20 ms·

The RIAA’s attack on YouTube-dl is not a DMCA 512 infringement

530 points by URfejk 6y ago

fergbrain 6y ago
I really hope EFF is able to take this on.
- chx 6y ago
  And I hope that Microsoft does. This would be a case where the veritable army of lawyers they have could do much good -- and the RIAA would back down almost immediately, they are good at bullying small players but Microsoft?
  - bgentry 6y ago
    Microsoft is a member of the RIAA, so that would be an odd lawsuit: https://www.riaa.com/about-riaa/riaa-members/ https://www.riaa.com/about-riaa/riaa-members/
    - ffpip 6y ago
      https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/017/046/BptVE1JIEAAA3dT.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/017/046/Bpt...
    - jlgaddis 6y ago
      Perhaps, but Microsoft "loves" open-source now, remember?
    - chx 6y ago
      Yeah, well, let's hope some time next week the case gets escalated within Microsoft to the RIAA contact person who can make the phone call "My man, the fuck?", with much more eloquent words of course.
      - lstamour 6y ago
        Wasn’t all that long ago that Microsoft was making their own YouTube client, with downloads on mobile before Google officially released such a feature...
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      If github under ms can't stand up they are cowards of little account that everyone ought to move away from.
chenpengcheng 6y ago
no comment?
nogabebop23 6y ago
First sentence: >> Web multimedia-content Swiss army knife youtube-dl Come on, you've already shown your bias and I need to be on guard from that point on. I love youtube-dl and built an app that used it heavily for exactly what it says in the name: downloading media from YouTube. To pretend that's not it's primary and major purpose is incredibly disingenuous.
- pengaru 6y ago
  > To pretend that's not it's primary and major purpose is incredibly disingenuous. I'm fairly confident some people use youtube-dl more on pornhub URLs than youtube URLs, what you say speaks more to youtube-dl's origins than its current state.
- nullc 6y ago
  Youtube-dl downloads a lot more than from youtube. I use it a more often on vimeo content embedded in webpages which usually won't play in my browser (presumably due to some privacy settings) than I use it on youtube.
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    I use it on my government funded news stations video player because it requires turning on DRM.
- hiisukun 6y ago
  I use it to watch twitch on devices that can't use the browser, and to watch videos from free TV services here in Australia in the same way, such as iview. I do rarely use it for youtube, but given it supports so many websites, I think 'swiss army knife' is a pretty fair description.
- ripdog 6y ago
  Just because that's all you use it for doesn't mean that's all others use it for. I've seen the yt-dl issue tracker, it's swamped in non-youtube support requests.
- 6y ago
gruez 6y ago
>A countersuit agaist RIAA may help make this cartel, or others, think twice about repeating such attempts, as well as establish precedent agaist future such attemps. A countersuit... for what? If this is pursued in civil court, they'll be up against an army of lawyers and any judgement would be minimal (I doubt youtube-dl maintainers can claim millions in damages). You'll set a precedent, although its usefulness in future cases is questionable due to the reasons listed. The only hope is for this to be pursued in criminal court, resulting in heavy fines and/or the lawyers being disbarred. However, I doubt this will happen given how cozy the RIAA is with the establishment.
- gpm 6y ago
  The damages are going to be very small (basically just costs in responding to the notice), but section 512 f of the dmca does provide a route to sue Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section— (1) that material or activity is infringing, or (2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.
  - ikeboy 6y ago
    This isn't a 512 notice, so you can't sue under that. My guess is you can't get any damages because the letter is quite careful in its claims and no judge is going to find that it's in bad faith.
    - 4436f1e5966ffd 6y ago
      This github comment points out that the RIAA letter seems to be deliberately breaking form to not mention “fair use”. I don’t know if that qualifies as “bad faith” but it seems disregarding fair use means this wasn’t made in good faith. https://github.com/github/dmca/pull/8124#issuecomment-715625409 https://github.com/github/dmca/pull/8124#issuecomment-715625...
dragonwriter 6y ago
If circumvention falls outside of the safe harbor provisions (which seems to be the plain text of the law), that just means that the ISP liability, if any, begins immediately on hosting it, and their liability for hosting it isn't negated by taking it down in accordance with the safe harbor process. OTOH, while the mental state required for a 1201 violation is not explicit, the most reasonable reading is that it requires knowledge of the circumventing purpose, which would mean liability would not attach to an hands-off distributor of material supplied by a third party until they had notice, which, is essentially equivalent to the safe harbor for infringement. So, from a liability perspective, it's at least plausible that there isn't a big difference here between circumvention and safe harbor provision. And, on top of the circumvention, this article tries to argue against infringement that the RIAA allegations, beyond circumvention, only involve “incidental copying", but any copying not either licensed or protected as fair use (which even the article here does not claim applies) is infringement. So, the article makes the infringement case while attempting to deny it. The infringement may only be contributory rather than direct on the part of youtube-dl’s creators, as well as anyone knowingly distributing it, but contributory infringement is still infringement, and so governed by the infringement safe harbor directly.
- dismantlethesun 6y ago
  When you watch something from Youtube in the browser, it makes copies on your computer---in memory transiently, and on disk files. Computers aren't radio or CDs, there's no way to actually consume media on them without copies being made at some point. Additionally, its not obvious who is infringing. Unlike say, downloading a torrent, people have legal access to youtube ordinarily, and pay for it. If you pay for offline access to music, why can't you use youtube-dl? Any infringement will only begin when your license to the content ends. Additionally, the software just makes HTTP(s) requests and can work with any site. I actually have never used it to download anything on youtube.
  - caf 6y ago
    Digital radios and CDs both have buffers that contain transient copies of the sound data.
neom 6y ago
One of my favourite youtube lawyers (also tech literate), Leonard French, did a review of the case yesterday as a livestream if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZITscblMBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZITscblMBA
