28 ms·

RIAA Takedowns Backfire as Pirated MP3s Now Surface on GitHub

324 points by TangerineDream 6y ago

verroq 6y ago
Any reason why youtube-dl hasn't filed a counter-takedown notice?
- ikeboy 6y ago
  This isn't a 512 notice, so a counternotice is not possible.
  - sillysaurusx 6y ago
    Really? I thought that every dmca notice was counterable. GitHub simply took down the repo with no recourse? That doesn’t sound right.
    - ikeboy 6y ago
      Every notice is. This wasn't a notice. The recourse is filing a declaratory judgement to establish the legality of the code.
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        > The recourse is filing a declaratory judgement to establish the legality of the code. Which is expensive relative to the resources of some individuals doing this as a hobby, so some kind of legal defense fund may be in order. Of course, the other option is to put enough pressure on Github/Microsoft to get them to be the ones to defend it, since it's not that expensive relative to the resources of a trillion dollar corporation, and they could quite plausibly have more to gain in positive PR with developers (or in avoiding continued negative PR) than they pay to the lawyers they probably already have on staff. We shouldn't forgive companies who do the wrong thing on issues like this, because the cost of people not forgiving them is a major incentive for them not to do the wrong thing.
        bxk1 6y ago
        Microsoft pays for RIAA lawyers, why would it pay for more lawyers to defend themselves from other lawyers they pay for already?
        AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        The obvious solution being to stop paying money for RIAA lawyers and use that money to defend against the RIAA lawyers, netting zero expense and twice positive PR.
    - sohkamyung 6y ago
      > [T]he RIAA was not citing DMCA Section 512, the usual takedown route, but DMCA Section 1201, the ban on breaking digital locks. [1] [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/github-youtube-dl-takedown-isnt-just-problem-american-law https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/github-youtube-dl-take...
- cesarb 6y ago
  Copy-pasting a comment of mine from a related thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886260): They might decide not to counter-notice, because there's a big trap in the DMCA counter-notice: as far as I know, for a DMCA counter-notice to be valid, the one doing the counter-notice must agree to be bound to the jurisdiction of an USA court. If the youtube-dl author is not from the USA (I think he's from the EU), that would expose him to legal risk. (As a non-USA person, to me this is the most evil part of the DMCA take-down system: even a defective DMCA notice leads to a dilemma, either you keep the content offline, or you risk being sued in a foreign jurisdiction you have no control over. This is also why I believe one should always prefer to host in one's own country, so that any dispute can be resolved by the local courts.)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bxk1 6y ago
    People outside of the US can't be bound to be sued in a US court or anywhere outside of the jurisdiction they currently reside in and even then a country he is a citizen of could try to use high level channels to get him out of there. Extradition treaties complicate this a bit more, but extradition still has to go through local laws, local law enforcement, local government and far from everyone would get extradited left and right if there is an agreement. The biggest thing a counter-notice could do (if it's even possible) is reveal one's identity and only if Microsoft/Github tries to verify it, which would be bad, because it could be used for harassment. But the author is obviously Russian, not sure if he lives in Russia, but if he does, they definitely won't be able to get him in Russia, only harass him.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- karlzt 6y ago
  Github is just one bottle in a room full of bottles https://alternativeto.net/software/github/ https://alternativeto.net/software/github/
  - mxuribe 6y ago
    Exactly THIS!
  - DrSiemer 6y ago
    Sure, but it's the most famous bottle, also among people that never use bottles
pmachinery 6y ago
TL;DR: Someone uploaded 3 (yes three) mp3s, which will be duly removed if they haven't been already. Torrentfreak bothered to tell the RIAA, to generate further drama and ad views, but even they weren't interested. This has nothing to do with youtube-dl; it's just someone annoyed about it doing something completely pointless.
- skj 6y ago
  In what way are you buried? I can see your comment.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- superkuh 6y ago
  It's important to make this as painful and dramatic as possible for Microsoft so they don't side with the RIAA they are a member of.
skj 6y ago
Does one imagine that the RIAA is substantially worried about this? I don't. I'm sure they see it as a total win.
- wrkronmiller 6y ago
  Agreed. If the people behind these take-down requests actually ended piracy, they'd be out of a job.
  - panpanna 6y ago
    Don't be naive. When they are done with open piracy they will move to other stuff. Did you whistle a copyrighted tune in the elevator? You owe us money now. (If you think I'm joking, look at Japan who jails musicians for 10+ years for playing covers at parties without paying royalties)
    - atmin 6y ago
      Citation needed. All I can find are jailed musicians in Japan for drug possession.
    - 52-6F-62 6y ago
      I don't think you're joking, but I think you're making pretty terrible assumptions. A party large enough is effectively a broadcast/performance. It's not as cut and dried and greed-filled as all that. For large acts and musical pieces that have moved into the larger cultural milieu, sure—there's a discussion to be had about the place of the work in that society. (And then maybe the society as a whole should compensate the artist they've so benefited from more directly) Those licensing and copyright laws were designed to protect journeyman musicians from having their life's work robbed by large publishers and broadcasters and it still serves that purpose. Imagine proprietary software from your work was lifted and incorporated by a potential client. I'm certain in most cases that would be grounds for litigation in most peoples' minds. (Or, for example Robert Kearns' case)
      - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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KingOfCoders 6y ago
Which will lead to GitHub adding content filters which will lead to false flags and rejected commits which will lead to algorithms wrongly flagging existing content in your repo which will lead to a byzantine appeal processes which ... ... no wait, that was my Youtube channel.
- swiley 6y ago
  I'm sure people will start noticing the pattern with these platforms... any day now.
- raxxorrax 6y ago
  Companies actually lobby the EU, I guess the same is true for the US, to allow "forward scanning". Meaning they would like to proactively try to purge the net of illegal content. Mozilla is part of this alliance. I am going to leave Github, since the tech giants + Mozilla should not be trusted. https://edima-eu.org/ https://edima-eu.org/
  - dotdi 6y ago
    I think rather than pretending such efforts don't exist, opposing companies could strategically join to have _some_ say and _some_ influence on how this plays out. Or maybe I'm just being naïve.
    - raxxorrax 6y ago
      I hope you are correct, but reading up about it just left me disappointed. While it may be true that you can influence the group, I think it is often used as an excuse because more participants give more weight to the interest group in the first place. But I hope you are right.
  - Sayrus 6y ago
    Is this[1] the document you are talking about? It doesn't seem to read as bad as what you make it sounds but it could end up exactly that bad. As dotdi said, I hope that companies like Mozilla joined to (try to) influence these decisions. [1] https://edima-eu.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ORF-Series_-Safeguards_EDiMA.pdf https://edima-eu.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ORF-Series_-...
tirz 6y ago
You wouldn't clone this repository. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg
sam_goody 6y ago
But now there is no official fork of youtube-dl, so development will either stop or be fragmented. And users will not want to trust any given fork, so downloads will taper off. If the original creator endorses a fork, is he making himself liable? - not sure what happens if you repost after a takedown notice. And the involvement of the law, and the publicity will lead overall to self-censoring, as most devs won't want to deal with this... Doesn't seem to me to making things worse for the RIAA
- swiley 6y ago
  All the maintainer has to do is collect patches and release an updated version of the canonical source. This isn't something that happens only in theory, the kernel for the OS I'm typing on right now is developed this way. Github is more interesting because of eg issue tracking, but there are other ways to do that.
- majewsky 6y ago
  > But now there is no official fork of youtube-dl youtube-dl has made new releases after the takedown, so development appears to be continuing.
- heinrichhartman 6y ago
  Looks like the project moved to GitLab: https://gitlab.com/dstftw/youtube-dl/-/commits/master https://gitlab.com/dstftw/youtube-dl/-/commits/master Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24960039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24960039
jankotek 6y ago
Github is part of critical infrastructure. It is bad enough it is blocked in Iran and some other countries.
