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Youtube-dl GitHub Template

197 points by youtube-dl2 6y ago

chippy 6y ago
forked from github/dmca
sillysaurusx 6y ago
None of these solutions will work. Look, I try not to be negative, but at some point you have to admit the RIAA dealt a serious blow. The value of youtube-dl wasn't the software. It was the community. It was the ability to respond, within hours, to a change made on any given site. I.e. youtube-dl stopped working? No problem, file an issue, wait a day, solved. That is now gone. And the world is simply going to have to accept that it is gone, or figure out a way to get it back. Because that was the sole reason youtube-dl mattered. Not the software. Yes, this youtube-dl2 thing is certainly ... clever. I guess that's the point, right? "Look! youtube-dl can still be downloaded!" That's why it has 34 upvotes right now, right? ... But so what? In a day, no one will remember it, and it won't have any impact. There's no community here. The community was the key. I just don't understand why people will do ten thousand mental backflips to avoid admitting defeat here. Yes, go ahead and clone this software far and wide. Make three youtube-dl templates! Etc. In three months, after youtube-dl is broken on most websites, no one will know where to turn, or how to update it, or how to file issues, or any of the things that made youtube-dl special. Because youtube-dl wasn't software. It was people; the combined effort of hundreds (thousands?) of people. That collaborative space is now gone. I am mortified to hear myself speak so negatively, with not one positive thing to say. I used to despise people like that. And here I am, doing the same thing. But you know what? You, personally, can solve this problem. You have the power to build The Next Thing. The thing that doesn't suffer this same fate. The tech can exist. I urge you to (a) think about a long-term solution, and then (b) devote years of your life to making it a reality. Until then, though, just accept that youtube-dl is gone, and be done with it.
- tutfbhuf 6y ago
  Never underestimate the community. The Github project is gone, the people are not. I'm pretty sure they will find an good alternative to github (with Issues, Pull Requests and so on) to continue the collaborative work on youtube-dl.
  - sillysaurusx 6y ago
    I hope so. Because, seriously, fuck the RIAA for doing what they did. youtube-dl wasn't hurting anybody. If you have any info about where youtube-dl peeps hang out now, or what any plans are for the future, please feel free to post it; it would be delightful to know about. Good luck, whoever you are, youtube-dl community.
  - num3ric 6y ago
    Agreed, the parent comment is extremely defeatist.
- heinrichhartman 6y ago
  So let's start a constructive discussion here: What are the next steps for the community? - Should we re-locate to a different space? - Shall we wait until a lawsuit has been filed? - Shall we wait until we have a legal response? The good thing is that the website https://yt-dl.org https://yt-dl.org is sill up, and the original author seems to have control over it. If there is some coordination behind it, I don't see why the community could not re-locate to a different place, where it is less likely to be sabotaged by what seems to be an inappropriate DMCA takedown.
  - yamrzou 6y ago
    We can create a repository just for issues, like Microsoft does with WSL: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL https://github.com/microsoft/WSL
  - Retr0spectrum 6y ago
    - youtube-dl should be re-named to something like webvideo-dl - I'm not familiar with the ytdl codebase, but I believe its already structured as a general framework, with separate per-site extraction functions. The central framework should be stored in a "webvideo-dl" repo, and the separate extraction functions should be contained under separate repos - e.g. "wvdl-plugin-youtube". This solves two problems: 1. If "wvdl-plugin-youtube" is DMCA'ed, the rest of the project continues to function. 2. Separate "plugins" can be maintained by separate teams. It sounds like the original youtube-dl was already running behind on responding to issues and PRs, prompting the creation of the youtube-dlc fork.
    - TomJansen 6y ago
      I think this is best strategy. However, how would you download plugins then? Make a whole package manager for handling youtube-dl plugins?
      - Retr0spectrum 6y ago
        That would be ideal, however, you could just re-use the existing `pip` infrastructure. e.g. pip install wvdl-plugin-youtube
- apta 6y ago
  Does gitlab still have to comply with DMCA? Can't they just move there? Or perhaps to a host in Europe or Asia?