- oars 6y ago
  Thank you for sharing, this is the type of content I come to HN for.
- est31 6y ago
  Very nice, I wondered why he had the dev console open, apparently to show that the HTTP response actually uses the "451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons" status code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451
- foerbert 6y ago
  I was really looking forward to his analysis, however he also fell into the ReadMe trap. AFAIK (and the recent DMCA/youtube-dl repo thing seemed to support) they didn't include any VEVO videos in their readme. Instead it was used as a test case. A substantial portion of his analysis relied on the readme misinformation. It could be taken as marketing material, and there are specific provisions for when the piracy capabilities are used as marketing. However that's not, as far as I know or can tell, actually what happened in this case. I was very interested in hearing how tests would be viewed legally, but he seems to have been working with the wrong information and so never addressed this.
rendall 6y ago
"Microsoft is listed on the RIAA's members page. Neither Google LLC, its Youtube subsidiary, nor parent Alphabet Inc. are. The RIAA are threatening a member for a §1201 violation against a nonmember. That's ... weird." That a really good point. This request seems ill-considered
- gamblor956 6y ago
  The RIAA is a separate entity from it's membership. It's not weird for them to sue a member; stuff like this happens all the time.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Suing a member on behalf of a nonmember adds extra kink.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      No, it doesn't. Especially since the RIAA isn't suing a member on behalf of a non-member. It's simply sending a takedown notice to a member who happens to be hosting something on a subsidiary's website.
      - dredmorbius 6y ago
        "Kink" is an observation of the peculiarly ironic nature of the claim. Not a legal argument. Though experience shows judicial temperment may take note of such quirks. You seem stongly inclined to object to any element no matter how tenuously germane. It's a bad look.
ikeboy 6y ago
>Further, under §512 (f) the RIAA's deceptive claim is liable for sanctions: This is wrong, because they didn't make a 512 claim. If you read the letter, the only part that's asserted under penalty of perjury is that they're authorized to act in behalf of their member companies, which is true. > RIAA are not injured due to utilisation of a non-member's mechanism. They're injured when the tool is used for copyright infringement. No issue with standing here. >Any potential copyright infringement which might occur through use of youtube-dl is at the volition of users, not the software's authors, actions would properly be directed at such users for individual acts of infringement This ignores the fact that circumvention itself creates liability in the right circumstances.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  The claim is couched as, and appears to have been read by Github as, a §512 claim, bearing several of the conspicious elements of a §512 notice. As my footnotes document, it was widely read as same (it took me some time to realise it was not a §512 claim myself). This could be argued as intentional, deceptive, and hence fraudulent.
  - ikeboy 6y ago
    >This could be argued as intentional, deceptive, and hence fraudulent. Fraud requires a false statement, generally. The letter clearly cites 1201 and never cites 512, and is missing essential elements of 512, (e.g. it never claims direct infringement). There's no way 512(f) applies.
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      A false representation of a matter of fact—whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading allegations, or by concealment of what should have been disclosed—that deceives and is intended to deceive another so that the individual will act upon it to her or his legal injury. https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fraud https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fraud See also 18 USC 1001.
supernova87a 6y ago
I hope that some large company chooses to challenge this and force it to a court ruling for precedent. (hopefully against RIAA, obviously, is my position) But it brings up a side point in my mind -- how interesting is it that sometimes, a company, or university will have someone in their administration who cares enough to say, we're going to take this on, and not roll over? Or be willing to say, "even though this is a small annoying cost to us individually, this nuisance is taking $B across everyone and should be stopped". That's a very rare thing to see. I remember only a couple of times this has gotten to the news in a major way: -- When Newegg took those patent trolls to court -- When Caltech, or was it MIT/Harvard took the MPAA to court to say that they are not responsible for their students' hosting of content I.e. not some non-profit or foundation dedicated to the topic, but an actual business that goes out of its way (and at cost to itself) to fight something. I'm sure others can give better examples. (And perhaps I'm not aware, but some industry association also helps back the lawsuit financially?) But still, it takes some kind of courage of legal counsel, probably with backing of the CEO or president of the company, to take stands like this and actually make it a big deal and push back. Funny how personality and individuals at corporations can still show through what you would think is otherwise bland legal daily life. I almost take that as more of a brand equity enhancement / reason that a company gains in reputation than sometimes its products. Or maybe it's those companies that have strong culture and brand that choose (or have the strength) to do this. Anyway, the story just made me reflect on that.
- grishka 6y ago
  > but an actual business that goes out of its way (and at cost to itself) to fight something. I think it won't be an overstatement to say that RIAA and MPAA are the scourge of the online services industry. If you host any kind of UGC and your product gets any semblance of popularity, it's only a matter of time before they try to come after you. It then comes as no surprise that many people in the industry hate these organizations with burning passion.
- californical 6y ago
  Two more examples that jumped to mind immediately: University of California vs Elsevier (academic journal publisher), over wanting free open access for the public to their published research. Epic Games vs Apple, over wanting developers & users to have more options and freedoms on a closed platform. I think it’s really special when an organization is able to say “yes this impacts us specifically in a small way, but it impacts the greater community in a much larger way — we have the resources and will take a stand.” Whether you agree with the organizations or not, I just think the act of doing something like that is special.
molticrystal 6y ago
