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Philipp Hagemeister, former YouTube-dl maintainer re: takedown
- Santosh83 6y agoVery well worded, diplomatic, and 'safe' views. However it is clear that the global leadership and rights holders have discovered that they can take a sledgehammer to the freedoms of collective society and most of us will not even comprehend the real issues in our ennui, and a few will murmur and very few will actively pushback. In a better society, it ought not have been possible to take down general purpose software with dubious claims of their "clear intent".
- atomi 6y agoIt's not even that. This is an ideological fight we should be having. Code is speech and code should be protected by all like free speech is under the first amendment. This is modern day book burning.
- ravi-delia 6y agoI'm pretty sure books have been protected by copyright too for a while now.
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- atomi 6y agoNot to confuse the point, this is about your right to publish your own code.
- valtism 6y agoThat seems like an overly simplistic view of what code is, and what code can be.
- atomi 6y agoIt's the opposite of simplistic. I believe the developer's constitutional rights were violated and I would contact the EFF and ACLU for help. For some context, at one point: > the US government designated encryption software as a "munition" https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...
- ChrisLomont 6y agoFree speech has limitations. If code is speech, then don’t those limitations also apply to code?
- devwastaken 6y agoLeonard french, the favorite copyright attorney, went over some of the legal parts of the DMCA claim yesterday. https://youtu.be/wZITscblMBA https://youtu.be/wZITscblMBA Philipp sounds very proffessional, and it's obvious that youtube-dl's goal isn't simply infringement of copyrighted music, its also a tool that allows creators to use content within fair use.
- yboris 6y agoI love this man's videos. I have unfortunately needed a lawyer once, and I used Leonard French's services and was very pleased. Can recommend both his videos and his services.
- joak 6y agoI've used to youtube-dl to watch videos hosted on legacy sites using defunct flash video player. Hopefully, youtube-dl project will remain alive.
- Void_ 6y agoI use youtube-dl to download conference talks for offline watching. And now I can't? This doesn't seem right.
- gsich 6y agoYou still can. Either apt install or pip install ate unafected. Might not be the newest version though.
- oauea 6y agoAnd most websites that host the conferences (such as youtube) will change to break those older versions of youtube-dl. This is the kind of project that needs constant maintenance.
- wolco2 6y agoWhy can't it live in outside of github say in a gitlabs repo?
- thaumasiotes 6y agoIt can; it just doesn't right now.
- wolco2 6y agoThey have an opportunity to put a spotlight on a new repo. Gitlabs, perhaps something new and upcoming.
- pantalaimon 6y agoThe problem is that with youtube-dl you always need the latest versions as websites often change their 'API'/layout and therefore break compatibility. I would not be surprised if YouTube intentionally introduces a breaking change now that the repo is down.
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- tasuki 6y agoThe article misspells DMCA as DCMA. I find it distracting, but admire the consistency.
- tsjq 6y agoThank goodness for clarifying. I was really perplexed .
- amelius 6y agoImho, the real outrage should be about Google/YouTube being so asymmetric (easy to upload, difficult to download). But I guess people consider this an impossible battle.
- _jjkk 6y agoEasy download would directly hurt engagement and ad revenue, with not much upside. Hosting video is costly and their only line of revenue is ads via repeated site visits .
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- krsdcbl 6y agoOne could argue that simply visiting the (video-) page downloads the media, and therefore download is much easier than upload any way you look at it - but i suppose you mean "a way to save the actual file that is easily understandable to laymen", and I'd support your claim.
- lucb1e 6y agoHis master's thesis seems relevant here: "Censorship-resistant Collaboration with a Hybrid DTN/P2P Network" (where DTN is "Delay-Tolerant Network"). Also relevant in relation to today's other headline about GitLab blocking access in Iran. Paper & slides: https://phihag.de/2012/mt.pdf https://phihag.de/2012/mt.pdf & https://phihag.de/2012/mtpres.pdf https://phihag.de/2012/mtpres.pdf
- submeta 6y agoThere are so many valuable videos that I would not rely Youtube (and the uploaders) to maintain those videos permanently on their site. For instance interviews with Niklas Luhmann or Feynman or Steve Jobs or Karl Popper and many many more. It is our right to have tools that could be used for different reasons. It is our right to be able to act not lawful. Just go after those citizens who break law, not those who COULD break law. Just because a knife can kill someone it's not taken from the market. Or just because a pen and paper could be used to write a demagogic text we don't disallow these tools.
- toxik 6y agoI find the tool analogy very useful, because we _do_ regulate some tools like guns. I think what this supposed DMCA is best compared to is making cameras illegal because people take photos and record videos of copyrighted material. The key difference is in what the real world contains, versus the virtual world — the virtual world is so dominated by intellectual property that it is almost hard to argue that youtube-dl isn’t meant to copy IP by the fact that almost everything on Youtube is copyrighted. The desire for a library style free archive of important videos, I think, is just, but youtube-dl is not a that. I’m not sure what it is, it seems to me unquestionable that it should be legal, though.