  - Santosh83 6y ago
    Yes, GitLab is US, and just one more DMCA notice away from another "takedown"... its time the Internet community looked into other legal jurisdictions that don't have to bend to such rules. How does it matter where the bits come from exactly? This is supposed to be the whole point of the Internet but somehow people are behaving as if the end of the US-hosted GitHub repo is the end of everything!
    - xtracto 6y ago
      Enough of legal jurisdictions. That's why distributed / p2p technology exist. It should be possible to have a distributed version of github.
      - Santosh83 6y ago
        While it is a long-term solution, as far as I can see, there is no immediate, P2P solution comparable to GitHub available today, while code-hosting solutions that can be spun up on non-US servers or SaaS products are available for use right now.
      - jhgb 6y ago
        Without the hub, we could call it just "Git" or something like that.
        yellowapple 6y ago
        And indeed, I can't think of anything in particular that'd be stopping someone from putting git repos on e.g. IPFS.
  - chimeracoder 6y ago
    > Does gitlab still have to comply with DMCA? Can't they just move there? Or perhaps to a host in Europe or Asia? GitLab, unlike Github, offers a self-hosted plan. In theory, youtube-dl could self-host, as long as they found a hosting provider that isn't subject to the DMCA and is willing to ignore DMCA notices (even many non-US providers will respond to them) and doesn't have any DMCA-like laws in their own country that could affect youtube-dl (many others actually do, although they're less publicized on places like HN).
- Santosh83 6y ago
  Exactly what stops the team/community from hosting the latest sources outside US jurisdiction and continuing to develop it over the Net, preferably anonymously? I mean... this is exactly one of the best strengths of the Internet...
- lalwanivikas 6y ago
  Wow I never thought about it like that. You raise a very valid point. Lots of time my youtube download did not work and all I had to do was upgrade the brew package. But it won't be the same next time it breaks :/
- amelius 6y ago
  Can't we turn youtube-dl into a user agent instead of a download tool? Would that solve the legal issue? (I assume then the download functionality can be unlocked using a few lines of code)
  - akersten 6y ago
    > into a user agent instead of a download tool? There's no legal distinction. It is a user agent, it's a web tool (agent) acting on your (the user's) behalf.
    - amelius 6y ago
      I mean Chrome and Firefox are user agents too, which can also access YouTube's content.
      - fao_ 6y ago
        Their sole purpose is not saving the content, they provide functionality to do so, but they are mainly meant for emphemeral viewing, not downloading
        amelius 6y ago
        Yes, so my idea would be to make youtube-dl a tool for viewing content without annoying ads and it could be extended to be a download tool (in another project, operating in a more gray legal area). This means that most developers in the project could contribute in a completely legal way.
        type0 6y ago
        > it could be extended to be a download tool (in another project, operating in a more gray legal area). don't have to be grey area, offline viewing is perfectly legal in many jurisdictions
- elorant 6y ago
  Honest question. Why do you need hundreds of people to maintain a simple software that downloads videos from YouTube? Is it that complicated to assemble the query string? I haven't done any work on YT per se, but in my experience from other social sites like Facebook all it takes is to fire a headless browser and do a couple hours of research at tops. Does YT changes on a daily basis?
  - heinrichhartman 6y ago
    Not daily, but frequently. In my experience ytdl breaks every 2-3 weeks and needs to be updated.
  - visarga 6y ago
    It covers almost every video streaming platform, not just YT.
  - numpad0 6y ago
    > Is it that complicated to assemble the query string? > all it takes is to ... do a couple hours of research at tops. is this not answering your own question
    - elorant 6y ago
      How is this answering my question? A couple hours of research every two to three weeks doesn't require a legion of maintainers. I was expecting a more elaborate answer to justify the amount mentioned in the parent comment.
  - istorical 6y ago
    youtube-dl 'just works' on almost every video streaming site I've tested it on.