I hit F12 and see my browser downloading things in the developer's network panel. My browser's disk cache and temporary directories save the files by placing them physically on my hard disk. Are only gui based webbrowsers with large market share the only legal way to access multimedia content? Lynx is a browser for the terminal, am I not allowed to open up multimedia links present either with an external program that displays it in a console framebuffer or converts it to ascii art? What about mpv which uses youtube-dl in the background to play a video? What about a container/plugin that uses mpv to play a video in a webbrowser?
- ajconway 6y ago
  These are all technical workarounds to a non-technical problem. Ultimately, you can capture media directly from the media output. If you build software or hardware that make the process easy for a significant number of people, the lawyers will come after you.
- sjy 6y ago
  > Are only gui based webbrowsers with large market share the only legal way to access multimedia content? I believe they are the only supported way to access content on YouTube. As for whether the unofficial ways to access YouTube are legal, that depends on whether they circumvent a “technological measure that effectively controls access” [1] to copyrighted works. That’s not so clear, but YouTube does obfuscate its code to make the task of tools like youtube-dl harder. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201
  - jk700 6y ago
    > That’s not so clear, but YouTube does obfuscate its code to make the task of tools like youtube-dl harder. Not for tools like youtube-dl, but for tools that let user manually extract links, such as viewing the source code of the document. Because YouTube also provides an algorithm to deobfuscate it, which humans can't run in their heads, but tools, browsers can.
- JdeBP 6y ago
anonymousiam 6y ago
The RIAA's whole argument is based upon the premise that ALL YouTube content is copyrighted. I do not believe that is the case. YouTube-dl is just a tool. A tool can be used for both legal and illegal purposes. If a tool user does something illegal with a tool, the user should be prosecuted and not the tool. (The same logic applies to guns.)
- john_minsk 6y ago
  PopcornTime is just a tool. A tool can be used for both legal and illegal purposes. If a tool user does something illegal with a tool, the user should be prosecuted and not the tool. (The same logic applies to guns.)
  - remexre 6y ago
    Torrent clients are legal though? And prosecution has generally followed the "if a tool isn't advertising 'you can use this to circumvent the law,' it's the user that's liable for an illegal use, not the developer" principle. And as someone who uses youtube-dl to get easy copies of NewsHour... rather annoying that it was shut down.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    I agree, but unfortunately the DMCA does not. In order to avoid liability, the tool has to have significant non-infringing uses, and I believe courts will look at how the tool is actually used in the wild as a part of determining that.
- sjy 6y ago
  It is based on the weaker premise that youtube-dl is “primarily designed or produced“ or “marketed” for the purpose of circumventing copyright protection.
  - contravariant 6y ago
    Although it's still not clear to me to what extent a webpage that essentially just shows the copyrighted work counts as 'protection'.
xvilka 6y ago
The best way to help, imho, is to improve IPFS, Federation protocols, for example for Gitea[1][2] or GitLab[3][4]. Or just sponsor them[5]. [1] https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/1612 https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/1612 [2] https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/9045 https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/9045 [3] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/6468 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/6468 [4] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/33665 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/33665 [5] https://opencollective.com/gitea https://opencollective.com/gitea
- ampdepolymerase 6y ago
  Do not forget the original version, Gogs. https://github.com/gogs/gogs https://github.com/gogs/gogs
- xvilka 6y ago
  The source code for ForgeFed[1][2] might be also of interest for improvement. [1] https://forgefed.peers.community/ https://forgefed.peers.community/ [2] https://notabug.org/peers/forgefed https://notabug.org/peers/forgefed
- Stevvo 6y ago
  Blockchain saves the day again, once scaling is solved. Fortunately the Ethereum development community has a unified focus right now.
  - lawtalkinghuman 6y ago
    Quality satire, please keep it up. The only thing blockchain folks are doing really reliably is scamming the hell out of people.
    - renw0rp 6y ago
      Don't forget about wasting electricity!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
darksaints 6y ago
Honestly it doesn't matter that it isn't breaking the law. Because even the if the RIAA can't bribe the judge and jury to liberally interpret the laws on the books, they will freely and openly bribe congress to create new laws to replace the ones that were previously not effective. Advocates for open source software and cryptography and right-to-repair and non-draconian copyright/patent protections need to do the things that their opponents do: they need to pony up the cash to do some real lobbying. Otherwise they get stuck in the same perpetual trap of trying to defend their status, one individual situation at a time, against the overapplication of laws that were poorly conceived to begin with. Sad, but the only language that congress talks is money.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  There may be a shift in the winds of copyright. The list of firms one might presume to have strong-copyright interests opposing SOPA, or more notably, shifting stance, comes to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_official_stances_on_the_SOPA_and_PIPA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_off... And yes, I'm strongly encouraging such thinking.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  They don't need to bribe anyone. The laws already support the copyright holders. This is really going to shock you: The Constitution explicitly grants creators and inventors "exclusive rights." (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 ) Fair use is a statutory construct of Congress.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Fair Use is presumed in the A1.S8.C8 justification for exclusive rights: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Again, Not only is Fair Use presumed, but it provides the basis under which such rights should be granted. More discussion at Cornell's LII: Although the courts have considered and ruled upon the fair use doctrine over and over again, no real definition of the concept has ever emerged. Indeed, since the doctrine is an equitable rule of reason, no generally applicable definition is possible, and each case raising the question must be decided on its own facts. On the other hand, the courts have evolved a set of criteria which, though in no case definitive or determinative, provide some gauge for balancing the equities. These criteria have been stated in various ways, but essentially they can all be reduced to the four standards which have been adopted in section 107... https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 (Notes)