- simias 6y ago
  Then that's a problem that needs fixing. Make the web decentralized again!
  - dotancohen 6y ago
    If only we had some form of decentralized source code management.
    - simias 6y ago
      The problem is that git is not feature complete to replace github. In hindsight I wish it had gone the Fossil route: integrate issue management in the distributed repo. If issues, wiki and code review were integrated in git proper it would be trivial to change host on a dime. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way (yet?).
      - kevincox 6y ago
        I'm not so convinced. Seeing as I use a number of issue trackers and code review systems daily and most of them are trash. I'm very happy for git to serve as a compatible core and I can "easily" move between systems as they improve. Basically I am glad that git does source control well. And I prefer that there is a marketplace of issue trackers, patch management and CI software layered on top. Until we have a clear excellent solution I don't think there is a need to bind them together. Let there be choice!
        simias 6y ago
        I see where you're coming from, but that does create a big barrier to decentralization. The youtube-dl source code is safe and sound but as far as I know all the issues, discussions, unmerged PRs and more are lost forever. I suppose the ideal would be if git somehow provided a low level API that could be used to build these types of solution and then everybody would be free to build their own solution on top of it. Much easier said than done, of course.
qwerty456127 6y ago
> This request wasn't well-received by developers, many of whom retaliated by posting copies of the code. Yesterday, things went from bad to worse when a user with the name 'F* T RIAA' uploaded three MP3s of the songs the RIAA mentioned in its takedown notice RIAA couldn't care less. As far as I understand, they practically are just a team of lawyers whose job is to attack whoever they can reach, take whatever they can down and collect money when possible. They hardly even care about the actual recording business, let alone about how do people feel about them.
- michelb 6y ago
  Indeed. This just plays into their hands.
  - mabbo 6y ago
    Not necessarily. Remember what happened when Digg tried to ban anyone from posting the 09F9 number because it was a secret key to some DVD thing? The users revolted so hard that the people managing the site gave up and let it stand. Then again... who remembers Digg?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - dwild 6y ago
      You really think Github will giveup respecting DMCA and copyright infringement? Your example is nice, but it's about the copyright stand of a number... it's much more grey than respecting an actual DMCA notice and being aware of actual copyrighted content on your platform. I don't think so... instead what I expect would most probably happen is that they automate it even more, which will suck even more. We got enough damage already from Youtube doing it...
      - wolfgke 6y ago
        Of course Microsoft (the company behind Github) will not give up respecting DMCA and copyright infringement. The question rather is: how much will developers continue to respect Microsoft?
simias 6y ago
It "backfires" because people post a small number of mp3 files on github that will promptly taken down? We did it reddit, the DMCA is no more! What a silly headline. If you want to actually something that will matter then make sure that github doesn't become a single point of failure for FLOSS software in the future. Or get your GH account banned by posting Lady Gaga tracks in your repos, you do you.
- fortran77 6y ago
  You just realized the people on Hacker News are no smarter than the folks on reddit!
  - daemoncoder 6y ago
    Those two groups are not mutually exclusive :-)
    - fortran77 6y ago
      I enjoy both and I'm not embarrassed. Where else can I get my "Below Deck" news and "Schitt's Creek" memes?
- pas 6y ago
  TorrentFreak's headlines are terrible "fan service" most of the time.
Pelic4n 6y ago
Copyright laws and their consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
- hashtagmarkup 6y ago
  What laws haven't been a disaster? People are still murdered. The environment is still polluted. Taxes are still squandered. Healthcare has become unaffordable.
vorticalbox 6y ago
> While GitHub’s CEO Nat Friedman was annoyed by RIAA takedown efforts, he stressed that the platform legally had to comply, which it did. It would be nice if for once platforms stood up legally for their users when they believe its unjust.
- thrownaway954 6y ago
  i agree with you... now show them your support by sending them a blank check for their legal fees. oh... i'm sorry... did i offend HN, strike a nerve and become a troll? no i did not. i am demonstrating that most people on this site haven't the slightest clue what they are talking about. it costs money and time to fight something and companies have something called a risk management department that decides whether it is worth the risk to fight or comply. github knows that getting into a heated legal battle is going to cost alot, especially going up against the deep pockets of the RIAA. not saying that github and microsoft don't have deep pockets, but that this _will_ become an expensive battle to fight and defending a grey area open source project isn't worth the time nor the money.
  - goatinaboat 6y ago
    it costs money and time to fight something and companies have something called a risk management department that decides whether it is worth the risk to fight or comply Genuine question: why? The police won't get involved in a civil matter, only a criminal one. So what happens if you just ignore the other side's lawyers?
    - _underfl0w_ 6y ago
      Couldn't those ignored lawyers invoke the power of the court somehow? E.g. a subpoena or similar? IA(clearly)NAL.
    - bigwavedave 6y ago
      > So what happens if you just ignore the other side's lawyers? IAN[even_close_to_being]AL but I'm fairly sure this would result in a default judgment. At least it does in civil cases between citizens (in the US) and corporations- when a company files with the court clerk, a complaint ("you've been served" kind of thing) is issued to the defendant and they typically have 21 days to respond by filing their own motion with the clerk. If they ignore this or never actually receive this, a hearing is scheduled where a court date is decided, which the court will attempt to communicate to the defendant if they didn't show up to the hearing. The court date will come and go, and if the defendant is still ignoring the situation, the judge assumes there's no contest and will issue a default judgment against the defendant. In the case of corporations vs citizens, this is when damages/fines are accessed and wage garnishment notices get issued. Garnishments (and the corporate equivalent of fines) are no joke- corporate accountants take them extremely seriously because of the penalties for failing to carry them out: if they don't, the company's assets can get seized, accounts can get raided (depending on the type of case [medical and taxes are two large categories] and the plaintiff), and fines get levied and even increase. I imagine it's the same way with default judgments against corporations, but again, I'm no lawyer- just a guy musing about corporate civil suits based on citizen civil suits.
solarkraft 6y ago
This didn't backfire for the RIAA, it backfired for GitHub, who are absolutely not the bad guys in this. They have expressed more support for the project than they would have needed to and are bound to laws.
- tw04 6y ago
  In the short-term, no. In the long-term - should companies like Microsoft get sick of their crap, all of the RIAAs power is based in regulatory capture. We can (and should) change the copyright laws that enable them to sue someone over a creative work that quite frankly they shouldn't get a single piece of after an extremely short period of time. The RIAA is big, Microsoft is much, much bigger and could tie them up in courts and outspend them in lobbying without missing a beat. You helped make an album? Great - here's your flat fee, royalties go to the artist and the artist only. The problem would fix itself overnight.
  - ddevault 6y ago
    Microsoft is a member of RIAA.
  - lovehashbrowns 6y ago
    Setting aside the fact that Microsoft is a member of the RIAA alongside other major companies, the RIAA isn’t the only one interested in lobbying for strict copyright laws. There’s the MPAA, Disney, Viacom, etc. Ask Google how they fared when Viacom tried to sue YouTube into oblivion. :) Hint: Content ID
    - arpa 6y ago
      Google is new money, these fucks are old money. Print establishments are older money. Print doesn't care about piracy. Print has a good academia racket going.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 6y ago
motohagiography 6y ago