  - tenebrisalietum 6y ago
    > Why do you need hundreds of people to maintain a simple software that downloads videos from YouTube? There's more than one video site that doesn't simply offer the browser a link to an .mp4 or other media file, but uses Javascript to download storage blobs, which aren't referenced by filenames, and then stream them using complex Javascript code. I know for YouTube the Javascript code is important and has to be reverse engineered. The YouTube mobile app probably does the same in native code. The 'hundreds of people' also comes in because youtube-dl supports much, much more than just YouTube (almost want to say 'hundreds of sites' but I think it's more like 50 or so). > Is it that complicated to assemble the query string? Again there's much more going on with some video sites than the query string.
- blitblitblit 6y ago
  > The tech can exist. I urge you to (a) think about a long-term solution, and then (b) devote years of your life to making it a reality. So a few ideas... 1) YouTube alternatives already exist (Libry, PeerTube, DTube, etc.) 2) It should be possible to clone as much content from YouTube as possible using the last version of YouTube-DL while it still works 3) We can migrate the content off a platform that wishes to make it impossible to share and remix work and put it on a decentralized model that does. Even better are platforms which allow you to download it directly without the need for hack tools. I think the future is simply getting enough people to use the existing alternatives and contribute to them.
  - awwaiid 6y ago
    None of those are resilient to the RIAA. Or maybe I read it wrong - is the idea to move all non-riaa-content to an open platform? Will need to be very careful to ban all RIAA content.
    - blitblitblit 6y ago
      Right you can move all non-RIAA content to an open platform. Or if someone wants to live dangerously setting up a PeerTube instance outside of RIAA jurisdiction would work just as well.
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  > Until then, though, just accept that youtube-dl is gone, and be done with it. Not so fast. Let's not be so quick to mourn a loss that we do it prematurely. Remember, GitHub /has/ to take youtube-dl down at least /temporarily/ in order to be procedurally compliant. That doesn't mean it stays down. Relevant HN subthread about Popcorn Time being reinstated earlier by GitHub [1]: """ GitHub isn't siding with anyone here. They're not increasing liability to protect Popcorn Time, they're only following regular counter-notice procedure by reinstating the repositories after 15 days of the MPAA not filing a lawsuit against the owners of Popcorn Time[0,1]. This procedure will also happen with youtube-dl if they decide to counter-notice. 0: https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/site-policy/guide-to-submitting-a-dmca-counter-notice#article-contents:~:text=If%20you%20do%2C%20we%20will%20wait,legal%20action%20against%20you%20before%20then https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/site-... 1: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/05/2020-05-04-MPA-counternotice.md https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/05/2020-05-0... """ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886023
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    So do you think the project creators are willing to risk an absurdly expensive lawsuit on principle? Because that is effectively what sending a counternotice does.
- feanaro 6y ago
  I still think this is an unnecessarily defeatist attitude. Let's wait and see. For now, these kind of things serve as a demonstration of spirit and of the fact that there are many people who do not agree with this interpretation of the law.
- Nzen 6y ago
  > But you know what? You, personally, can solve this problem. You have the power to build The Next Thing. The thing that doesn't suffer this same fate. > The tech can exist. I urge you to (a) think about a long-term solution, and then (b) devote years of your life to making it a reality. The way you've described it, this isn't a problem with a technical solution. Discouraging or eliminating the ability of an organization to deplatform a software community requires a social/legal solution. Presumably, someone hoped to reignite interest in the social solution yesterday by pointing at [0] gittorrent. Ultimately, I affirm your general sentiment that this can only be an occasional flower in the desert and tall weeds get cut. Any network I can find, RIAA can find. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24874994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24874994
- m463 6y ago
  Did Barbara Streisand achieve the results she wanted by attempting to suppress photos of her estate? In the same way, did the RIAA remove youtube-dl from visibility and awareness? just watch.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    The difference between Barbara Streisand and the RIAA: - Streisand wanted privacy. Once private information is broadly released, it can't be hidden again, and trying to take the private information down just disseminated it more. - The RIAA just wants to stop a tool from being used to violate their copyrights because that causes them financial damages. Unlike Streisand, they have the legal power, under the DMCA, to go after the creators of those tools for financial damages. It doesn't matter if people make copies of the tool, since they can go after all of the copiers. So, unlike Streisand, they can be made whole for their financial losses. In fact, I would be surprised if someone from the RIAA wasn't on Github right now recording the usernames of the people forking/PRing the youtube-dl code.