dredmorbius 6y ago
Author. I may be wrong on some or all of this.
- contravariant 6y ago
  For what it's worth the word 'by' in the first sentence is probably wrong. Or at the very least it makes the sentence hard to parse.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    That it is. Sadly Diaspora doesn't permit editing of posted content (a long-standing gripe). I proofed the damned text 20 times before submitting. That's at least two errors that snuck in....
jwilk 6y ago
Archived copy that works with JS disabled: https://archive.vn/dqABi https://archive.vn/dqABi
cookiengineer 6y ago
I don't understand this case, to be honest. On one hand people tend to side with youtube-dl, because everybody claims they did nothing wrong. But it can be argued that the testsuite (and CI pipeline) is the responsibility of the person who implemented. And I agree with that point. From youtube-dl's perspective, this is an unnecessary attack surface that can be easily removed. I mean, this was bound to happen at some point, don't kid yourself. With a project so big, I think it is irresponsible to not care for its legality. I mean, they could have just prevented this with a supersimple fix. 0. Use only CC licensed content in testsuite. If necessary, open up your own youtube-dl-tests channel and upload a video of your dog or cat. It just takes less than an hour. 1. Implement a license check, required by all plugins. Default to proprietary if none given. If proprietary, provide a url to Terms Of Service. 2. Let the end user manually confirm that the license is XYZ once it is proprietary and not public domain or CC based. Do this with every download. 3. Introduce a CLI flag like "--agree-to-license" in order to skip that. 4. Document this under legal compliance in the readme, and state that youtube-dl does in good faith try to comply with legal requirements, but that the responsibility is the action of its users that it cannot influence. Boom. Plausible deniability, and RIAA would have not a single basis for the case. I mean, this would have been so easy to implement. I don't understand why this wasn't integrated.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Former lead developer Philipp Hagemeiste: These videos were never fully downloaded anyways; 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. https://news.perthchat.org/youtube-dl-removed-from-github/ https://news.perthchat.org/youtube-dl-removed-from-github/
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - cookiengineer 6y ago
    I know this is an unpopular opinion and I probably get downvoted for this. But I stand my ground that I think the assumption of fair use for this copyright circumventing algorithm is wrong. ------ First off: Fair Use does not exist. It is an assumption, not a defined situation as it requires legal evaluation in court to apply. And on top of that: It is a regional difference and is therefore completely unpredictable whether it applies or not. Assuming fair use on a platform with a proprietary license that even forbids downloading, while downloading proprietary content specifically to circumvent copyright protection, while fair use does only exist as a "possibibility" inside, and only inside, the US and only after a legal case was decided in at least state level court ... really? You get sued for downloading 512kB of porn illegaly, just as you can get sued for downloading 10kB of copyrighted youtube videos. As I said, this was just a suggestion to remove that attack surface. Another attack surface is the trademark violation, but that's a different case.
bitwize 6y ago
RIAA doesn't need standing to report on criminal activity. §1201 provides for criminal penalties for trafficking in circumventing measures. They're telling GitHub/Microsoft "This is your last chance before we call the US Attorney and file charges against you for distributing piracy tools." And the US Attorney will almost certainly lend an ear to the RIA-fucking-A.
aries1980 6y ago
I don't live in the USA, why should I be affected by the RIAA and DMCA outside the USA? If I ping github.com, it is resolved as lb-140-82-121-4-fra.github.com , so what is the rational behind the global takedown?
- explodingcamera 6y ago
  Most Countries don't care about where your server are, as long as you're registered as a company somewhere, you need to stick to those laws.
  - aries1980 6y ago
    This doesn't stand for many legal cases, including copyright, work rights, taxation, etc. I don't see why this case should be an exception with having an effect outside the US jurisdiction.
- cricalix 6y ago
  Based on the DNS name, I'd guess that's a load balancer either in a Frankfurt (DE) point of presence, or a Frankfurt data center. If it's a POP, then it's probably just a cache to the servers in the DC, which could still be in the USA. End of the day, Github is a US-based business, and they are subject to US laws, and thus all of their customers/users are affected by those laws, whether or not they're in the USA.
- zadokshi 6y ago
  A company is liable in multiple places. - Where the servers are located. - Where the comparably offices are located, - where the business is registered, - where the employees live or travel to/from - employees in any country who are quite happy to ship people to the US even when that employee has not broken any law.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Though the claim is made under US law, similar anti-circumvention provisions exist in international law, which is highly standardised in large part thanks to the RIAA, MPAA (video), SIIA (software), WIPO, and other copyright monopoly cartels' special-interest deep-pockets lobbying. Offshore legal safe havens are limited and vulnerable. Defence within DMCA /anti-circ / WIPO / Berne regions is unfortunately necessary. Simply hosting the repository outside US jurisdiction is not sufficient, though a valid immediate response. From TFA. I supect this was included by the author in anticipation of such questions.
jmnicolas 6y ago
This reminds me of Inquisition times: just shout loud enough "Heretic!" and everybody submits without batting an eyelid.
globular-toast 6y ago
Is this title correct? The attack is an infringement? Or does it mean that youtube-dl was not infringing?
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Tack "claim" on the end. The title here was edited from the original.
superkuh 6y ago
Here's a non-Javascript mirror: https://archive.is/dqABi https://archive.is/dqABi
squarefoot 6y ago
The (not so funny) irony here is that the powers that grant RIAA the power to sue someone for providing DRM circumvention code, are the same exact powers that push for banning software encryption for common people.