The EFF appears to concur with a previous comment I made on this topic: "EFF believes that the circumvention restrictions in DMCA section 1201, which prevent people from bypassing technological restrictions, are too broad. DMCA 1201 is incredibly broad, apparently allowing rightsholders to legally harass any ‘trafficker’ in code that lets users re-take control of their devices from DRM locks,” EFF wrote recently." This creates an unaccountable enforcement party who can harass "targets" on behalf of another unaccountable party. The way it is written, reddit would have to take down a selectively unpopular subreddit for providing technology that facilitates the trafficking of copyrighted images. Whose copyright? Who cares? One could inject a bunch of copyrighted material into sites and then use a DMCA notice against their upstream provider to shut them off - a pattern I would predict is likely to materialize in coming months. Write sideloaded apps for a community because an app store uses their policy against you? "Circumvention!" The opportunities for abuse are endless. While teleological arguments are always a bit iffy, the final objective is to ensure that there can be no information or service on the internet that is outside not only U.S. subpoena, but that there can be no communities or networks of personal relationships that are not governed by legacy institutions. It is under the auspices of people being "accountable," for their thoughts and beliefs, and yet without precision about to whom one is being held to account by. To every establishment growth is the greatest threat of all, and the DMCA s1201 is effectively designed to suppress it. The good news is these blunt attacks are a forcing function for developing decentralized technologies, and every one of these creates a cohort of new hackers.
phkahler 6y ago
Isnt YouTube meant for content distribution including downloading? I thought they encouraged remixing and reposting videos, is that not correct?
beloch 6y ago
Music consumers across multiple generations, while supporting artists, have expected a certain degree of freedom with the music playback technology placed in their hands. Whether it was recording a custom mix-tape for a special friend full of copied tracks or ripping a stream to play back on demand, there are certain things that most people see as reasonable and harmless. RIAA made a habit of attacking things seen as reasonable and harmless and has earned a reputation for being unreasonable and harmful. Musicians deserve better. Ultimately, they are the bosses here. Perhaps someday they'll start acting like it.
- na85 6y ago
  >Musicians deserve better. Some do. I seem to recall Nirvana being outspoken of their corporate attack dogs the RIAA back in the Napster days when the RIAA was with a straight face claiming damages that totaled more money than was in circulation, globally.
  - daniel-thompson 6y ago
    Do you mean Metallica? South Park did an episode about how ridiculous their arguments against Napster were[1]. I don't remember Nirvana weighing in on the RIAA's side (incidentally, Nirvana disbanded in 1994 after the death of Kurt Cobain; Napster was founded in 1999). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Rock_Hard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Rock_Hard
    - arpa 6y ago
      It was metallica.
  - na85 6y ago
    My bad, mixed up Metallica and Nirvana in my head. I don't listen to metal, obviously. Can't edit.
- backtoyoujim 6y ago
  Does anyone think that music company executives (the boss's boss) have ever paid money for mp3s, cds, tapes, 8-tracks, and vinyl ?
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
I'm not sure I'd call this "backfiring," as I'm sure that the RIAA must have seen this coming (they have been the Snidely Whiplash of the tech industry for a couple of decades). This kind of reaction is not exactly anything new; just the medium. I think that pirating streams actually helps to sell music. At least, in my limited sample pool, that has been the case. I used to stream an Internet radio station that played Industrial (dating myself -no one else will), and would often grab songs from it. A lot of times, the only reason that I grabbed it, was so that I could find out more about it. The quality of the audio grab wasn't really what I wanted as a "keeper." These pretty obscure groups made a lot of sales (to me) because they had their stuff out there.
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago
  > I think that pirating streams actually helps to sell music. At least, in my limited sample pool, that has been the case. So you say that users pirate the music and then buy the same music they illegally downloaded?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    In my case, yes, but I haven't done that in quite a while (YouTube became a good place to sample music).
  - AndrewUnmuted 6y ago
    AFAIK, the illegal part is not the downloading, but the act of uploading/seeding the assets. But this pipeline you establish - of people "pirating" music and then purchasing that same music later on - was a very common one, and remains so to this day. Before digital audio was a thing, people would routinely record songs onto tape while listening to the radio. They would then play this music in other contexts, to which they had no license, effectively making these individuals "pirates." Any "pirate" who recorded a Todd Rundgren song in 1972 from the radio, and then purchased his full double-LP "Something/Anything" at Sears the next week, was definitely a win for the artist, the record label, and the industry as a whole. On top of this, also don't forget that even to this day, consumers commonly purchase the same music when it gets released on a newer audio distribution format (vinyl -> 8-track -> cassette -> CD -> iTunes -> Spotify/Apple Music). "Piracy" now does commonly mean a "purchase" later.
wglb 6y ago
It would appear that if you are going to stick your thumb in a grizzly bear's eye, you should really get it up to the second knuckle.
djhaskin987 6y ago
> As we highlighted earlier, hundreds of new copies of the youtube-dl code appeared online in response, also on GitHub. > While GitHub’s CEO Nat Friedman was annoyed by RIAA takedown efforts, he stressed that the platform legally had to comply, which it did. More recently, the company even said that users who continue to republish the code risk being banned. Mates, just put the youtube-dl code up on IPFS[1] or SourceHut[2], which is a platform much more sympathetic to and defensive for the open source cause. No need to put it back up on GitHub and risk banishment there. There are lots of options here. The RIAA can't sensor open source software. At least, I'd like to see them try. I wanted also to say that I don't necessarily agree with jacking videos off of youtube. But who knows? What if you have the permission of the youtuber? What if the youtuber is just posting stuff that's in the public domain anyway? What if you're downloading the whole video so that you can get clips of the video you intend to put in your own video in an attempt to criticize the video, thus invoking fair use? The RIAA does not and should not have the power to take down open source software just because it could be used for nefarious purposes. There are also plenty of innocent uses out there. 1: https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ 2: https://git.sr.ht/ https://git.sr.ht/
TheDesolate0 6y ago
How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man!
Animats 6y ago
This makes it necessary to sync another service with Github for software projects. Once Github, now a unit of Microsoft, gets takedowns going, legit software projects will be taken down through random errors. Systems which rely on Github in production, such as Rust's "cargo", now need to be using multiple sources and checking hashes.
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago
  Even without that package manager relying on Github sounds plain stupid to me. What if Github decides to rate limit, gets banned in country(it got banned in India once) or lot of other things that could happen at Microsoft's whims.
- the5avage 6y ago
  Why does it rely on Github? Can't it download git repos from other sites?
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    It 99% does not. Cargo does not download the sources of projects from github. The package index is downloaded as a git repo from github.
rch 6y ago
I'd rather see a curated database of content that isn't covered by any enforcement arm of the recording industry, so I can compensate those musicians directly.
- YetAnotherNick 6y ago
  What benefit would that make? I heard mostly good things about the studios from artist's perspective. They might be forced to lie though in public. You can buy the songs from itunes and artist will receive most of the money.
  - rch 6y ago
    It could be beneficial if it contributed to diminishing the coercive influence of the industry with respect to copyright law and actions like the one being discussed here. I haven't used iTunes in quite a while, but it's worth noting that Bandcamp is still waiving its revenue share the first Friday of the month. Of course that only makes sense given the variety options which also support the platform itself, like their vinyl program.
- rollcat 6y ago
  Closest that comes to my mind is probably Bandcamp.
miga 6y ago
I feel sorry for GitHub people that are caught between RIAA's vandalism of the law on one side and activist vandalism on the other. To keep their business they should defend from both sides.
- craftyguy 6y ago
  I don't feel sorry at all for Microsoft. They have a long history of harassing developers (e.g., [1]. It's nice to see them bear some of that for once. 1. https://www.infoworld.com/article/2676459/microsoft-sues-linux-based-vendor-over-patents.html https://www.infoworld.com/article/2676459/microsoft-sues-lin...
supernihil 6y ago
https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/e672d697b36e82007f2f7c98747937895981e697 https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/e672d697b36e82007f2f7c... run 1. run `node dmca.js` to get a Justin Timberlake - Tunnel Vision (Official Music Video) (Explicit).mp3 file 2. `node youtube.dl.js` to get a youtube-dl-master.zip file ;-)
Simulacra 6y ago
With bit torrent, I’m surprised that the RIAA can’t even keep up. it’s not like Napster anymore, you can download an entire discography
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Any reason why youtube-dl hasn't filed a counter-takedown notice?