    - randomchars 6y ago
      > The RIAA just wants to stop a tool from being used to violate their copyrights because that causes them financial damages But does it actually cause them financial damages? I highly doubt it does.
  - zouhair 6y ago
    I doubt the RIAA cares either way, it's ultimately just a bunch of suits that try to justify their position and keep the money flowing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- shmerl 6y ago
  It's not a blow if they counter claim and get support to fight these jerks in court. What RIAA did is free PR for the project.
- llacb47 6y ago
  > It was the ability to respond, within hours, to a change made on any given site. I.e. youtube-dl stopped working? No problem, file an issue, wait a day, solved. That's funny. You must have not been around on the repo for the last six to eight months. It was practically abandoned, with several broken extractors not being addressed, and essential PRs being ignored for months or even years. See this: https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3AcSWoRbWfKaUJ%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fytdl-org%2Fyoutube-dl%2Fissues%2F26462 https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercon... As an example, take the tiktok extractor, which was (and is still) broken for almost a year without even being acknowledged by the maintainers: https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ae7hVl_JMlVIJ%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fytdl-org%2Fyoutube-dl%2Fissues%2F23264%3FBADWAYBACKMACHINE https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercon... https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ALzFSU8BXMNkJ%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fytdl-org%2Fyoutube-dl%2Fissues%2F20809+&cd=5 https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercon... https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3AjZu_3AOXOP4J%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fytdl-org%2Fyoutube-dl%2Fissues%2F26094%3Fcb47 https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercon...
  - ninjaoxygen 6y ago
    I think that is a pretty normal OSS situation though; there's a fairly small overlap between who care enough to play in the arms race for Tiktok videos and people who want to spend their time updating youtube-dl. Other sites were regularly updated, so it's just down to what individual maintainers have time and inclination for. Tiktok are pretty active in that arms race, I can only suppose most maintainers feel it's not worth a constant battle for Tiktok content.
    - llacb47 6y ago
      There is no "arms race", because the maintainers made no commits to the tiktok extractor for the past 8 months AFAIK. And twitch, a fairly important site, was similarly broken for three months due to maintainers' inactivity: https://web.archive.org/web/20201002044125/https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/25606 https://web.archive.org/web/20201002044125/https://github.co...
- zxcvbn4038 6y ago
  You are overly pessimistic, just move to another site, happens all the time. RIAA makes a lot of noise but is actually toothless. If it was only US persons involved with excess tangible assets and there was a lot of money changing hands they might roll the dice, but in this instance everything is working against them.
- pitay 6y ago
  youtube-dl can still be used for reference so that people can use as it as a starting point to learn to scrape video. If enough people take an interest in fixing their local youtube-dl individually when things change and it stops working, even just for themselves, means that the video scraping knowledge is more widespread. Maybe that is a bit of a pipe dream, but it is something people can do if they really care about it, there is certainly the motivation now. Yeah, it's going to be a lot more difficult now that there is no longer a centralised community for it.
- atomi 6y ago
  Code is speech. The fight should be an ideological one - akin to first amendment protections.
aswinmohanme 6y ago
Can't we migrate the entire thing to fossil ? It has it's own integrated Issue Tracker and Wiki and point https://yt-dl.org https://yt-dl.org to it ?