- bondarchuk 6y ago> I think what this supposed DMCA is best compared to is making cameras illegal because people take photos and record videos of copyrighted material. Ah, just you wait. If ever the analog loophole becomes the dominant way to reproduce copyrighted works, it will be difficult to get a camera without a content-recognition and blocking system.
- wolco2 6y agoWhy did you remove the photoshop not allowing banking notes editing. Is this true?
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- talentedcoin 6y agoI have to agree. Putting examples of copyright infringement in the README and test cases was irresponsible. What were they thinking? Time for a less reckless group of people to work on a replacement.
- waon 6y agoDid you actually read the README, or are you just spreading rumors? Because I did and have no idea what you're talking about. BTW the README can be found at https://gitlab.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl https://gitlab.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl if anyone wants to see for themselves. As for the test cases, this is what the article has to say about it: > they are automated test cases where the test just downloads the first 10KB, which amounts to a couple of seconds at most. This is certainly fair use, but the project is fully functional without these test cases. So what part of this article are you agreeing with? I doubt we read the same article.
- talentedcoin 6y agoI guess we’ll find out when the case goes through won’t we? From the takedown notice: We note that the source code is described on GitHub as “a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites.”1 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.
- waon 6y agoYou don't have to "find out," I've already shown you actual proof, but in case you missed it: https://gitlab.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl https://gitlab.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl And you also don't need to "find out" whether you've read the README and the article or not, you should know the answer yourself.
- talentedcoin 6y agoAre you a lawyer, random internet comment writer? Also, per HN guidelines, please don’t insinuate that I can’t read.
- DanielBMarkham 6y agoWildly spitballing here: what if somebody took the entire repository and stuck it in a place or places that are secure from takedowns. What if, after that happens, another person set up a public repo called, I dunno, ld-ebutuoy. This repo would contain no source code but would allow collaboration, PRs, issues, and so forth. Each time there's a push, only the changed files would appear in the repo. Both the private and public repos would be active simultaneously in order to do a build. In other words, your project would have two folders with git active, and the build would combine those folders as part of the CI/CD pipeline. Every now and then the process of taking all of the current master branch and moving it offline would happen again. In this way, you'd never have a public repo that would have anything more than a few files in it. In this scenario, the only things that are being hosted publicly are tiny bits of source code that are changed in order to keep the base updating. And even then, on a regular basis they would be deleted. tl;dr: simply because you have to take down a repo doesn't mean you have to take down a location for publicly developing F/OSS software. </speculation>
- CameronNemo 6y agoThat is a lot of work considering that you can simply move the hosting to Europe (using cgit and a ML, or gitea, or self-hosted gitlab) and be immune from DMCA requests. Also probably a way to host a git repo over tor. But that would make life a bit harder for devs.
- dheera 6y agoSure, not the EU. The EU will cooperate with the US if they want an extradition. In all seriousness, move it to Russia, China, or some other country that has better freedoms in this particular regard and won't take crap from the US about silly copyright concerns. Or put the source code on the blockchain and it will never be eraseable. Even better, build a decentralized Github that is actually based on a blockchain but allows transparent interaction via the "git" command. No matter what the DMCA or RIAA want there is nobody that can erase anything from past commits.
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- bredren 6y agoInteresting to note he expresses none of the animosity toward Github this action seems to have attracted.
- IshKebab 6y agoI think most people have enough DCMA experience to know that GitHub were legally required to do what they did. They had no choice. The repo owners should be able to file a counter notice to reinstate the repo.
- zucker42 6y agoI've seen very little animosity towards Github. The law in this case makes Github respond promptly to any takedown request, even if it's wrong. Github can face liability for copyright infringement unless it > (C)upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity. They also have to wait ten days before restoring the content after a counter-claim.
- bredren 6y agoHuh. I had thought I'd seen some well placed comments describing migrating away from the platform.
- wolco2 6y agoThis wasn't a takedown request as it didn't include a link to it so github isn't required to take it down. They can legally put it back now. The fact that they did speaks to how they will respond in the future.
- zucker42 6y agoI don't understand which of the required elements you think the notice lacks. It identifies both the content which it claims is infringing (linking the repos) and the songs which it claims are infringed (by name). Relevant statute: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512 The problem is the law is terrible. Github's actions are pretty much required as far as I can tell. Edit: I'd like to add that one thing Github could do is accept liability for copyright infringement and fight against frivolous claims like this in court. Maybe users should start demanding companies protect them from tactics like this, but the existing legal penalties are severely in the claimants favor.
- Rochus 6y agoThis whole case is very strange. From my point of view (I studied law, among other things) there is no justification to take action against this tool or its authors. There are various contents on Youtube, whose license allows downloading and offline playback without any problems. What is allowed with the tool in a specific case depends on the country or the jurisdiction of the user as well as on his actually intended actions. What has happened here obviously goes far beyond what an author or his or her copyright collective may demand. The whole thing looks more like a charade.
- dylan604 6y agoYou must not have studied law very hard, or just missed the classes that taught "reading between the lines" to twist things in your direction. The fact that the read me provided examples specifically downloading RIAA relevant content is pretty damning. Why in the world the maintainers allowed to happen is beyond me. It would have been so simple to provide examples to anything else. It just wouldn't have been sexy. How anyone that studied law couldn't see this as a "gotcha" is confusing.