ikeboy 6y ago
This isn't a 512 notice, so a counternotice is not possible.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  Really? I thought that every dmca notice was counterable. GitHub simply took down the repo with no recourse? That doesn’t sound right.
  - ikeboy 6y ago
    Every notice is. This wasn't a notice. The recourse is filing a declaratory judgement to establish the legality of the code.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      > The recourse is filing a declaratory judgement to establish the legality of the code. Which is expensive relative to the resources of some individuals doing this as a hobby, so some kind of legal defense fund may be in order. Of course, the other option is to put enough pressure on Github/Microsoft to get them to be the ones to defend it, since it's not that expensive relative to the resources of a trillion dollar corporation, and they could quite plausibly have more to gain in positive PR with developers (or in avoiding continued negative PR) than they pay to the lawyers they probably already have on staff. We shouldn't forgive companies who do the wrong thing on issues like this, because the cost of people not forgiving them is a major incentive for them not to do the wrong thing.
      - bxk1 6y ago
        Microsoft pays for RIAA lawyers, why would it pay for more lawyers to defend themselves from other lawyers they pay for already?
        AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        The obvious solution being to stop paying money for RIAA lawyers and use that money to defend against the RIAA lawyers, netting zero expense and twice positive PR.
  - sohkamyung 6y ago
    > [T]he RIAA was not citing DMCA Section 512, the usual takedown route, but DMCA Section 1201, the ban on breaking digital locks. [1] [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/github-youtube-dl-takedown-isnt-just-problem-american-law https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/github-youtube-dl-take...
cesarb 6y ago
Copy-pasting a comment of mine from a related thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24886260): They might decide not to counter-notice, because there's a big trap in the DMCA counter-notice: as far as I know, for a DMCA counter-notice to be valid, the one doing the counter-notice must agree to be bound to the jurisdiction of an USA court. If the youtube-dl author is not from the USA (I think he's from the EU), that would expose him to legal risk. (As a non-USA person, to me this is the most evil part of the DMCA take-down system: even a defective DMCA notice leads to a dilemma, either you keep the content offline, or you risk being sued in a foreign jurisdiction you have no control over. This is also why I believe one should always prefer to host in one's own country, so that any dispute can be resolved by the local courts.)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bxk1 6y ago
  People outside of the US can't be bound to be sued in a US court or anywhere outside of the jurisdiction they currently reside in and even then a country he is a citizen of could try to use high level channels to get him out of there. Extradition treaties complicate this a bit more, but extradition still has to go through local laws, local law enforcement, local government and far from everyone would get extradited left and right if there is an agreement. The biggest thing a counter-notice could do (if it's even possible) is reveal one's identity and only if Microsoft/Github tries to verify it, which would be bad, because it could be used for harassment. But the author is obviously Russian, not sure if he lives in Russia, but if he does, they definitely won't be able to get him in Russia, only harass him.
  - deleted 6y ago
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karlzt 6y ago
Github is just one bottle in a room full of bottles https://alternativeto.net/software/github/ https://alternativeto.net/software/github/
- mxuribe 6y ago
  Exactly THIS!
- DrSiemer 6y ago
  Sure, but it's the most famous bottle, also among people that never use bottles