- noxer 6y ago
  That would be awesome. It could even be setup with a cluster of hosters in different locations.
bkmeneguello 6y ago
This is very dangerous, to censure a software by the potential or have. Youtube-dl does not violate any copyright law by itself, only its user can
ankushnarula 6y ago
git over IPFS - https://radicle.xyz https://radicle.xyz

197 points by youtube-dl2 6y ago

forked from github/dmca

None of these solutions will work. Look, I try not to be negative, but at some point you have to admit the RIAA dealt a serious blow. The value of youtube-dl wasn't the software. It was the community. It was the ability to respond, within hours, to a change made on any given site. I.e. youtube-dl stopped working? No problem, file an issue, wait a day, solved. That is now gone. And the world is simply going to have to accept that it is gone, or figure out a way to get it back. Because that was the sole reason youtube-dl mattered. Not the software. Yes, this youtube-dl2 thing is certainly ... clever. I guess that's the point, right? "Look! youtube-dl can still be downloaded!" That's why it has 34 upvotes right now, right? ... But so what? In a day, no one will remember it, and it won't have any impact. There's no community here. The community was the key. I just don't understand why people will do ten thousand mental backflips to avoid admitting defeat here. Yes, go ahead and clone this software far and wide. Make three youtube-dl templates! Etc. In three months, after youtube-dl is broken on most websites, no one will know where to turn, or how to update it, or how to file issues, or any of the things that made youtube-dl special. Because youtube-dl wasn't software. It was people; the combined effort of hundreds (thousands?) of people. That collaborative space is now gone. I am mortified to hear myself speak so negatively, with not one positive thing to say. I used to despise people like that. And here I am, doing the same thing. But you know what? You, personally, can solve this problem. You have the power to build The Next Thing. The thing that doesn't suffer this same fate. The tech can exist. I urge you to (a) think about a long-term solution, and then (b) devote years of your life to making it a reality. Until then, though, just accept that youtube-dl is gone, and be done with it.

tutfbhuf 6y ago
Never underestimate the community. The Github project is gone, the people are not. I'm pretty sure they will find an good alternative to github (with Issues, Pull Requests and so on) to continue the collaborative work on youtube-dl.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  I hope so. Because, seriously, fuck the RIAA for doing what they did. youtube-dl wasn't hurting anybody. If you have any info about where youtube-dl peeps hang out now, or what any plans are for the future, please feel free to post it; it would be delightful to know about. Good luck, whoever you are, youtube-dl community.
- num3ric 6y ago
  Agreed, the parent comment is extremely defeatist.
heinrichhartman 6y ago
So let's start a constructive discussion here: What are the next steps for the community? - Should we re-locate to a different space? - Shall we wait until a lawsuit has been filed? - Shall we wait until we have a legal response? The good thing is that the website https://yt-dl.org https://yt-dl.org is sill up, and the original author seems to have control over it. If there is some coordination behind it, I don't see why the community could not re-locate to a different place, where it is less likely to be sabotaged by what seems to be an inappropriate DMCA takedown.
- yamrzou 6y ago
  We can create a repository just for issues, like Microsoft does with WSL: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL https://github.com/microsoft/WSL
- Retr0spectrum 6y ago
  - youtube-dl should be re-named to something like webvideo-dl - I'm not familiar with the ytdl codebase, but I believe its already structured as a general framework, with separate per-site extraction functions. The central framework should be stored in a "webvideo-dl" repo, and the separate extraction functions should be contained under separate repos - e.g. "wvdl-plugin-youtube". This solves two problems: 1. If "wvdl-plugin-youtube" is DMCA'ed, the rest of the project continues to function. 2. Separate "plugins" can be maintained by separate teams. It sounds like the original youtube-dl was already running behind on responding to issues and PRs, prompting the creation of the youtube-dlc fork.
  - TomJansen 6y ago
    I think this is best strategy. However, how would you download plugins then? Make a whole package manager for handling youtube-dl plugins?
    - Retr0spectrum 6y ago
      That would be ideal, however, you could just re-use the existing `pip` infrastructure. e.g. pip install wvdl-plugin-youtube
apta 6y ago
Does gitlab still have to comply with DMCA? Can't they just move there? Or perhaps to a host in Europe or Asia?