530 points by URfejk 6y ago

fergbrain 6y ago

I really hope EFF is able to take this on.

chx 6y ago
And I hope that Microsoft does. This would be a case where the veritable army of lawyers they have could do much good -- and the RIAA would back down almost immediately, they are good at bullying small players but Microsoft?
- bgentry 6y ago
  Microsoft is a member of the RIAA, so that would be an odd lawsuit: https://www.riaa.com/about-riaa/riaa-members/ https://www.riaa.com/about-riaa/riaa-members/
  - ffpip 6y ago
    https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/017/046/BptVE1JIEAAA3dT.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/017/046/Bpt...
  - jlgaddis 6y ago
    Perhaps, but Microsoft "loves" open-source now, remember?
  - chx 6y ago
    Yeah, well, let's hope some time next week the case gets escalated within Microsoft to the RIAA contact person who can make the phone call "My man, the fuck?", with much more eloquent words of course.
    - lstamour 6y ago
      Wasn’t all that long ago that Microsoft was making their own YouTube client, with downloads on mobile before Google officially released such a feature...
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    If github under ms can't stand up they are cowards of little account that everyone ought to move away from.

chenpengcheng 6y ago

no comment?

nogabebop23 6y ago

First sentence: >> Web multimedia-content Swiss army knife youtube-dl Come on, you've already shown your bias and I need to be on guard from that point on. I love youtube-dl and built an app that used it heavily for exactly what it says in the name: downloading media from YouTube. To pretend that's not it's primary and major purpose is incredibly disingenuous.

pengaru 6y ago
> To pretend that's not it's primary and major purpose is incredibly disingenuous. I'm fairly confident some people use youtube-dl more on pornhub URLs than youtube URLs, what you say speaks more to youtube-dl's origins than its current state.
nullc 6y ago
Youtube-dl downloads a lot more than from youtube. I use it a more often on vimeo content embedded in webpages which usually won't play in my browser (presumably due to some privacy settings) than I use it on youtube.
- Polylactic_acid 6y ago
  I use it on my government funded news stations video player because it requires turning on DRM.
hiisukun 6y ago
I use it to watch twitch on devices that can't use the browser, and to watch videos from free TV services here in Australia in the same way, such as iview. I do rarely use it for youtube, but given it supports so many websites, I think 'swiss army knife' is a pretty fair description.
ripdog 6y ago
Just because that's all you use it for doesn't mean that's all others use it for. I've seen the yt-dl issue tracker, it's swamped in non-youtube support requests.
6y ago

gruez 6y ago

>A countersuit agaist RIAA may help make this cartel, or others, think twice about repeating such attempts, as well as establish precedent agaist future such attemps. A countersuit... for what? If this is pursued in civil court, they'll be up against an army of lawyers and any judgement would be minimal (I doubt youtube-dl maintainers can claim millions in damages). You'll set a precedent, although its usefulness in future cases is questionable due to the reasons listed. The only hope is for this to be pursued in criminal court, resulting in heavy fines and/or the lawyers being disbarred. However, I doubt this will happen given how cozy the RIAA is with the establishment.

gpm 6y ago
The damages are going to be very small (basically just costs in responding to the notice), but section 512 f of the dmca does provide a route to sue Any person who knowingly materially misrepresents under this section— (1) that material or activity is infringing, or (2) that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification, shall be liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys’ fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner’s authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it.
- ikeboy 6y ago
  This isn't a 512 notice, so you can't sue under that. My guess is you can't get any damages because the letter is quite careful in its claims and no judge is going to find that it's in bad faith.
  - 4436f1e5966ffd 6y ago
    This github comment points out that the RIAA letter seems to be deliberately breaking form to not mention “fair use”. I don’t know if that qualifies as “bad faith” but it seems disregarding fair use means this wasn’t made in good faith. https://github.com/github/dmca/pull/8124#issuecomment-715625409 https://github.com/github/dmca/pull/8124#issuecomment-715625...

dragonwriter 6y ago

If circumvention falls outside of the safe harbor provisions (which seems to be the plain text of the law), that just means that the ISP liability, if any, begins immediately on hosting it, and their liability for hosting it isn't negated by taking it down in accordance with the safe harbor process. OTOH, while the mental state required for a 1201 violation is not explicit, the most reasonable reading is that it requires knowledge of the circumventing purpose, which would mean liability would not attach to an hands-off distributor of material supplied by a third party until they had notice, which, is essentially equivalent to the safe harbor for infringement. So, from a liability perspective, it's at least plausible that there isn't a big difference here between circumvention and safe harbor provision. And, on top of the circumvention, this article tries to argue against infringement that the RIAA allegations, beyond circumvention, only involve “incidental copying", but any copying not either licensed or protected as fair use (which even the article here does not claim applies) is infringement. So, the article makes the infringement case while attempting to deny it. The infringement may only be contributory rather than direct on the part of youtube-dl’s creators, as well as anyone knowingly distributing it, but contributory infringement is still infringement, and so governed by the infringement safe harbor directly.

dismantlethesun 6y ago
When you watch something from Youtube in the browser, it makes copies on your computer---in memory transiently, and on disk files. Computers aren't radio or CDs, there's no way to actually consume media on them without copies being made at some point. Additionally, its not obvious who is infringing. Unlike say, downloading a torrent, people have legal access to youtube ordinarily, and pay for it. If you pay for offline access to music, why can't you use youtube-dl? Any infringement will only begin when your license to the content ends. Additionally, the software just makes HTTP(s) requests and can work with any site. I actually have never used it to download anything on youtube.
- caf 6y ago
  Digital radios and CDs both have buffers that contain transient copies of the sound data.

