dating back to before copying works was trivial.
WORLD_ENDS_SOON 6y ago
To add another item to the list of legal, legitimate uses of YouTube-dl: lots of public domain content is uploaded to YouTube, including a lot of media produced by the US government. For example, The White House has a YouTube channel, and my understanding of US law is that the vast majority of the content uploaded to that channel is public domain (produced by federal employees in the course of their job). Journalists or anyone else wanting to monitor the government would likely find YouTube-dl useful for archiving this public domain content from government channels.
- m-p-3 6y ago
  Google should add direct download links for public domain content, but that's another fight entirely.
  - johnchristopher 6y ago
    Why should they ? YouTube is in the streaming business, not the archival business. If someone wants to make their videos available for download they should post a link on their website, served through their servers and bandwidth.
    - scaramanga 6y ago
      Presumably as a condition of being allowed to hold their monopoly status and treat the (publicly developed) internet as a source of annuities.
    - fnord123 6y ago
      Isn't streaming live video? It seems to me that youtube is exactly in archival video and hardly in streaming. But it's a big site so maybe a lot of people use it in ways I don't know.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - 6y ago
truncate 6y ago
I remember using youtube-dl back 8 years or so ago when I was an undergrad in India to download MIT OCW lectures (and others e.g. SICP vidoes, Coursera), because bandwidth was limited, download was capped, and 3G was too expensive. I could watch these videos anywhere, and whenever I wanted. And I'm pretty sure non of those videos had (or even have) ads.
reshie 6y ago
not to mention its a console cmd and works well in scripts. i used it for a lot of sites that have their videos free but i used a console browser and used this in a script that i could call through the browser. i never looked at how it worked or what i could do with it in a non legitimate way but i wonder if i did unintentionally. i wonder if its the download part that is the issue though for some sites can have free to watch but might have issue with downloading funnily enough screen recording does exist.

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
    I don't know whether I agree that it should be thin legal grounds for a couple of reasons, even though I do agree that changing a few lines of text that doesn't alter the function of the code makes the argument sound sketchy. Here's why I am not sure whether I agree: The text in question is described as being part of a test. It is highly suggestive that at least one developer wanted to consider cases where the rights holder may be more assertive (e.g. with potential protection mechanisms), which implies intent. Granted, I don't know what the actual intent was. Only the people who added that text and accepted the commit can know that. Intent is important when laws are broken. In the minor instances, it may determine whether the law is even enforced. In more significant violations, it may be considered when evaluating legal recourse or damages awarded. While I am uncomfortable with the law being fuzzy, I am also uncomfortable with it being absolute. The latter is especially true when you consider that it is far too common to create laws that protect singular interests.

mulmen 6y ago

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.

murgindrag 6y ago
A copyright is for a creative work, not for a set of bits. It's unlikely transcoding a video added anything creative to the process.
- mulmen 6y ago
  Yes I am aware that the bits are not what is copywritten and I am not suggesting Youtube has any right to the content itself. But using youtube-dl to download content from a competitors site is taking advantage of the functionality on that competitors site to add value to your own product. It could still be in Youtube's interest to prevent this from happening. I'm asking why you would expect a competitor to make your own product more compelling for your customers. This is a further example that Youtube-dl is there to circumvent the intended functionality of Youtube.
  - patmorgan23 6y ago
    But YouTube is not the one taking legal action here, The RIAA is.
    - mulmen 6y ago
      I understand that as well. I am saying it is possible to imagine a scenario in which someone looks at Youtube-dl as something other than a totally harmless aid to users. Youtube has legitimate reasons to try and prevent people from downloading content from their site. Youtube-dl is clearly there to enable people to do that. Rightsholders can use this as another argument that Youtube-dl violates (or is designed to violate) the DMCA. I'm not defending the RIAA or DMCA here but I can understand their argument and why they are making it.

gamblor956 6y ago

Right, but that's not the heart of the matter. It's one thing if a tool designed for legitimate archiving use results in incidental violation of copyright. It's another thing entirely, legally, if a tool is designed for violating copyright. In such case, it doesn't matter if there are also legitimate fair use uses of the tool. And that's what the README showed: that youtube-dl was built primarily to violate copyright. EDIT: based on other comments, it turns out the offending evidence was in the unit testing code not the README file, which legally makes it a bit worse than if it had just been in the README file.

maxander 6y ago
The kicker is that if their demo examples had been something like that, or e.g. students downloading copies of free lectures, or etc, the RIAA would have much less of a case. No actual code would have had to change. If you have a tool which skirts (bad, overreaching, probably constitutionally invalid) laws, be smart about how you present them!
- yebyen 6y ago
  If this content is freely available, why can't we take a fair use copy? That is not a violation of copyright. (Even if it is entertainment / not educational.) Those are the terms of the deal, we made when we enshrined copyright into law. If you can show it to me, then I am allowed to take a copy. (Is it not? I thought that DMCA law itself was written to skirt around this fact of law.)
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    If this content is freely available, why can't we take a fair use copy? That is not a violation of copyright. Making a copy on its own is not fair use. What matters is the reason for making the copy. If you are making an connectivity-shifted copy (aka, for viewing away from internet access) there could be a fair use argument to download content from a streaming site that is not otherwise available for offline consumption. But the flipside of that: if there is a way to access the content in a way that fair use is not implicated (i.e., because the copyright owner makes the content available for that use case such as offline viewing, even if payment is required), then generally fair use does not apply. Remember: fair use is a defense to violating copyright, and it must be reasonable under the circumstances. Not wanting to pay for a license for your intended use case is generally never considered reasonable. If you can show it to me, then I am allowed to take a copy. That has never been the law, at any point in the history of copyright, dating back to before copying works was trivial.

WORLD_ENDS_SOON 6y ago

To add another item to the list of legal, legitimate uses of YouTube-dl: lots of public domain content is uploaded to YouTube, including a lot of media produced by the US government. For example, The White House has a YouTube channel, and my understanding of US law is that the vast majority of the content uploaded to that channel is public domain (produced by federal employees in the course of their job). Journalists or anyone else wanting to monitor the government would likely find YouTube-dl useful for archiving this public domain content from government channels.

m-p-3 6y ago
Google should add direct download links for public domain content, but that's another fight entirely.
- johnchristopher 6y ago
  Why should they ? YouTube is in the streaming business, not the archival business. If someone wants to make their videos available for download they should post a link on their website, served through their servers and bandwidth.
  - scaramanga 6y ago
    Presumably as a condition of being allowed to hold their monopoly status and treat the (publicly developed) internet as a source of annuities.
  - fnord123 6y ago
    Isn't streaming live video? It seems to me that youtube is exactly in archival video and hardly in streaming. But it's a big site so maybe a lot of people use it in ways I don't know.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - 6y ago

truncate 6y ago

I remember using youtube-dl back 8 years or so ago when I was an undergrad in India to download MIT OCW lectures (and others e.g. SICP vidoes, Coursera), because bandwidth was limited, download was capped, and 3G was too expensive. I could watch these videos anywhere, and whenever I wanted. And I'm pretty sure non of those videos had (or even have) ads.

reshie 6y ago

not to mention its a console cmd and works well in scripts. i used it for a lot of sites that have their videos free but i used a console browser and used this in a script that i could call through the browser. i never looked at how it worked or what i could do with it in a non legitimate way but i wonder if i did unintentionally. i wonder if its the download part that is the issue though for some sites can have free to watch but might have issue with downloading funnily enough screen recording does exist.