- Santosh83 6y ago
  Yes, GitLab is US, and just one more DMCA notice away from another "takedown"... its time the Internet community looked into other legal jurisdictions that don't have to bend to such rules. How does it matter where the bits come from exactly? This is supposed to be the whole point of the Internet but somehow people are behaving as if the end of the US-hosted GitHub repo is the end of everything!
  - xtracto 6y ago
    Enough of legal jurisdictions. That's why distributed / p2p technology exist. It should be possible to have a distributed version of github.
    - Santosh83 6y ago
      While it is a long-term solution, as far as I can see, there is no immediate, P2P solution comparable to GitHub available today, while code-hosting solutions that can be spun up on non-US servers or SaaS products are available for use right now.
    - jhgb 6y ago
      Without the hub, we could call it just "Git" or something like that.
      - yellowapple 6y ago
        And indeed, I can't think of anything in particular that'd be stopping someone from putting git repos on e.g. IPFS.
- chimeracoder 6y ago
  > Does gitlab still have to comply with DMCA? Can't they just move there? Or perhaps to a host in Europe or Asia? GitLab, unlike Github, offers a self-hosted plan. In theory, youtube-dl could self-host, as long as they found a hosting provider that isn't subject to the DMCA and is willing to ignore DMCA notices (even many non-US providers will respond to them) and doesn't have any DMCA-like laws in their own country that could affect youtube-dl (many others actually do, although they're less publicized on places like HN).
Santosh83 6y ago
Exactly what stops the team/community from hosting the latest sources outside US jurisdiction and continuing to develop it over the Net, preferably anonymously? I mean... this is exactly one of the best strengths of the Internet...
lalwanivikas 6y ago
Wow I never thought about it like that. You raise a very valid point. Lots of time my youtube download did not work and all I had to do was upgrade the brew package. But it won't be the same next time it breaks :/
amelius 6y ago
Can't we turn youtube-dl into a user agent instead of a download tool? Would that solve the legal issue? (I assume then the download functionality can be unlocked using a few lines of code)
- akersten 6y ago
  > into a user agent instead of a download tool? There's no legal distinction. It is a user agent, it's a web tool (agent) acting on your (the user's) behalf.
  - amelius 6y ago
    I mean Chrome and Firefox are user agents too, which can also access YouTube's content.
    - fao_ 6y ago
      Their sole purpose is not saving the content, they provide functionality to do so, but they are mainly meant for emphemeral viewing, not downloading
      - amelius 6y ago
        Yes, so my idea would be to make youtube-dl a tool for viewing content without annoying ads and it could be extended to be a download tool (in another project, operating in a more gray legal area). This means that most developers in the project could contribute in a completely legal way.
        type0 6y ago
        > it could be extended to be a download tool (in another project, operating in a more gray legal area). don't have to be grey area, offline viewing is perfectly legal in many jurisdictions
elorant 6y ago
Honest question. Why do you need hundreds of people to maintain a simple software that downloads videos from YouTube? Is it that complicated to assemble the query string? I haven't done any work on YT per se, but in my experience from other social sites like Facebook all it takes is to fire a headless browser and do a couple hours of research at tops. Does YT changes on a daily basis?
- heinrichhartman 6y ago
  Not daily, but frequently. In my experience ytdl breaks every 2-3 weeks and needs to be updated.
- visarga 6y ago
  It covers almost every video streaming platform, not just YT.
- numpad0 6y ago
  > Is it that complicated to assemble the query string? > all it takes is to ... do a couple hours of research at tops. is this not answering your own question
  - elorant 6y ago
    How is this answering my question? A couple hours of research every two to three weeks doesn't require a legion of maintainers. I was expecting a more elaborate answer to justify the amount mentioned in the parent comment.
- istorical 6y ago
  youtube-dl 'just works' on almost every video streaming site I've tested it on.