neom 6y ago

One of my favourite youtube lawyers (also tech literate), Leonard French, did a review of the case yesterday as a livestream if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZITscblMBA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZITscblMBA

oars 6y ago
Thank you for sharing, this is the type of content I come to HN for.
est31 6y ago
Very nice, I wondered why he had the dev console open, apparently to show that the HTTP response actually uses the "451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons" status code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_451
foerbert 6y ago
I was really looking forward to his analysis, however he also fell into the ReadMe trap. AFAIK (and the recent DMCA/youtube-dl repo thing seemed to support) they didn't include any VEVO videos in their readme. Instead it was used as a test case. A substantial portion of his analysis relied on the readme misinformation. It could be taken as marketing material, and there are specific provisions for when the piracy capabilities are used as marketing. However that's not, as far as I know or can tell, actually what happened in this case. I was very interested in hearing how tests would be viewed legally, but he seems to have been working with the wrong information and so never addressed this.

rendall 6y ago

"Microsoft is listed on the RIAA's members page. Neither Google LLC, its Youtube subsidiary, nor parent Alphabet Inc. are. The RIAA are threatening a member for a §1201 violation against a nonmember. That's ... weird." That a really good point. This request seems ill-considered

gamblor956 6y ago
The RIAA is a separate entity from it's membership. It's not weird for them to sue a member; stuff like this happens all the time.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Suing a member on behalf of a nonmember adds extra kink.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    No, it doesn't. Especially since the RIAA isn't suing a member on behalf of a non-member. It's simply sending a takedown notice to a member who happens to be hosting something on a subsidiary's website.
    - dredmorbius 6y ago
      "Kink" is an observation of the peculiarly ironic nature of the claim. Not a legal argument. Though experience shows judicial temperment may take note of such quirks. You seem stongly inclined to object to any element no matter how tenuously germane. It's a bad look.

ikeboy 6y ago

>Further, under §512 (f) the RIAA's deceptive claim is liable for sanctions: This is wrong, because they didn't make a 512 claim. If you read the letter, the only part that's asserted under penalty of perjury is that they're authorized to act in behalf of their member companies, which is true. > RIAA are not injured due to utilisation of a non-member's mechanism. They're injured when the tool is used for copyright infringement. No issue with standing here. >Any potential copyright infringement which might occur through use of youtube-dl is at the volition of users, not the software's authors, actions would properly be directed at such users for individual acts of infringement This ignores the fact that circumvention itself creates liability in the right circumstances.

dredmorbius 6y ago
The claim is couched as, and appears to have been read by Github as, a §512 claim, bearing several of the conspicious elements of a §512 notice. As my footnotes document, it was widely read as same (it took me some time to realise it was not a §512 claim myself). This could be argued as intentional, deceptive, and hence fraudulent.
- ikeboy 6y ago
  >This could be argued as intentional, deceptive, and hence fraudulent. Fraud requires a false statement, generally. The letter clearly cites 1201 and never cites 512, and is missing essential elements of 512, (e.g. it never claims direct infringement). There's no way 512(f) applies.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    A false representation of a matter of fact—whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading allegations, or by concealment of what should have been disclosed—that deceives and is intended to deceive another so that the individual will act upon it to her or his legal injury. https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fraud https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fraud See also 18 USC 1001.

supernova87a 6y ago

I hope that some large company chooses to challenge this and force it to a court ruling for precedent. (hopefully against RIAA, obviously, is my position) But it brings up a side point in my mind -- how interesting is it that sometimes, a company, or university will have someone in their administration who cares enough to say, we're going to take this on, and not roll over? Or be willing to say, "even though this is a small annoying cost to us individually, this nuisance is taking $B across everyone and should be stopped". That's a very rare thing to see. I remember only a couple of times this has gotten to the news in a major way: -- When Newegg took those patent trolls to court -- When Caltech, or was it MIT/Harvard took the MPAA to court to say that they are not responsible for their students' hosting of content I.e. not some non-profit or foundation dedicated to the topic, but an actual business that goes out of its way (and at cost to itself) to fight something. I'm sure others can give better examples. (And perhaps I'm not aware, but some industry association also helps back the lawsuit financially?) But still, it takes some kind of courage of legal counsel, probably with backing of the CEO or president of the company, to take stands like this and actually make it a big deal and push back. Funny how personality and individuals at corporations can still show through what you would think is otherwise bland legal daily life. I almost take that as more of a brand equity enhancement / reason that a company gains in reputation than sometimes its products. Or maybe it's those companies that have strong culture and brand that choose (or have the strength) to do this. Anyway, the story just made me reflect on that.

grishka 6y ago
> but an actual business that goes out of its way (and at cost to itself) to fight something. I think it won't be an overstatement to say that RIAA and MPAA are the scourge of the online services industry. If you host any kind of UGC and your product gets any semblance of popularity, it's only a matter of time before they try to come after you. It then comes as no surprise that many people in the industry hate these organizations with burning passion.
californical 6y ago
Two more examples that jumped to mind immediately: University of California vs Elsevier (academic journal publisher), over wanting free open access for the public to their published research. Epic Games vs Apple, over wanting developers & users to have more options and freedoms on a closed platform. I think it’s really special when an organization is able to say “yes this impacts us specifically in a small way, but it impacts the greater community in a much larger way — we have the resources and will take a stand.” Whether you agree with the organizations or not, I just think the act of doing something like that is special.

