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Or, you know, you could just ask the people posting their videos (aka the copyright owners) to make them available for download. Most will if asked. They'd prob

Or, you know, you could just ask the people posting their videos (aka the copyright owners) to make them available for download. Most will if asked. They'd probably even provide the highest-quality versions available. Why do the solutions on HN always involve complicated technical solutions that ignore the rights of the people affected?

dheera 6y ago
> Most will if asked. No, most people who post good videos don't respond to e-mail. Whenever I take a flight or long train ride or are otherwise going to be without reception I often youtube-dl a bunch of stuff to watch. That usually happens a couple hours before the flight, and I can't be bothered to deal with e-mailing National Geographic and Coyote Peterson and Smarter Everyday and their ilk and pray that they'll send me a high-res video file. They probably won't. And there are all the times I've used hundreds of downloaded videos as datasets or test sets for machine learning algorithms. Just because rights can be theoretically violated with a tool doesn't mean we should ban the tool. My use of youtube-dl is legit as far as the copyright claims of video creators go. I'm not reusing or redistributing their content without permission.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  No, most people who post good videos don't respond to e-mail. Probably just due to the different industries, but every time I've asked a presenter at a legal conference for a video they have been overjoyed that someone would want a copy. 100% yes rate, except for the presenter at a CLE conference (and in that case, the video was available through the conference organizer). I can't be bothered to deal with e-mailing National Geographic and Coyote Peterson and Smarter Everyday and their ilk and pray that they'll send me a high-res video file. They probably won't. And yet that is what copyright law generally requires. "Convenience" isn't a valid justification for fair use. My use of youtube-dl is legit as far as the copyright claims of video creators go. I'm not reusing or redistributing their content without permission. No, actually you mentioned a number of infringing uses that wouldn't be protected as fair use except for the training bits. But the issue for youtube-dl is different: as a tool, the question is whether it is designed to infringe copyright, and the answer thus far appears to be that it is, especially given that they explicitly design for and test this ability. What it may come down to (if this gets to court) may be the percentage of the user base that uses it for legitimate purposes and the percentage that doesn't. If they can't show that a substantial portion of the userbase uses it for downloading stuff other than RIAA licensed videos, youtubedl is DOA.
  - dheera 6y ago
    > "Convenience" isn't a valid justification for fair use. Not specifically for fair use, but convenience is a perfectly valid justification in my book to transform, edit, or save content for personal use. [My body + my electronic devices] is a black box, and nobody has the right to meddle inside the workings of that black box. Once YouTube sends bytes into that black box, the extent of their control is done, and don't get to ask what happens inside after that. They don't get to know whether content got recorded on an organic brain or on a silicon brain within that black box, for example. The black box is private, and is not open for introspection. They can only require that said black box not re-emit information that came from them, or derivatives of that information, back into the outside world. > number of infringing uses First of all, fair use is enough reason to have a tool. But regardless, I don't believe downloading a video for offline personal consumption violates the spirit of copyright, and that's all that matters to me. When Youtube, or anyone, sends any content into my personal LAN I can do whatever I want with that content within my private spaces and for my private viewing in any way I wish. If the law suggests otherwise, I don't believe in that law. The law also banned women from voting, and colored people from from sitting in the front of the bus, and it's because of people who didn't believe in those laws that we are where we are today. Sometimes the law is wrong, and I firmly believe the law is wrong to say anything about how I'm allowed to save or consume content that was legally transmitted to a device I own for my own private use.

dheera 6y ago

> Most will if asked. No, most people who post good videos don't respond to e-mail. Whenever I take a flight or long train ride or are otherwise going to be without reception I often youtube-dl a bunch of stuff to watch. That usually happens a couple hours before the flight, and I can't be bothered to deal with e-mailing National Geographic and Coyote Peterson and Smarter Everyday and their ilk and pray that they'll send me a high-res video file. They probably won't. And there are all the times I've used hundreds of downloaded videos as datasets or test sets for machine learning algorithms. Just because rights can be theoretically violated with a tool doesn't mean we should ban the tool. My use of youtube-dl is legit as far as the copyright claims of video creators go. I'm not reusing or redistributing their content without permission.

gamblor956 6y ago
No, most people who post good videos don't respond to e-mail. Probably just due to the different industries, but every time I've asked a presenter at a legal conference for a video they have been overjoyed that someone would want a copy. 100% yes rate, except for the presenter at a CLE conference (and in that case, the video was available through the conference organizer). I can't be bothered to deal with e-mailing National Geographic and Coyote Peterson and Smarter Everyday and their ilk and pray that they'll send me a high-res video file. They probably won't. And yet that is what copyright law generally requires. "Convenience" isn't a valid justification for fair use. My use of youtube-dl is legit as far as the copyright claims of video creators go. I'm not reusing or redistributing their content without permission. No, actually you mentioned a number of infringing uses that wouldn't be protected as fair use except for the training bits. But the issue for youtube-dl is different: as a tool, the question is whether it is designed to infringe copyright, and the answer thus far appears to be that it is, especially given that they explicitly design for and test this ability. What it may come down to (if this gets to court) may be the percentage of the user base that uses it for legitimate purposes and the percentage that doesn't. If they can't show that a substantial portion of the userbase uses it for downloading stuff other than RIAA licensed videos, youtubedl is DOA.
- dheera 6y ago
  > "Convenience" isn't a valid justification for fair use. Not specifically for fair use, but convenience is a perfectly valid justification in my book to transform, edit, or save content for personal use. [My body + my electronic devices] is a black box, and nobody has the right to meddle inside the workings of that black box. Once YouTube sends bytes into that black box, the extent of their control is done, and don't get to ask what happens inside after that. They don't get to know whether content got recorded on an organic brain or on a silicon brain within that black box, for example. The black box is private, and is not open for introspection. They can only require that said black box not re-emit information that came from them, or derivatives of that information, back into the outside world. > number of infringing uses First of all, fair use is enough reason to have a tool. But regardless, I don't believe downloading a video for offline personal consumption violates the spirit of copyright, and that's all that matters to me. When Youtube, or anyone, sends any content into my personal LAN I can do whatever I want with that content within my private spaces and for my private viewing in any way I wish. If the law suggests otherwise, I don't believe in that law. The law also banned women from voting, and colored people from from sitting in the front of the bus, and it's because of people who didn't believe in those laws that we are where we are today. Sometimes the law is wrong, and I firmly believe the law is wrong to say anything about how I'm allowed to save or consume content that was legally transmitted to a device I own for my own private use.