- tenebrisalietum 6y ago
  > Why do you need hundreds of people to maintain a simple software that downloads videos from YouTube? There's more than one video site that doesn't simply offer the browser a link to an .mp4 or other media file, but uses Javascript to download storage blobs, which aren't referenced by filenames, and then stream them using complex Javascript code. I know for YouTube the Javascript code is important and has to be reverse engineered. The YouTube mobile app probably does the same in native code. The 'hundreds of people' also comes in because youtube-dl supports much, much more than just YouTube (almost want to say 'hundreds of sites' but I think it's more like 50 or so). > Is it that complicated to assemble the query string? Again there's much more going on with some video sites than the query string.
blitblitblit 6y ago
> The tech can exist. I urge you to (a) think about a long-term solution, and then (b) devote years of your life to making it a reality. So a few ideas... 1) YouTube alternatives already exist (Libry, PeerTube, DTube, etc.) 2) It should be possible to clone as much content from YouTube as possible using the last version of YouTube-DL while it still works 3) We can migrate the content off a platform that wishes to make it impossible to share and remix work and put it on a decentralized model that does. Even better are platforms which allow you to download it directly without the need for hack tools. I think the future is simply getting enough people to use the existing alternatives and contribute to them.
- awwaiid 6y ago
  None of those are resilient to the RIAA. Or maybe I read it wrong - is the idea to move all non-riaa-content to an open platform? Will need to be very careful to ban all RIAA content.
  - blitblitblit 6y ago
    Right you can move all non-RIAA content to an open platform. Or if someone wants to live dangerously setting up a PeerTube instance outside of RIAA jurisdiction would work just as well.
yowlingcat 6y ago
> Until then, though, just accept that youtube-dl is gone, and be done with it. Not so fast. Let's not be so quick to mourn a loss that we do it prematurely. Remember, GitHub /has/ to take youtube-dl down at least /temporarily/ in order to be procedurally compliant. That doesn't mean it stays down. Relevant HN subthread about Popcorn Time being reinstated earlier by GitHub [1]: """ GitHub isn't siding with anyone here. They're not increasing liability to protect Popcorn Time, they're only following regular counter-notice procedure by reinstating the repositories after 15 days of the MPAA not filing a lawsuit against the owners of Popcorn Time[0,1]. This procedure will also happen with youtube-dl if they decide to counter-notice. 0: https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/site-policy/guide-to-submitting-a-dmca-counter-notice#article-contents:~:text=If%20you%20do%2C%20we%20will%20wait,legal%20action%20against%20you%20before%20then https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/site-... 1: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/05/2020-05-04-MPA-counternotice.md https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/05/2020-05-0... """ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886023
- Karunamon 6y ago
  So do you think the project creators are willing to risk an absurdly expensive lawsuit on principle? Because that is effectively what sending a counternotice does.
feanaro 6y ago
I still think this is an unnecessarily defeatist attitude. Let's wait and see. For now, these kind of things serve as a demonstration of spirit and of the fact that there are many people who do not agree with this interpretation of the law.
Nzen 6y ago
> But you know what? You, personally, can solve this problem. You have the power to build The Next Thing. The thing that doesn't suffer this same fate. > The tech can exist. I urge you to (a) think about a long-term solution, and then (b) devote years of your life to making it a reality. The way you've described it, this isn't a problem with a technical solution. Discouraging or eliminating the ability of an organization to deplatform a software community requires a social/legal solution. Presumably, someone hoped to reignite interest in the social solution yesterday by pointing at [0] gittorrent. Ultimately, I affirm your general sentiment that this can only be an occasional flower in the desert and tall weeds get cut. Any network I can find, RIAA can find. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24874994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24874994
m463 6y ago
Did Barbara Streisand achieve the results she wanted by attempting to suppress photos of her estate? In the same way, did the RIAA remove youtube-dl from visibility and awareness? just watch.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  The difference between Barbara Streisand and the RIAA: - Streisand wanted privacy. Once private information is broadly released, it can't be hidden again, and trying to take the private information down just disseminated it more. - The RIAA just wants to stop a tool from being used to violate their copyrights because that causes them financial damages. Unlike Streisand, they have the legal power, under the DMCA, to go after the creators of those tools for financial damages. It doesn't matter if people make copies of the tool, since they can go after all of the copiers. So, unlike Streisand, they can be made whole for their financial losses. In fact, I would be surprised if someone from the RIAA wasn't on Github right now recording the usernames of the people forking/PRing the youtube-dl code.