TL;DR: Someone uploaded 3 (yes three) mp3s, which will be duly removed if they haven't been already. Torrentfreak bothered to tell the RIAA, to generate further drama and ad views, but even they weren't interested. This has nothing to do with youtube-dl; it's just someone annoyed about it doing something completely pointless.

skj 6y ago
In what way are you buried? I can see your comment.
- deleted 6y ago
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superkuh 6y ago
It's important to make this as painful and dramatic as possible for Microsoft so they don't side with the RIAA they are a member of.

skj 6y ago

Does one imagine that the RIAA is substantially worried about this? I don't. I'm sure they see it as a total win.

wrkronmiller 6y ago
Agreed. If the people behind these take-down requests actually ended piracy, they'd be out of a job.
- panpanna 6y ago
  Don't be naive. When they are done with open piracy they will move to other stuff. Did you whistle a copyrighted tune in the elevator? You owe us money now. (If you think I'm joking, look at Japan who jails musicians for 10+ years for playing covers at parties without paying royalties)
  - atmin 6y ago
    Citation needed. All I can find are jailed musicians in Japan for drug possession.
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    I don't think you're joking, but I think you're making pretty terrible assumptions. A party large enough is effectively a broadcast/performance. It's not as cut and dried and greed-filled as all that. For large acts and musical pieces that have moved into the larger cultural milieu, sure—there's a discussion to be had about the place of the work in that society. (And then maybe the society as a whole should compensate the artist they've so benefited from more directly) Those licensing and copyright laws were designed to protect journeyman musicians from having their life's work robbed by large publishers and broadcasters and it still serves that purpose. Imagine proprietary software from your work was lifted and incorporated by a potential client. I'm certain in most cases that would be grounds for litigation in most peoples' minds. (Or, for example Robert Kearns' case)
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KingOfCoders 6y ago

Which will lead to GitHub adding content filters which will lead to false flags and rejected commits which will lead to algorithms wrongly flagging existing content in your repo which will lead to a byzantine appeal processes which ... ... no wait, that was my Youtube channel.

