4 ms·

I believe a court in Germany has already ruled on the rolling cipher being a technological restriction (and that is referenced in the complaint). The point of t

by sfifs 6y ago

I believe a court in Germany has already ruled on the rolling cipher being a technological restriction (and that is referenced in the complaint). The point of the technological measure (together with TOS) is to make the intent clear. youtube-dl could probably have been fine without implementing the cipher decryption function but since it did and had a test suite to check and flag if it doesn't work, it made itself a target.

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
Agree with 2nd sentence. This issue is silly to me because the YT videos I am interested almost never use the rolling cipher. I cannot be the only one. If the user is someone who wants to consume commercial content from VEVO and the like via YT, surely she is also content to do so using Google's Javascript player and submitting herself to ads and tracking that web browsers enable. IMO, there is more to YT than what the RIAA's members contribute.
TheCoelacanth 6y ago
Any standard user agent would "circumvent" the "protection" in exactly the same manner. If Firefox used that page as a test case for its JS engine, would that make it primarily designed for circumvention? The point of the rolling cipher is that you can't access the video without running their JS. youtube-dl did exactly that, just as any user agent would.
- sfifs 6y ago
  Well if it actually went to a court case, I'm sure either RIAA's lawyers or the defence lawyers would subpoena Google to disclose the split of downloaded videos between protected and not protected videos and then we'd actually know. It is likely RIAA would have already done some sense check of usage already using metered PC panels before even stirring up this particular hornets nest.
  - justinclift 6y ago
    > It is likely RIAA would have already done some sense check of usage already using metered PC panels ... Not sure about that. The RIAA approach over the last few years doesn't seem very well researched or well thought out. They seem to more go after "targets of opportunity" + add in coercion wherever possible. That's just my impression anyway.
lloeki 6y ago
I’m failing to see how handing a key to someone along with the address to the door it unlocks communicates any intent about that someone to unlock the door with his left hand only, and never with his right one. Now, if they had designed a system where the key could only be operated once/for a given timeframe from a specific left hand glove, then the intent would be clear (IOW DRM container like widevine or fairplay). But the intent of making it from cumbersome to impossible for right handed, broken armed, or disabled people, or just missed the bus and being late, to use the key would be very clear also. What’s clear to me from this overall SNAFU is that they’re after the eyeballs. The content only matters as an eyeball attractor. I’m wondering if in the EU youtube-dl could fall under protection for interoperability.
- rrobukef 6y ago
  I think a better analogy is: Handing someone a key to unlock a door to watch an artwork and then taking the (a copy of, a photo of) artwork with you. You can see the Mona Lisa but you cannot take a photo of the Mona Lisa without previous consent of the Louvre.
  - lloeki 6y ago
    > You can see the Mona Lisa but you cannot take a photo of the Mona Lisa without previous consent of the Louvre. You can, they just ask you to responsibly not use a flash. https://c8.alamy.com/comp/F0948J/tourists-photographing-mona-lisa-in-the-louvre-museum-paris-france-F0948J.jpg https://c8.alamy.com/comp/F0948J/tourists-photographing-mona... This specific painting is public domain, you could copy it to your heart’s content. > I think a better analogy is: Handing someone a key to unlock a door to watch an artwork and then taking the (a copy of, a photo of) artwork with you. I kinda get your point, but it’s completely non obvious that the key from YouTube has any sort of such value: it’s just a string of chars, it could just as well be some homegrown encoding, tracking system, or error check+. A ticket has clear information about its validity in space and time. I’d argue that the alleged protection is so lousy as such that it could very well be dismissed as being one, whereas a ticket+museum or video+drm you cannot get the content out of the container, at least not easily so, and it’s very obvious that it’s there to prevent that, with enforcement of metadata on the key (e.g cert/key with time, device or account id, pubkey signature, ...) I seem to recall a legal provision (might be DMCA even) that says if the protection scheme comes to be trivially bypassed then the circumvention clause doesn’t hold water, in essence codifying protection obsolescence and making e.g DeCSS ultimately legal, but I can’t find the reference to that. + I’d argue it’s actually more akin to the second one.

by sfifs 6y ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

Agree with 2nd sentence. This issue is silly to me because the YT videos I am interested almost never use the rolling cipher. I cannot be the only one. If the user is someone who wants to consume commercial content from VEVO and the like via YT, surely she is also content to do so using Google's Javascript player and submitting herself to ads and tracking that web browsers enable. IMO, there is more to YT than what the RIAA's members contribute.

TheCoelacanth 6y ago

Any standard user agent would "circumvent" the "protection" in exactly the same manner. If Firefox used that page as a test case for its JS engine, would that make it primarily designed for circumvention? The point of the rolling cipher is that you can't access the video without running their JS. youtube-dl did exactly that, just as any user agent would.

sfifs 6y ago
Well if it actually went to a court case, I'm sure either RIAA's lawyers or the defence lawyers would subpoena Google to disclose the split of downloaded videos between protected and not protected videos and then we'd actually know. It is likely RIAA would have already done some sense check of usage already using metered PC panels before even stirring up this particular hornets nest.
- justinclift 6y ago
  > It is likely RIAA would have already done some sense check of usage already using metered PC panels ... Not sure about that. The RIAA approach over the last few years doesn't seem very well researched or well thought out. They seem to more go after "targets of opportunity" + add in coercion wherever possible. That's just my impression anyway.

lloeki 6y ago

I’m failing to see how handing a key to someone along with the address to the door it unlocks communicates any intent about that someone to unlock the door with his left hand only, and never with his right one. Now, if they had designed a system where the key could only be operated once/for a given timeframe from a specific left hand glove, then the intent would be clear (IOW DRM container like widevine or fairplay). But the intent of making it from cumbersome to impossible for right handed, broken armed, or disabled people, or just missed the bus and being late, to use the key would be very clear also. What’s clear to me from this overall SNAFU is that they’re after the eyeballs. The content only matters as an eyeball attractor. I’m wondering if in the EU youtube-dl could fall under protection for interoperability.

rrobukef 6y ago
I think a better analogy is: Handing someone a key to unlock a door to watch an artwork and then taking the (a copy of, a photo of) artwork with you. You can see the Mona Lisa but you cannot take a photo of the Mona Lisa without previous consent of the Louvre.
- lloeki 6y ago
  > You can see the Mona Lisa but you cannot take a photo of the Mona Lisa without previous consent of the Louvre. You can, they just ask you to responsibly not use a flash. https://c8.alamy.com/comp/F0948J/tourists-photographing-mona-lisa-in-the-louvre-museum-paris-france-F0948J.jpg https://c8.alamy.com/comp/F0948J/tourists-photographing-mona... This specific painting is public domain, you could copy it to your heart’s content. > I think a better analogy is: Handing someone a key to unlock a door to watch an artwork and then taking the (a copy of, a photo of) artwork with you. I kinda get your point, but it’s completely non obvious that the key from YouTube has any sort of such value: it’s just a string of chars, it could just as well be some homegrown encoding, tracking system, or error check+. A ticket has clear information about its validity in space and time. I’d argue that the alleged protection is so lousy as such that it could very well be dismissed as being one, whereas a ticket+museum or video+drm you cannot get the content out of the container, at least not easily so, and it’s very obvious that it’s there to prevent that, with enforcement of metadata on the key (e.g cert/key with time, device or account id, pubkey signature, ...) I seem to recall a legal provision (might be DMCA even) that says if the protection scheme comes to be trivially bypassed then the circumvention clause doesn’t hold water, in essence codifying protection obsolescence and making e.g DeCSS ultimately legal, but I can’t find the reference to that. + I’d argue it’s actually more akin to the second one.