19 ms·
It's important if a court cares, which would probably be the case. Watching a YouTube video on Firefox is unlikely to be construed as circumventing DRM while do
by nkrisc 6y ago
It's important if a court cares, which would probably be the case. Watching a YouTube video on Firefox is unlikely to be construed as circumventing DRM while downloading the same video with youtube-dl conceivably could be construed as such.
Courts aren't always concerned with technical differences, more often intent.
- xorcist 6y agoNo court has found any of the mentioned software to be illegal so far, anywhere. They are all interchangeable. Should one implementation be found problematic, in theory it can be swapped with another. It's not comparable to DRM, where a particular software can be licensed for a particular digital protection mechanism. In this case either they all are, or none are.
- nkrisc 6y agoYou're still just focused on technical implementation and not the intent behind actions, which is also important and will likely be considered by the courts. While there is no technical difference, there is quite a difference of intent between watching a streaming video and downloading it to circumvent copy-protection.