swiley 6y ago
I'm sure people will start noticing the pattern with these platforms... any day now.
raxxorrax 6y ago
Companies actually lobby the EU, I guess the same is true for the US, to allow "forward scanning". Meaning they would like to proactively try to purge the net of illegal content. Mozilla is part of this alliance. I am going to leave Github, since the tech giants + Mozilla should not be trusted. https://edima-eu.org/ https://edima-eu.org/
- dotdi 6y ago
  I think rather than pretending such efforts don't exist, opposing companies could strategically join to have _some_ say and _some_ influence on how this plays out. Or maybe I'm just being naïve.
  - raxxorrax 6y ago
    I hope you are correct, but reading up about it just left me disappointed. While it may be true that you can influence the group, I think it is often used as an excuse because more participants give more weight to the interest group in the first place. But I hope you are right.
- Sayrus 6y ago
  Is this[1] the document you are talking about? It doesn't seem to read as bad as what you make it sounds but it could end up exactly that bad. As dotdi said, I hope that companies like Mozilla joined to (try to) influence these decisions. [1] https://edima-eu.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ORF-Series_-Safeguards_EDiMA.pdf https://edima-eu.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ORF-Series_-...

tirz 6y ago

You wouldn't clone this repository. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg

sam_goody 6y ago

But now there is no official fork of youtube-dl, so development will either stop or be fragmented. And users will not want to trust any given fork, so downloads will taper off. If the original creator endorses a fork, is he making himself liable? - not sure what happens if you repost after a takedown notice. And the involvement of the law, and the publicity will lead overall to self-censoring, as most devs won't want to deal with this... Doesn't seem to me to making things worse for the RIAA

swiley 6y ago
All the maintainer has to do is collect patches and release an updated version of the canonical source. This isn't something that happens only in theory, the kernel for the OS I'm typing on right now is developed this way. Github is more interesting because of eg issue tracking, but there are other ways to do that.
majewsky 6y ago
> But now there is no official fork of youtube-dl youtube-dl has made new releases after the takedown, so development appears to be continuing.
heinrichhartman 6y ago
Looks like the project moved to GitLab: https://gitlab.com/dstftw/youtube-dl/-/commits/master https://gitlab.com/dstftw/youtube-dl/-/commits/master Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24960039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24960039

jankotek 6y ago

Github is part of critical infrastructure. It is bad enough it is blocked in Iran and some other countries.

simias 6y ago
Then that's a problem that needs fixing. Make the web decentralized again!
- dotancohen 6y ago
  If only we had some form of decentralized source code management.
  - simias 6y ago
    The problem is that git is not feature complete to replace github. In hindsight I wish it had gone the Fossil route: integrate issue management in the distributed repo. If issues, wiki and code review were integrated in git proper it would be trivial to change host on a dime. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way (yet?).
    - kevincox 6y ago
      I'm not so convinced. Seeing as I use a number of issue trackers and code review systems daily and most of them are trash. I'm very happy for git to serve as a compatible core and I can "easily" move between systems as they improve. Basically I am glad that git does source control well. And I prefer that there is a marketplace of issue trackers, patch management and CI software layered on top. Until we have a clear excellent solution I don't think there is a need to bind them together. Let there be choice!
      - simias 6y ago
        I see where you're coming from, but that does create a big barrier to decentralization. The youtube-dl source code is safe and sound but as far as I know all the issues, discussions, unmerged PRs and more are lost forever. I suppose the ideal would be if git somehow provided a low level API that could be used to build these types of solution and then everybody would be free to build their own solution on top of it. Much easier said than done, of course.

qwerty456127 6y ago

> This request wasn't well-received by developers, many of whom retaliated by posting copies of the code. Yesterday, things went from bad to worse when a user with the name 'F* T RIAA' uploaded three MP3s of the songs the RIAA mentioned in its takedown notice RIAA couldn't care less. As far as I understand, they practically are just a team of lawyers whose job is to attack whoever they can reach, take whatever they can down and collect money when possible. They hardly even care about the actual recording business, let alone about how do people feel about them.

michelb 6y ago
Indeed. This just plays into their hands.
- mabbo 6y ago
  Not necessarily. Remember what happened when Digg tried to ban anyone from posting the 09F9 number because it was a secret key to some DVD thing? The users revolted so hard that the people managing the site gave up and let it stand. Then again... who remembers Digg?
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  - dwild 6y ago
    You really think Github will giveup respecting DMCA and copyright infringement? Your example is nice, but it's about the copyright stand of a number... it's much more grey than respecting an actual DMCA notice and being aware of actual copyrighted content on your platform. I don't think so... instead what I expect would most probably happen is that they automate it even more, which will suck even more. We got enough damage already from Youtube doing it...
    - wolfgke 6y ago
      Of course Microsoft (the company behind Github) will not give up respecting DMCA and copyright infringement. The question rather is: how much will developers continue to respect Microsoft?

simias 6y ago

It "backfires" because people post a small number of mp3 files on github that will promptly taken down? We did it reddit, the DMCA is no more! What a silly headline. If you want to actually something that will matter then make sure that github doesn't become a single point of failure for FLOSS software in the future. Or get your GH account banned by posting Lady Gaga tracks in your repos, you do you.

fortran77 6y ago
You just realized the people on Hacker News are no smarter than the folks on reddit!
- daemoncoder 6y ago
  Those two groups are not mutually exclusive :-)
  - fortran77 6y ago
    I enjoy both and I'm not embarrassed. Where else can I get my "Below Deck" news and "Schitt's Creek" memes?
pas 6y ago
TorrentFreak's headlines are terrible "fan service" most of the time.

