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To me the most interesting (and new to me) part is §Cease and Desist Notices: > Following our initial coverage, we learned that the pressure against YouTube-DL

To me the most interesting (and new to me) part is §Cease and Desist Notices: > Following our initial coverage, we learned that the pressure against YouTube-DL had already started weeks earlier in Germany. Law firm Rasch, which works with several major music industry players, sent out cease and desist orders in the hope of taking YouTube-DL offline. > Hosting service Uberspace was one of the recipients. The company hosts the official YouTube-DL site and still does so today. Instead of taking the website down, Uberspace replied to the notice through its own lawyer, who said that the hosting company hasn’t don’t anything wrong. [emphasis added] > When the cease and desist notice was filed, yt-dl.org wasn’t even hosting the tool, as all download links pointed to GitHub, the company informs us. [But the site does host the tool now, and Uberspace still doesn’t appear to have taken it down] > “The software itself wasn’t hosted on our systems anyway so [but IIUC it is now], to be honest, I felt it to be quite ridiculous to involve us in this issue anyway – a lawyer specializing in IT laws should know better,” Jonas from Uberspace says.

Macha 6y ago
It's probably worth mentioning that Uberspace is based in Germany, not the United States, so may not feel the same risk from not obeying the DMCA as a US company.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- chmod775 6y ago
  I run a service based in Germany, and yes we don't care about DMCAs per se. However German laws are essentially: "Once you are notified of copyright infringing/illegal content, you have to remove it, lest you lose your protection as a service provider and become responsible for the content." A DMCA takedown notice would be such a notification. On the upside you don't need to do anything if you don't have reason to believe the content is illegal in any way (unlike with DMCAs where you pretty much always have to remove first). On the downside it's a bit easier to get into trouble as a provider if you chose to let something stay online.
  - ikeboy 6y ago
    >On the upside you don't need to do anything if you don't have reason to believe the content is illegal in any way (unlike with DMCAs where you pretty much always have to remove first). The DMCA works the same way. If you refuse to remove content and it turns out to be legal, then you as a service provider can't be held liable. You only get in trouble if you ignore a valid notice and there is infringement. Neither is relevant here, though, as it wasn't a DMCA notice but a claim of anti-circumvention.
    - chmod775 6y ago
      If that's the case I suppose the only notable difference is that the DMCA system is more formalized.
  - aaron_m04 6y ago
    > However German laws are essentially: "Once you are notified of copyright infringing/illegal content, you have to remove it, lest you lose your protection as a service provider and become responsible for the content." Youtube-dl itself isn't copyright infringement though. It's a tool that could theoretically be used for copyright infringement.
- varispeed 6y ago
  The irony that freedom of speech is more protected in Germany than in the US.
  - maweki 6y ago
    And why exactly would that be ironic?
    - chmod775 6y ago
      One of 4chan's favorite past times is discussing which country has more freedom of speech. It always ends in a massive flamewar and I can only recommend not to repeat that here.
      - maweki 6y ago
        I was asking where the irony would be coming from, and not whether the attached statement was factual.
  - kstrauser 6y ago
    That's not ironic. They spilled blood over it much more recently than we have.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      They did? I don't think it'd be ironic, but it's also not true. It's obviously not a free speech issue, and Germany has laws regarding copyright and circumvention of constraints. I doubt a large company would have taken the same route, uberspace is just generally pretty cool and user friendly.
  - ahofmann 6y ago
    As a European, I can't find any irony in that. It seems completely normal to me.
  - dschuler 6y ago
    There is actually _less_ legal protection for speech in Germany than the US. For instance, it's against the law to insult a government official like a cop (Beamtenbeleidigung). This could mean saying something like "damn cops" in earshot of the police - it doesn't take much. You could argue that courts aren't as accessible in the US as they should be without deep pockets (rightfully so), but fundamentally free speech _is_ much better protected in the US.
- onli 6y ago
  Maybe also worth mentioning that Uberspace is not your average hoster. It's a highly developer focused and developer friendly hoster with the fitting technical expertise, combined with a lot of character (plus interesting business model). If only one german company would not accept a baseless claim as this it would be Uberspace.

Macha 6y ago

It's probably worth mentioning that Uberspace is based in Germany, not the United States, so may not feel the same risk from not obeying the DMCA as a US company.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chmod775 6y ago
I run a service based in Germany, and yes we don't care about DMCAs per se. However German laws are essentially: "Once you are notified of copyright infringing/illegal content, you have to remove it, lest you lose your protection as a service provider and become responsible for the content." A DMCA takedown notice would be such a notification. On the upside you don't need to do anything if you don't have reason to believe the content is illegal in any way (unlike with DMCAs where you pretty much always have to remove first). On the downside it's a bit easier to get into trouble as a provider if you chose to let something stay online.
- ikeboy 6y ago
  >On the upside you don't need to do anything if you don't have reason to believe the content is illegal in any way (unlike with DMCAs where you pretty much always have to remove first). The DMCA works the same way. If you refuse to remove content and it turns out to be legal, then you as a service provider can't be held liable. You only get in trouble if you ignore a valid notice and there is infringement. Neither is relevant here, though, as it wasn't a DMCA notice but a claim of anti-circumvention.
  - chmod775 6y ago
    If that's the case I suppose the only notable difference is that the DMCA system is more formalized.
- aaron_m04 6y ago
  > However German laws are essentially: "Once you are notified of copyright infringing/illegal content, you have to remove it, lest you lose your protection as a service provider and become responsible for the content." Youtube-dl itself isn't copyright infringement though. It's a tool that could theoretically be used for copyright infringement.
varispeed 6y ago
The irony that freedom of speech is more protected in Germany than in the US.
- maweki 6y ago
  And why exactly would that be ironic?
  - chmod775 6y ago
    One of 4chan's favorite past times is discussing which country has more freedom of speech. It always ends in a massive flamewar and I can only recommend not to repeat that here.
    - maweki 6y ago
      I was asking where the irony would be coming from, and not whether the attached statement was factual.
- kstrauser 6y ago
  That's not ironic. They spilled blood over it much more recently than we have.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    They did? I don't think it'd be ironic, but it's also not true. It's obviously not a free speech issue, and Germany has laws regarding copyright and circumvention of constraints. I doubt a large company would have taken the same route, uberspace is just generally pretty cool and user friendly.
- ahofmann 6y ago
  As a European, I can't find any irony in that. It seems completely normal to me.
- dschuler 6y ago
  There is actually _less_ legal protection for speech in Germany than the US. For instance, it's against the law to insult a government official like a cop (Beamtenbeleidigung). This could mean saying something like "damn cops" in earshot of the police - it doesn't take much. You could argue that courts aren't as accessible in the US as they should be without deep pockets (rightfully so), but fundamentally free speech _is_ much better protected in the US.
onli 6y ago
Maybe also worth mentioning that Uberspace is not your average hoster. It's a highly developer focused and developer friendly hoster with the fitting technical expertise, combined with a lot of character (plus interesting business model). If only one german company would not accept a baseless claim as this it would be Uberspace.