- Rochus 6y agoRemain objective (if your personality allows it). What the Americans do is their business, even if it is in the gray area also there. But the cease and desists to (ex-)developers in Germany are simply tasteless. And the project should move to a server in Switzerland. EDIT: and please be specific which sections of the Readme justify such action by the IP owners or their (effectively legitimate) representatives, or the github responsibles.
- tsjq 6y agoWait a minute. Is it DCMA takedown or DMCA takedown ?
- shmerl 6y ago> Copyright law is always a balance between creators and society. Copyright law was created for promoting progress and useful arts. Current copyright law is a horror that's totally skewed towards hoarders of intellectual property who only want to take away more and more from the public all the time. Garbage like DMCA 1201 should never have been allowed to exist. Reverting this mess back to the original intent would be hugely beneficial for the public.
- jokethrowaway 6y agoCopyright should be exactly like any other contract and should be treated as a breach of contract if you infringe on it, if you signed it. If you're selling your work to millions of people you're probably making a decent amount of money. The difficulty of enforcing millions of contracts at the same time are nothing but a market way to tax your profits. The less you sell, the easier it will be to pinpoint the culprit and sue him. As a creator you're in your right to sue whoever breached your contract with them and redistributed / copied your work / didn't respect your conditions, but is it going to be cost efficient (especially if you consider the marketing side of piracy)? Someone pirating your content without entering into a contract with you is not breaching any contract and, despite being highly immoral, is not doing anything wrong. The original copy must have been sourced from somewhere though, so I would consider it fair to put the entire cost to whoever breached the contract first. If as a society we create regulations that allow big corporations and their friends in the government to infringe on people's freedom, we're not only losing our freedom but also increasing inequality.
- shmerl 6y agoCopyright isn't a contract though. It's a government sanctioned ability to control the use of information. It shouldn't exist in the first place, unless public gets something in return, which is progress and useful arts.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Copyright law was created for promoting progress and useful arts. No, it wasn't. That's the justification for the US Constitution allowing the US Congress to create US federal IP laws, but copyright law is older than the US, and was very much not created for that purpose. (And, despite exercising a power expressly created for that purpose, it's pretty clear that the actual present US copyright law wasn't created for that purpose, either.)
- mlang23 6y agoIndeed. My main use case for youtube-dl is via mpv -no-video. I am blind. I can not always use a web browser to access a lecture. Being able to play YT videos on the terminal is a godsent feature for me.
- justaj 6y ago> In my time as maintainer, I declined numerous requests to support piracy sites and DRM-protected content. I can not speak for the project in the last years, but from what I've seen that policy has remained. To me, this is the right policy any legal project should follow. Seems to me that the best method of retaliation would be to let the code + issues + PRs become decentralized and this policy changed.
- krick 6y agoSo, was there some decision about the actual youtube-dl project future? Is it moving somewhere? Or is everything on hiatus?
- Aldo_MX 6y agoCopyright law is always a balance between creators and society. When it comes to being able to watch videos no matter the device or Internet connection, and doing so for non-commercial purposes, the balance we should strive for seems clear to me; it should allow youtube-dl. I loved that last quote.
- amagumori 6y agowhat we've seen over the past decade or so is the creation of commons on the internet; however, these commons, like Youtube, Twitter, or Instagram, are centrally managed, owned, and controlled. the buy-in to these commons has grown and grown, and now that they are essential parts of the way the world communicates and consumes information, they're being "tightened down", with ever increasing ad loads, censorship, and "steering" (influence via search and recommendation visibility). as global inequality increases ever more starkly, these services represent a powerful means of control over a disaffected and disenfranchised populace - everyone has been herded into the walled garden. the collective dream we had of the internet as a species-level advancement has, in fact, been a mirage. the idea was that the internet would allow free and uncensored communication across the world, perhaps allowing the citizens of the earth to organize against injustice, corruption, and repression, and to share information freely. in fact, what we see now is a global internet and computing backbone compromised to the core by nation-state actors, and a centralization of internet services controlled by an oligopoly. not to put too fine a point on it, but the idea of a "global commons" or "collective good" cannot coexist with a world economy of globalized capitalism. the capitalization of the internet is a situation that is unprecedented in human society - we may have crossed an event horizon where societal control has grown to such a level where the very ability of people to fight repression and organize a more equitable society has died. anyway, happy sunday
- lifeisstillgood 6y agoAwesome wordsmithing - I annoy be as bleak as you for your third paragraph but thank you for your passion :-)
- amagumori 6y agoi'm usually not so pessimistic, but i was in a bad mood, especially because youtube-dl is such a essential tool for me. things aren't hopeless. they just feel that way sometimes.
- lifeisstillgood 6y ago
- brandonr49 6y agoAm I wrong in thinking that youtube-dl is clearly just a VCR in code form. Society decided VCRs were legal so this should be fine.
- onibishop 6y agoAt least we still have pyIDM. We still have pyIDM right ?