Pelic4n 6y ago

hashtagmarkup 6y ago
What laws haven't been a disaster? People are still murdered. The environment is still polluted. Taxes are still squandered. Healthcare has become unaffordable.

vorticalbox 6y ago

> While GitHub’s CEO Nat Friedman was annoyed by RIAA takedown efforts, he stressed that the platform legally had to comply, which it did. It would be nice if for once platforms stood up legally for their users when they believe its unjust.

thrownaway954 6y ago
i agree with you... now show them your support by sending them a blank check for their legal fees. oh... i'm sorry... did i offend HN, strike a nerve and become a troll? no i did not. i am demonstrating that most people on this site haven't the slightest clue what they are talking about. it costs money and time to fight something and companies have something called a risk management department that decides whether it is worth the risk to fight or comply. github knows that getting into a heated legal battle is going to cost alot, especially going up against the deep pockets of the RIAA. not saying that github and microsoft don't have deep pockets, but that this _will_ become an expensive battle to fight and defending a grey area open source project isn't worth the time nor the money.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  it costs money and time to fight something and companies have something called a risk management department that decides whether it is worth the risk to fight or comply Genuine question: why? The police won't get involved in a civil matter, only a criminal one. So what happens if you just ignore the other side's lawyers?
  - _underfl0w_ 6y ago
    Couldn't those ignored lawyers invoke the power of the court somehow? E.g. a subpoena or similar? IA(clearly)NAL.
  - bigwavedave 6y ago
    > So what happens if you just ignore the other side's lawyers? IAN[even_close_to_being]AL but I'm fairly sure this would result in a default judgment. At least it does in civil cases between citizens (in the US) and corporations- when a company files with the court clerk, a complaint ("you've been served" kind of thing) is issued to the defendant and they typically have 21 days to respond by filing their own motion with the clerk. If they ignore this or never actually receive this, a hearing is scheduled where a court date is decided, which the court will attempt to communicate to the defendant if they didn't show up to the hearing. The court date will come and go, and if the defendant is still ignoring the situation, the judge assumes there's no contest and will issue a default judgment against the defendant. In the case of corporations vs citizens, this is when damages/fines are accessed and wage garnishment notices get issued. Garnishments (and the corporate equivalent of fines) are no joke- corporate accountants take them extremely seriously because of the penalties for failing to carry them out: if they don't, the company's assets can get seized, accounts can get raided (depending on the type of case [medical and taxes are two large categories] and the plaintiff), and fines get levied and even increase. I imagine it's the same way with default judgments against corporations, but again, I'm no lawyer- just a guy musing about corporate civil suits based on citizen civil suits.

solarkraft 6y ago

This didn't backfire for the RIAA, it backfired for GitHub, who are absolutely not the bad guys in this. They have expressed more support for the project than they would have needed to and are bound to laws.

tw04 6y ago
In the short-term, no. In the long-term - should companies like Microsoft get sick of their crap, all of the RIAAs power is based in regulatory capture. We can (and should) change the copyright laws that enable them to sue someone over a creative work that quite frankly they shouldn't get a single piece of after an extremely short period of time. The RIAA is big, Microsoft is much, much bigger and could tie them up in courts and outspend them in lobbying without missing a beat. You helped make an album? Great - here's your flat fee, royalties go to the artist and the artist only. The problem would fix itself overnight.
- ddevault 6y ago
  Microsoft is a member of RIAA.
- lovehashbrowns 6y ago
  Setting aside the fact that Microsoft is a member of the RIAA alongside other major companies, the RIAA isn’t the only one interested in lobbying for strict copyright laws. There’s the MPAA, Disney, Viacom, etc. Ask Google how they fared when Viacom tried to sue YouTube into oblivion. :) Hint: Content ID
  - arpa 6y ago
    Google is new money, these fucks are old money. Print establishments are older money. Print doesn't care about piracy. Print has a good academia racket going.
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motohagiography 6y ago

The EFF appears to concur with a previous comment I made on this topic: "EFF believes that the circumvention restrictions in DMCA section 1201, which prevent people from bypassing technological restrictions, are too broad. DMCA 1201 is incredibly broad, apparently allowing rightsholders to legally harass any ‘trafficker’ in code that lets users re-take control of their devices from DRM locks,” EFF wrote recently." This creates an unaccountable enforcement party who can harass "targets" on behalf of another unaccountable party. The way it is written, reddit would have to take down a selectively unpopular subreddit for providing technology that facilitates the trafficking of copyrighted images. Whose copyright? Who cares? One could inject a bunch of copyrighted material into sites and then use a DMCA notice against their upstream provider to shut them off - a pattern I would predict is likely to materialize in coming months. Write sideloaded apps for a community because an app store uses their policy against you? "Circumvention!" The opportunities for abuse are endless. While teleological arguments are always a bit iffy, the final objective is to ensure that there can be no information or service on the internet that is outside not only U.S. subpoena, but that there can be no communities or networks of personal relationships that are not governed by legacy institutions. It is under the auspices of people being "accountable," for their thoughts and beliefs, and yet without precision about to whom one is being held to account by. To every establishment growth is the greatest threat of all, and the DMCA s1201 is effectively designed to suppress it. The good news is these blunt attacks are a forcing function for developing decentralized technologies, and every one of these creates a cohort of new hackers.

phkahler 6y ago

Isnt YouTube meant for content distribution including downloading? I thought they encouraged remixing and reposting videos, is that not correct?

beloch 6y ago

Music consumers across multiple generations, while supporting artists, have expected a certain degree of freedom with the music playback technology placed in their hands. Whether it was recording a custom mix-tape for a special friend full of copied tracks or ripping a stream to play back on demand, there are certain things that most people see as reasonable and harmless. RIAA made a habit of attacking things seen as reasonable and harmless and has earned a reputation for being unreasonable and harmful. Musicians deserve better. Ultimately, they are the bosses here. Perhaps someday they'll start acting like it.

na85 6y ago
>Musicians deserve better. Some do. I seem to recall Nirvana being outspoken of their corporate attack dogs the RIAA back in the Napster days when the RIAA was with a straight face claiming damages that totaled more money than was in circulation, globally.
- daniel-thompson 6y ago
  Do you mean Metallica? South Park did an episode about how ridiculous their arguments against Napster were[1]. I don't remember Nirvana weighing in on the RIAA's side (incidentally, Nirvana disbanded in 1994 after the death of Kurt Cobain; Napster was founded in 1999). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Rock_Hard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Rock_Hard
  - arpa 6y ago
    It was metallica.
- na85 6y ago
  My bad, mixed up Metallica and Nirvana in my head. I don't listen to metal, obviously. Can't edit.
backtoyoujim 6y ago
Does anyone think that music company executives (the boss's boss) have ever paid money for mp3s, cds, tapes, 8-tracks, and vinyl ?