molticrystal 6y ago

I hit F12 and see my browser downloading things in the developer's network panel. My browser's disk cache and temporary directories save the files by placing them physically on my hard disk. Are only gui based webbrowsers with large market share the only legal way to access multimedia content? Lynx is a browser for the terminal, am I not allowed to open up multimedia links present either with an external program that displays it in a console framebuffer or converts it to ascii art? What about mpv which uses youtube-dl in the background to play a video? What about a container/plugin that uses mpv to play a video in a webbrowser?

ajconway 6y ago
These are all technical workarounds to a non-technical problem. Ultimately, you can capture media directly from the media output. If you build software or hardware that make the process easy for a significant number of people, the lawyers will come after you.
sjy 6y ago
> Are only gui based webbrowsers with large market share the only legal way to access multimedia content? I believe they are the only supported way to access content on YouTube. As for whether the unofficial ways to access YouTube are legal, that depends on whether they circumvent a “technological measure that effectively controls access” [1] to copyrighted works. That’s not so clear, but YouTube does obfuscate its code to make the task of tools like youtube-dl harder. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201
- jk700 6y ago
  > That’s not so clear, but YouTube does obfuscate its code to make the task of tools like youtube-dl harder. Not for tools like youtube-dl, but for tools that let user manually extract links, such as viewing the source code of the document. Because YouTube also provides an algorithm to deobfuscate it, which humans can't run in their heads, but tools, browsers can.
JdeBP 6y ago

anonymousiam 6y ago

The RIAA's whole argument is based upon the premise that ALL YouTube content is copyrighted. I do not believe that is the case. YouTube-dl is just a tool. A tool can be used for both legal and illegal purposes. If a tool user does something illegal with a tool, the user should be prosecuted and not the tool. (The same logic applies to guns.)

john_minsk 6y ago
PopcornTime is just a tool. A tool can be used for both legal and illegal purposes. If a tool user does something illegal with a tool, the user should be prosecuted and not the tool. (The same logic applies to guns.)
- remexre 6y ago
  Torrent clients are legal though? And prosecution has generally followed the "if a tool isn't advertising 'you can use this to circumvent the law,' it's the user that's liable for an illegal use, not the developer" principle. And as someone who uses youtube-dl to get easy copies of NewsHour... rather annoying that it was shut down.
- kelnos 6y ago
  I agree, but unfortunately the DMCA does not. In order to avoid liability, the tool has to have significant non-infringing uses, and I believe courts will look at how the tool is actually used in the wild as a part of determining that.
sjy 6y ago
It is based on the weaker premise that youtube-dl is “primarily designed or produced“ or “marketed” for the purpose of circumventing copyright protection.
- contravariant 6y ago
  Although it's still not clear to me to what extent a webpage that essentially just shows the copyrighted work counts as 'protection'.

xvilka 6y ago

The best way to help, imho, is to improve IPFS, Federation protocols, for example for Gitea[1][2] or GitLab[3][4]. Or just sponsor them[5]. [1] https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/1612 https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/1612 [2] https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/9045 https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/9045 [3] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/6468 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/6468 [4] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/33665 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/33665 [5] https://opencollective.com/gitea https://opencollective.com/gitea

ampdepolymerase 6y ago
Do not forget the original version, Gogs. https://github.com/gogs/gogs https://github.com/gogs/gogs
xvilka 6y ago
The source code for ForgeFed[1][2] might be also of interest for improvement. [1] https://forgefed.peers.community/ https://forgefed.peers.community/ [2] https://notabug.org/peers/forgefed https://notabug.org/peers/forgefed
Stevvo 6y ago
Blockchain saves the day again, once scaling is solved. Fortunately the Ethereum development community has a unified focus right now.
- lawtalkinghuman 6y ago
  Quality satire, please keep it up. The only thing blockchain folks are doing really reliably is scamming the hell out of people.
  - renw0rp 6y ago
    Don't forget about wasting electricity!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

darksaints 6y ago

Honestly it doesn't matter that it isn't breaking the law. Because even the if the RIAA can't bribe the judge and jury to liberally interpret the laws on the books, they will freely and openly bribe congress to create new laws to replace the ones that were previously not effective. Advocates for open source software and cryptography and right-to-repair and non-draconian copyright/patent protections need to do the things that their opponents do: they need to pony up the cash to do some real lobbying. Otherwise they get stuck in the same perpetual trap of trying to defend their status, one individual situation at a time, against the overapplication of laws that were poorly conceived to begin with. Sad, but the only language that congress talks is money.

dredmorbius 6y ago
There may be a shift in the winds of copyright. The list of firms one might presume to have strong-copyright interests opposing SOPA, or more notably, shifting stance, comes to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_official_stances_on_the_SOPA_and_PIPA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_off... And yes, I'm strongly encouraging such thinking.
gamblor956 6y ago
They don't need to bribe anyone. The laws already support the copyright holders. This is really going to shock you: The Constitution explicitly grants creators and inventors "exclusive rights." (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 ) Fair use is a statutory construct of Congress.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Fair Use is presumed in the A1.S8.C8 justification for exclusive rights: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Again, Not only is Fair Use presumed, but it provides the basis under which such rights should be granted. More discussion at Cornell's LII: Although the courts have considered and ruled upon the fair use doctrine over and over again, no real definition of the concept has ever emerged. Indeed, since the doctrine is an equitable rule of reason, no generally applicable definition is possible, and each case raising the question must be decided on its own facts. On the other hand, the courts have evolved a set of criteria which, though in no case definitive or determinative, provide some gauge for balancing the equities. These criteria have been stated in various ways, but essentially they can all be reduced to the four standards which have been adopted in section 107... https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107 (Notes)

dredmorbius 6y ago

Author. I may be wrong on some or all of this.

