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The RIAA letter was a takedown notice, tho from the looks of it a rather frivolous one. They used a DMCA (17 U.S. Code § 512) takedown notice not to complain a

The RIAA letter was a takedown notice, tho from the looks of it a rather frivolous one. They used a DMCA (17 U.S. Code § 512) takedown notice not to complain about infringing content but to complain about "circumvention" (17 U.S. Code § 1201). This is probably outside of the scope of DMCA notices, but courts often rule like common people would not expect (shout-out to Google vs Oracle). Github then followed the letter of the law (and case law and jurisprudence) and processed the takedown request without looking into the merit, just making sure the notice had the required elements under the DMCA. Doing anything else would potentially open up Github to liability. Now it's up to yt-dl to file a counter-notice, pointing out that the RIAA members do not actually own any copyright to the code itself (and maybe also state that yt-dl is not "primarily" a "circumvention" software according to 17 U.S. Code § 1201), and see what happens. RIAA can then file a lawsuit, which at this point they would probably win just because they can throw more money at it. Hurray for the US civil law legal system, where the richer party almost always wins.

eli 6y ago
It’s not a takedown notice and doesn’t follow takedown notice procedure. It doesn’t claim to be a takedown notice. RIAA sent a letter asking GitHub to take a repo down and they listened. They weren’t legally obligated to but they chose to and that’s their right. A counter notification wouldn’t necessarily do anything since the original letter was not a takedown notice. GitHub can’t be compelled to host something they no longer wish to host.
- rndgermandude 6y ago
  I determined this based on being a person who has to read a lot of these regularly (even tho I am not in the US; fun innit?!) It does not lack any of the required elements (compare https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 ). In fact, it is specifically written to hit all the required elements. Let's go through this. Statement there is copyright infringement and demanding takedown: >In light of the above noted copyright infringements and anticircumvention violations, we ask that you immediately take down and disable access to the youtube-dl source code at all of its locations where it is hosted on GitHub, including without limitation those locations in the representative list set forth above. (yes, the "copyright infringement claim is very most likely bullshit, but it's not Github's place under the law to rule on it, unless they want to lose their safe harbor protections and open themselves up to potential liability) (vi) statement of authorization (with perjury) > Under penalty of perjury, we submit that the RIAA is authorized to act on behalf of its member companies on matters involving the infringement of their sound recordings, audiovisual works and images, including enforcing their copyrights and common law rights on the Internet. (v) statement of good faith of accurateness >We have a good faith belief that this activity is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. We assert that the information in this notification is accurate, based upon the data available to us. (iv) and (i) contact details and (electronic) signature >You may contact me at RIAA, [private] Tel. [private], >[private] (ii) identification of content >We also note that the source code prominently includes as sample uses of the source code the downloading of copies of our members’ copyrighted sound recordings and music videos, as noted in Exhibit A hereto. For example, as shown on Exhibit A, the source code expressly suggests its use to copy and/or distribute the following copyrighted works owned by our member companies: [list] (yes, this is basically trickery to hit the (ii)) (iii) identification of infringement > https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl [...] And there you go, all 6 required elements + claim of infringement + demand for takedown are there.
gruez 6y ago
>Hurray for the US civil law legal system, where the richer party almost always wins. As opposed to any other legal system?
- ulucs 6y ago
  Yes.
  - wegs 6y ago
    Even the historic US legal system was designed to have parties be able to reasonably represent themselves in court. Lawyers weren't a thing until pretty recently. Earlier lawyers had fees capped at fairly low levels. Money wasn't a thing since lawyers were fixed-price for a type of case, by legislation. If Biden is talking about serious judicial reforms, simplifying the court system to where individuals can represent themselves, and capping legal fees seem like the ways to do it. He'd never do it, though; the democrats are in the pocket of the legal lobby.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      I think you've confused the US system with the UK system. The US has always had lawyers; a great deal of the founding fathers were themselves lawyers. Fees were never fixed by legislation, generally cases were simpler back then so they didn't have or need time-based billing (that was a relatively recent development). Individuals already can represent themselves in small claims courts. Federal courts are intended for much larger cases (and in fact there is a minimum threshold for cases to be in federal court) and capping legal fees there generally wouldn't benefit either party.
      - wegs 6y ago
        Nope. I didn't. And you can't quite decouple the two; there's a continuous lineage; institutions didn't get reinvented with the revolution: * US is a common law jurisdiction, and indeed, pre-colonization UK courts sometimes act as precedent for post-revolution US courts. * US courts come from colonial courts If you'd like to read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_American_legal_profession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_American_legal_... "Legal procedures in the 17th century were quite informal, with judges discussing issues directly with the people involved in the case." "Colonial legislatures passed laws to fix the fees lawyers could charge for standardized procedures and maintain these fees relatively low. This often led some lawyers to handle a high volume of cases more speedily." ... and so on. By the time the US formed, you had plenty of lawyers, but you had plenty of people representing themselves (and in cases above what would go into small claims). The concept of statutory legal fees is a good one. It's present in a form in the German legal system. It's limited; you can pay more than statutory fees, but you can't recover more than statutory fees if you lose. That's still powerful. I know of a case where a big party PROBABLY owes a small party a few million dollars, but if they came out liable for opposing side's legal fees, they'd be bankrupt. And the litigation would cost a few years of their life. And yes, cases were simpler, but that's as much a property of the unnecessary rising complexity of our legal system as of the cases. Modern cases shouldn't be so complex.