  - randomchars 6y ago
    > The RIAA just wants to stop a tool from being used to violate their copyrights because that causes them financial damages But does it actually cause them financial damages? I highly doubt it does.
- zouhair 6y ago
  I doubt the RIAA cares either way, it's ultimately just a bunch of suits that try to justify their position and keep the money flowing.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
shmerl 6y ago
It's not a blow if they counter claim and get support to fight these jerks in court. What RIAA did is free PR for the project.
llacb47 6y ago
> It was the ability to respond, within hours, to a change made on any given site. I.e. youtube-dl stopped working? No problem, file an issue, wait a day, solved. That's funny. You must have not been around on the repo for the last six to eight months. It was practically abandoned, with several broken extractors not being addressed, and essential PRs being ignored for months or even years. See this: https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3AcSWoRbWfKaUJ%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fytdl-org%2Fyoutube-dl%2Fissues%2F26462 https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercon... As an example, take the tiktok extractor, which was (and is still) broken for almost a year without even being acknowledged by the maintainers: https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ae7hVl_JMlVIJ%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fytdl-org%2Fyoutube-dl%2Fissues%2F23264%3FBADWAYBACKMACHINE https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercon... https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ALzFSU8BXMNkJ%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fytdl-org%2Fyoutube-dl%2Fissues%2F20809+&cd=5 https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercon... https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3AjZu_3AOXOP4J%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fytdl-org%2Fyoutube-dl%2Fissues%2F26094%3Fcb47 https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://webcache.googleusercon...
- ninjaoxygen 6y ago
  I think that is a pretty normal OSS situation though; there's a fairly small overlap between who care enough to play in the arms race for Tiktok videos and people who want to spend their time updating youtube-dl. Other sites were regularly updated, so it's just down to what individual maintainers have time and inclination for. Tiktok are pretty active in that arms race, I can only suppose most maintainers feel it's not worth a constant battle for Tiktok content.
  - llacb47 6y ago
    There is no "arms race", because the maintainers made no commits to the tiktok extractor for the past 8 months AFAIK. And twitch, a fairly important site, was similarly broken for three months due to maintainers' inactivity: https://web.archive.org/web/20201002044125/https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/pull/25606 https://web.archive.org/web/20201002044125/https://github.co...
zxcvbn4038 6y ago
You are overly pessimistic, just move to another site, happens all the time. RIAA makes a lot of noise but is actually toothless. If it was only US persons involved with excess tangible assets and there was a lot of money changing hands they might roll the dice, but in this instance everything is working against them.
pitay 6y ago
youtube-dl can still be used for reference so that people can use as it as a starting point to learn to scrape video. If enough people take an interest in fixing their local youtube-dl individually when things change and it stops working, even just for themselves, means that the video scraping knowledge is more widespread. Maybe that is a bit of a pipe dream, but it is something people can do if they really care about it, there is certainly the motivation now. Yeah, it's going to be a lot more difficult now that there is no longer a centralised community for it.
atomi 6y ago
Code is speech. The fight should be an ideological one - akin to first amendment protections.

aswinmohanme 6y ago

Can't we migrate the entire thing to fossil ? It has it's own integrated Issue Tracker and Wiki and point https://yt-dl.org https://yt-dl.org to it ?

noxer 6y ago
That would be awesome. It could even be setup with a cluster of hosters in different locations.

bkmeneguello 6y ago

This is very dangerous, to censure a software by the potential or have. Youtube-dl does not violate any copyright law by itself, only its user can

ankushnarula 6y ago

git over IPFS - https://radicle.xyz https://radicle.xyz