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> You want to access YouTube videos through an alternate client, as is your legal right in the European Union? Do you have a source on this? I can't find anyth

> You want to access YouTube videos through an alternate client, as is your legal right in the European Union? Do you have a source on this? I can't find anything about this through a quick Google search, but I'd love for this to be true.

Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
To the best of my knowledge (and IANAL) a good example of this is the European Court of Justice Case C-355/12 "Nintendo v. PC Box" where europas highest court ruled that DRM must respect the principle of proportionality and circumvention of technical protection is only illegal if done for unlawful purposes. If DRM prevents lawful purposes, then the DRM is not proportional to consumer rights (or those of other corporations). If circumventing DRM is illegal is a question of the specific case and must take into account the purpose of the tech used to do it and what people actually use it for. This, at the core, means it is very hard to argue that some library written to circumvent DRM is "illegal tech" and have it taken down in this manner, because the DRM could be inappropriate and it is not the copyright owner who has to decide that. The ECJ was asked by a Milan court for a preliminary, so they gave instructions how the Milan court should handle the matter and how the law is to be interpreted. The base case was about a mod-chip sold by pc-box, who argued as a defendant, that circumventing nintendos DRM for the purpose of playing homebrews was ok and nintendo preventing that is inappropriate. In the general case this was a huge win, because "circumventing DRM is illegal" is only true with a big IF, not as a blanket statement. And from that follows that usage of alternative clients is well within the consumers rights, but again i am not a lawyer. However note that the Milan court then ruled in its case 12508/2015 that this particular mod chip is illegal. Nintendo gave a lot of evidence about the advantages of their DRM in terms of cost, ease of use, security etc, comparing it to inferior implementations of their choice that would fail to protect the copyright holders interests, as well as evidence of usage of the mod chip for piracy. On the other side pc-box defaulted, filing no evidence showing that their users are a vibrant community of homebrew gamers and techheads that circumvent DRM for purposes well within their rights, like running self written software on the hardware. The Milan court also argues that defendant has a burden of proof to show that a more proportionate drm method was possible, which i strongly disagree with, and which seems to follow nintendos argument that their solution is appropriate even if more restrictive then strictly necessary. Note that Milan does not speak for the EU.
wizzwizz4 6y ago
The EU directive is a bit different to the implementations I've seen (which are stronger), but you still have a right to create such an alternate client (if it's sufficiently different in its expression, which youtube-dl clearly is): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:111:0016:0022:EN:PDF https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:... article 6(1): > 1. The authorisation of the rightholder shall not be required where reproduction of the code and translation of its form within the meaning of points (a) and (b) of Article 4(1) are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met: (a) you're allowed to use YouTube, (b) YouTube is undocumented, (c) this only applies to relevant parts of the code. > 2. The provisions of paragraph 1 shall not permit the information obtained through its application: to be (a) used for other stuff, (b) distributed, (c) used for cloning or copyright infringement. > 3. In accordance with the provisions of the Berne Convention for the protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the provisions of this Article may not be interpreted in such a way as to allow its application to be used in a manner which unreasonably prejudices the rightholder's legitimate interests or conflicts with a normal exploitation of the computer program. Creating youtube-dl isn't infringing on anyone's copyright, and the rightsholder here is Google, so it's allowed. There's wiggle room for arguing – it's not as cut and dry as most Big Bold Legal Statements I make, so iamnotalawyerandthisisnotlegaladvice – but I'm fairly sure this is sound. In the UK, you have unequivocal rights to do this. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/50B https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/50B, based on this directive, says: > (3) In particular, the conditions in subsection (2) are not met if the lawful user— > (a)has readily available to him the information necessary to achieve the permitted objective; > (b)does not confine the decompiling to such acts as are necessary to achieve the permitted objective; > (c)supplies the information obtained by the decompiling to any person to whom it is not necessary to supply it in order to achieve the permitted objective; or > (d)uses the information to create a program which is substantially similar in its expression to the program decompiled or to do any act restricted by copyright. The wording in (d), here, is clearer than the EU directive – unless youtube-dl's existence can somehow be shown to be a copyright violation (specifically, if its creation was an act restricted by copyright), it's permitted. Not sure whether this would help in an EU court, but if other countries' implementations have taken the obvious interpretation of the directive, then the other language versions of the directive are probably clear on the matter.