eli 6y ago

It’s not a takedown notice and doesn’t follow takedown notice procedure. It doesn’t claim to be a takedown notice. RIAA sent a letter asking GitHub to take a repo down and they listened. They weren’t legally obligated to but they chose to and that’s their right. A counter notification wouldn’t necessarily do anything since the original letter was not a takedown notice. GitHub can’t be compelled to host something they no longer wish to host.

rndgermandude 6y ago
I determined this based on being a person who has to read a lot of these regularly (even tho I am not in the US; fun innit?!) It does not lack any of the required elements (compare https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 ). In fact, it is specifically written to hit all the required elements. Let's go through this. Statement there is copyright infringement and demanding takedown: >In light of the above noted copyright infringements and anticircumvention violations, we ask that you immediately take down and disable access to the youtube-dl source code at all of its locations where it is hosted on GitHub, including without limitation those locations in the representative list set forth above. (yes, the "copyright infringement claim is very most likely bullshit, but it's not Github's place under the law to rule on it, unless they want to lose their safe harbor protections and open themselves up to potential liability) (vi) statement of authorization (with perjury) > Under penalty of perjury, we submit that the RIAA is authorized to act on behalf of its member companies on matters involving the infringement of their sound recordings, audiovisual works and images, including enforcing their copyrights and common law rights on the Internet. (v) statement of good faith of accurateness >We have a good faith belief that this activity is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. We assert that the information in this notification is accurate, based upon the data available to us. (iv) and (i) contact details and (electronic) signature >You may contact me at RIAA, [private] Tel. [private], >[private] (ii) identification of content >We also note that the source code prominently includes as sample uses of the source code the downloading of copies of our members’ copyrighted sound recordings and music videos, as noted in Exhibit A hereto. For example, as shown on Exhibit A, the source code expressly suggests its use to copy and/or distribute the following copyrighted works owned by our member companies: [list] (yes, this is basically trickery to hit the (ii)) (iii) identification of infringement > https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl [...] And there you go, all 6 required elements + claim of infringement + demand for takedown are there.

gruez 6y ago

>Hurray for the US civil law legal system, where the richer party almost always wins. As opposed to any other legal system?

ulucs 6y ago
Yes.
- wegs 6y ago
  Even the historic US legal system was designed to have parties be able to reasonably represent themselves in court. Lawyers weren't a thing until pretty recently. Earlier lawyers had fees capped at fairly low levels. Money wasn't a thing since lawyers were fixed-price for a type of case, by legislation. If Biden is talking about serious judicial reforms, simplifying the court system to where individuals can represent themselves, and capping legal fees seem like the ways to do it. He'd never do it, though; the democrats are in the pocket of the legal lobby.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    I think you've confused the US system with the UK system. The US has always had lawyers; a great deal of the founding fathers were themselves lawyers. Fees were never fixed by legislation, generally cases were simpler back then so they didn't have or need time-based billing (that was a relatively recent development). Individuals already can represent themselves in small claims courts. Federal courts are intended for much larger cases (and in fact there is a minimum threshold for cases to be in federal court) and capping legal fees there generally wouldn't benefit either party.
    - wegs 6y ago
      Nope. I didn't. And you can't quite decouple the two; there's a continuous lineage; institutions didn't get reinvented with the revolution: * US is a common law jurisdiction, and indeed, pre-colonization UK courts sometimes act as precedent for post-revolution US courts. * US courts come from colonial courts If you'd like to read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_American_legal_profession https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_American_legal_... "Legal procedures in the 17th century were quite informal, with judges discussing issues directly with the people involved in the case." "Colonial legislatures passed laws to fix the fees lawyers could charge for standardized procedures and maintain these fees relatively low. This often led some lawyers to handle a high volume of cases more speedily." ... and so on. By the time the US formed, you had plenty of lawyers, but you had plenty of people representing themselves (and in cases above what would go into small claims). The concept of statutory legal fees is a good one. It's present in a form in the German legal system. It's limited; you can pay more than statutory fees, but you can't recover more than statutory fees if you lose. That's still powerful. I know of a case where a big party PROBABLY owes a small party a few million dollars, but if they came out liable for opposing side's legal fees, they'd be bankrupt. And the litigation would cost a few years of their life. And yes, cases were simpler, but that's as much a property of the unnecessary rising complexity of our legal system as of the cases. Modern cases shouldn't be so complex.