contravariant 6y ago
For what it's worth the word 'by' in the first sentence is probably wrong. Or at the very least it makes the sentence hard to parse.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  That it is. Sadly Diaspora doesn't permit editing of posted content (a long-standing gripe). I proofed the damned text 20 times before submitting. That's at least two errors that snuck in....

jwilk 6y ago

Archived copy that works with JS disabled: https://archive.vn/dqABi https://archive.vn/dqABi

cookiengineer 6y ago

I don't understand this case, to be honest. On one hand people tend to side with youtube-dl, because everybody claims they did nothing wrong. But it can be argued that the testsuite (and CI pipeline) is the responsibility of the person who implemented. And I agree with that point. From youtube-dl's perspective, this is an unnecessary attack surface that can be easily removed. I mean, this was bound to happen at some point, don't kid yourself. With a project so big, I think it is irresponsible to not care for its legality. I mean, they could have just prevented this with a supersimple fix. 0. Use only CC licensed content in testsuite. If necessary, open up your own youtube-dl-tests channel and upload a video of your dog or cat. It just takes less than an hour. 1. Implement a license check, required by all plugins. Default to proprietary if none given. If proprietary, provide a url to Terms Of Service. 2. Let the end user manually confirm that the license is XYZ once it is proprietary and not public domain or CC based. Do this with every download. 3. Introduce a CLI flag like "--agree-to-license" in order to skip that. 4. Document this under legal compliance in the readme, and state that youtube-dl does in good faith try to comply with legal requirements, but that the responsibility is the action of its users that it cannot influence. Boom. Plausible deniability, and RIAA would have not a single basis for the case. I mean, this would have been so easy to implement. I don't understand why this wasn't integrated.

dredmorbius 6y ago
Former lead developer Philipp Hagemeiste: These videos were never fully downloaded anyways; 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. https://news.perthchat.org/youtube-dl-removed-from-github/ https://news.perthchat.org/youtube-dl-removed-from-github/
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- cookiengineer 6y ago
  I know this is an unpopular opinion and I probably get downvoted for this. But I stand my ground that I think the assumption of fair use for this copyright circumventing algorithm is wrong. ------ First off: Fair Use does not exist. It is an assumption, not a defined situation as it requires legal evaluation in court to apply. And on top of that: It is a regional difference and is therefore completely unpredictable whether it applies or not. Assuming fair use on a platform with a proprietary license that even forbids downloading, while downloading proprietary content specifically to circumvent copyright protection, while fair use does only exist as a "possibibility" inside, and only inside, the US and only after a legal case was decided in at least state level court ... really? You get sued for downloading 512kB of porn illegaly, just as you can get sued for downloading 10kB of copyrighted youtube videos. As I said, this was just a suggestion to remove that attack surface. Another attack surface is the trademark violation, but that's a different case.

bitwize 6y ago

RIAA doesn't need standing to report on criminal activity. §1201 provides for criminal penalties for trafficking in circumventing measures. They're telling GitHub/Microsoft "This is your last chance before we call the US Attorney and file charges against you for distributing piracy tools." And the US Attorney will almost certainly lend an ear to the RIA-fucking-A.

aries1980 6y ago

I don't live in the USA, why should I be affected by the RIAA and DMCA outside the USA? If I ping github.com, it is resolved as lb-140-82-121-4-fra.github.com , so what is the rational behind the global takedown?

explodingcamera 6y ago
Most Countries don't care about where your server are, as long as you're registered as a company somewhere, you need to stick to those laws.
- aries1980 6y ago
  This doesn't stand for many legal cases, including copyright, work rights, taxation, etc. I don't see why this case should be an exception with having an effect outside the US jurisdiction.
cricalix 6y ago
Based on the DNS name, I'd guess that's a load balancer either in a Frankfurt (DE) point of presence, or a Frankfurt data center. If it's a POP, then it's probably just a cache to the servers in the DC, which could still be in the USA. End of the day, Github is a US-based business, and they are subject to US laws, and thus all of their customers/users are affected by those laws, whether or not they're in the USA.
zadokshi 6y ago
A company is liable in multiple places. - Where the servers are located. - Where the comparably offices are located, - where the business is registered, - where the employees live or travel to/from - employees in any country who are quite happy to ship people to the US even when that employee has not broken any law.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Though the claim is made under US law, similar anti-circumvention provisions exist in international law, which is highly standardised in large part thanks to the RIAA, MPAA (video), SIIA (software), WIPO, and other copyright monopoly cartels' special-interest deep-pockets lobbying. Offshore legal safe havens are limited and vulnerable. Defence within DMCA /anti-circ / WIPO / Berne regions is unfortunately necessary. Simply hosting the repository outside US jurisdiction is not sufficient, though a valid immediate response. From TFA. I supect this was included by the author in anticipation of such questions.

jmnicolas 6y ago

This reminds me of Inquisition times: just shout loud enough "Heretic!" and everybody submits without batting an eyelid.

globular-toast 6y ago

Is this title correct? The attack is an infringement? Or does it mean that youtube-dl was not infringing?

dredmorbius 6y ago
Tack "claim" on the end. The title here was edited from the original.

superkuh 6y ago

Here's a non-Javascript mirror: https://archive.is/dqABi https://archive.is/dqABi

squarefoot 6y ago

The (not so funny) irony here is that the powers that grant RIAA the power to sue someone for providing DRM circumvention code, are the same exact powers that push for banning software encryption for common people.