Jon_Lowtek 6y ago

To the best of my knowledge (and IANAL) a good example of this is the European Court of Justice Case C-355/12 "Nintendo v. PC Box" where europas highest court ruled that DRM must respect the principle of proportionality and circumvention of technical protection is only illegal if done for unlawful purposes. If DRM prevents lawful purposes, then the DRM is not proportional to consumer rights (or those of other corporations). If circumventing DRM is illegal is a question of the specific case and must take into account the purpose of the tech used to do it and what people actually use it for. This, at the core, means it is very hard to argue that some library written to circumvent DRM is "illegal tech" and have it taken down in this manner, because the DRM could be inappropriate and it is not the copyright owner who has to decide that. The ECJ was asked by a Milan court for a preliminary, so they gave instructions how the Milan court should handle the matter and how the law is to be interpreted. The base case was about a mod-chip sold by pc-box, who argued as a defendant, that circumventing nintendos DRM for the purpose of playing homebrews was ok and nintendo preventing that is inappropriate. In the general case this was a huge win, because "circumventing DRM is illegal" is only true with a big IF, not as a blanket statement. And from that follows that usage of alternative clients is well within the consumers rights, but again i am not a lawyer. However note that the Milan court then ruled in its case 12508/2015 that this particular mod chip is illegal. Nintendo gave a lot of evidence about the advantages of their DRM in terms of cost, ease of use, security etc, comparing it to inferior implementations of their choice that would fail to protect the copyright holders interests, as well as evidence of usage of the mod chip for piracy. On the other side pc-box defaulted, filing no evidence showing that their users are a vibrant community of homebrew gamers and techheads that circumvent DRM for purposes well within their rights, like running self written software on the hardware. The Milan court also argues that defendant has a burden of proof to show that a more proportionate drm method was possible, which i strongly disagree with, and which seems to follow nintendos argument that their solution is appropriate even if more restrictive then strictly necessary. Note that Milan does not speak for the EU.

wizzwizz4 6y ago

The EU directive is a bit different to the implementations I've seen (which are stronger), but you still have a right to create such an alternate client (if it's sufficiently different in its expression, which youtube-dl clearly is): https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:111:0016:0022:EN:PDF https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:... article 6(1): > 1. The authorisation of the rightholder shall not be required where reproduction of the code and translation of its form within the meaning of points (a) and (b) of Article 4(1) are indispensable to obtain the information necessary to achieve the interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, provided that the following conditions are met: (a) you're allowed to use YouTube, (b) YouTube is undocumented, (c) this only applies to relevant parts of the code. > 2. The provisions of paragraph 1 shall not permit the information obtained through its application: to be (a) used for other stuff, (b) distributed, (c) used for cloning or copyright infringement. > 3. In accordance with the provisions of the Berne Convention for the protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the provisions of this Article may not be interpreted in such a way as to allow its application to be used in a manner which unreasonably prejudices the rightholder's legitimate interests or conflicts with a normal exploitation of the computer program. Creating youtube-dl isn't infringing on anyone's copyright, and the rightsholder here is Google, so it's allowed. There's wiggle room for arguing – it's not as cut and dry as most Big Bold Legal Statements I make, so iamnotalawyerandthisisnotlegaladvice – but I'm fairly sure this is sound. In the UK, you have unequivocal rights to do this. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/50B https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/50B, based on this directive, says: > (3) In particular, the conditions in subsection (2) are not met if the lawful user— > (a)has readily available to him the information necessary to achieve the permitted objective; > (b)does not confine the decompiling to such acts as are necessary to achieve the permitted objective; > (c)supplies the information obtained by the decompiling to any person to whom it is not necessary to supply it in order to achieve the permitted objective; or > (d)uses the information to create a program which is substantially similar in its expression to the program decompiled or to do any act restricted by copyright. The wording in (d), here, is clearer than the EU directive – unless youtube-dl's existence can somehow be shown to be a copyright violation (specifically, if its creation was an act restricted by copyright), it's permitted. Not sure whether this would help in an EU court, but if other countries' implementations have taken the obvious interpretation of the directive, then the other language versions of the directive are probably clear on the matter.