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

I'm not sure I'd call this "backfiring," as I'm sure that the RIAA must have seen this coming (they have been the Snidely Whiplash of the tech industry for a couple of decades). This kind of reaction is not exactly anything new; just the medium. I think that pirating streams actually helps to sell music. At least, in my limited sample pool, that has been the case. I used to stream an Internet radio station that played Industrial (dating myself -no one else will), and would often grab songs from it. A lot of times, the only reason that I grabbed it, was so that I could find out more about it. The quality of the audio grab wasn't really what I wanted as a "keeper." These pretty obscure groups made a lot of sales (to me) because they had their stuff out there.

YetAnotherNick 6y ago
> I think that pirating streams actually helps to sell music. At least, in my limited sample pool, that has been the case. So you say that users pirate the music and then buy the same music they illegally downloaded?
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  In my case, yes, but I haven't done that in quite a while (YouTube became a good place to sample music).
- AndrewUnmuted 6y ago
  AFAIK, the illegal part is not the downloading, but the act of uploading/seeding the assets. But this pipeline you establish - of people "pirating" music and then purchasing that same music later on - was a very common one, and remains so to this day. Before digital audio was a thing, people would routinely record songs onto tape while listening to the radio. They would then play this music in other contexts, to which they had no license, effectively making these individuals "pirates." Any "pirate" who recorded a Todd Rundgren song in 1972 from the radio, and then purchased his full double-LP "Something/Anything" at Sears the next week, was definitely a win for the artist, the record label, and the industry as a whole. On top of this, also don't forget that even to this day, consumers commonly purchase the same music when it gets released on a newer audio distribution format (vinyl -> 8-track -> cassette -> CD -> iTunes -> Spotify/Apple Music). "Piracy" now does commonly mean a "purchase" later.

wglb 6y ago

It would appear that if you are going to stick your thumb in a grizzly bear's eye, you should really get it up to the second knuckle.

djhaskin987 6y ago

> As we highlighted earlier, hundreds of new copies of the youtube-dl code appeared online in response, also on GitHub. > While GitHub’s CEO Nat Friedman was annoyed by RIAA takedown efforts, he stressed that the platform legally had to comply, which it did. More recently, the company even said that users who continue to republish the code risk being banned. Mates, just put the youtube-dl code up on IPFS[1] or SourceHut[2], which is a platform much more sympathetic to and defensive for the open source cause. No need to put it back up on GitHub and risk banishment there. There are lots of options here. The RIAA can't sensor open source software. At least, I'd like to see them try. I wanted also to say that I don't necessarily agree with jacking videos off of youtube. But who knows? What if you have the permission of the youtuber? What if the youtuber is just posting stuff that's in the public domain anyway? What if you're downloading the whole video so that you can get clips of the video you intend to put in your own video in an attempt to criticize the video, thus invoking fair use? The RIAA does not and should not have the power to take down open source software just because it could be used for nefarious purposes. There are also plenty of innocent uses out there. 1: https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/ 2: https://git.sr.ht/ https://git.sr.ht/

TheDesolate0 6y ago

How many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man!

Animats 6y ago

This makes it necessary to sync another service with Github for software projects. Once Github, now a unit of Microsoft, gets takedowns going, legit software projects will be taken down through random errors. Systems which rely on Github in production, such as Rust's "cargo", now need to be using multiple sources and checking hashes.

YetAnotherNick 6y ago
Even without that package manager relying on Github sounds plain stupid to me. What if Github decides to rate limit, gets banned in country(it got banned in India once) or lot of other things that could happen at Microsoft's whims.
the5avage 6y ago
Why does it rely on Github? Can't it download git repos from other sites?
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  It 99% does not. Cargo does not download the sources of projects from github. The package index is downloaded as a git repo from github.

rch 6y ago

I'd rather see a curated database of content that isn't covered by any enforcement arm of the recording industry, so I can compensate those musicians directly.

YetAnotherNick 6y ago
What benefit would that make? I heard mostly good things about the studios from artist's perspective. They might be forced to lie though in public. You can buy the songs from itunes and artist will receive most of the money.
- rch 6y ago
  It could be beneficial if it contributed to diminishing the coercive influence of the industry with respect to copyright law and actions like the one being discussed here. I haven't used iTunes in quite a while, but it's worth noting that Bandcamp is still waiving its revenue share the first Friday of the month. Of course that only makes sense given the variety options which also support the platform itself, like their vinyl program.
rollcat 6y ago
Closest that comes to my mind is probably Bandcamp.

miga 6y ago

I feel sorry for GitHub people that are caught between RIAA's vandalism of the law on one side and activist vandalism on the other. To keep their business they should defend from both sides.

craftyguy 6y ago
I don't feel sorry at all for Microsoft. They have a long history of harassing developers (e.g., [1]. It's nice to see them bear some of that for once. 1. https://www.infoworld.com/article/2676459/microsoft-sues-linux-based-vendor-over-patents.html https://www.infoworld.com/article/2676459/microsoft-sues-lin...

supernihil 6y ago

https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/e672d697b36e82007f2f7c98747937895981e697 https://github.com/github/dmca/commit/e672d697b36e82007f2f7c... run 1. run `node dmca.js` to get a Justin Timberlake - Tunnel Vision (Official Music Video) (Explicit).mp3 file 2. `node youtube.dl.js` to get a youtube-dl-master.zip file ;-)

Simulacra 6y ago

With bit torrent, I’m surprised that the RIAA can’t even keep up. it’s not like Napster anymore, you can download an entire discography

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