7 ms·

Excellent. Looks like they've removed the tests for RIAA member videos as the only change, which I assume helped get this restored: https://github.com/ytdl-org

by envy2 6y ago

Excellent. Looks like they've removed the tests for RIAA member videos as the only change, which I assume helped get this restored: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/1fb034d029c8b7feafe45f64e6a0808663ad315e https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/1fb034d029c8b7...

offtop5 6y ago
Fantastic compromise. Arguing that you have a right to break RIAA DRM is much harder that taking it out entirely. I use this for downloading national archive videos off youtube, I'm very happy about this news
crumbshot 6y ago
And not even purged from the repo, it's still in the history if needed. Seems like the copyright holders making a big fuss over nothing really.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  I wonder if RIAA lawyers believe themselves productive members of society, or if they recognize themselves as the parasites they are.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    They see themselves as the last bastion of decency in a world full of violation.
    - contravariant 6y ago
      This is neither here nor there but Nobel Prize winner Gerard 't Hooft has written an opinion piece on wrong-way drivers in science who seem convinced that everyone else is going the wrong way [1] (it's in Dutch unfortunately, but then the Dutch the word 'spookrider' (lit. 'ghostrider') is a lot cooler than 'wrong-way driver' IMHO). It's a concept that's somehow always stuck with me whenever I hear about people who seem convinced everyone else is wrong. [1]: https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/spookrijders.html https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/spookrijders.html
      - codetrotter 6y ago
        Yeah but sometimes it really is everyone else that is wrong. For example, when most people used to think the world was flat.
        bigbubba 6y ago
        'Everybody' thinks RMS is wrong. He has the worst case of Cassandra's curse I've ever heard of. But I think it tends to not work like this. Incidentally, the flat earth thing is mostly a myth; literate people have know the earth is round since the ancient Greeks figured it out. Columbus was ridiculed for thinking the Earth was smaller than it really is (his critics were right) and the only reason his trip didn't end badly for him is shear dumb luck in running into another continent in his quest to reach Asia the looooong way around.
        drilldrive 6y ago
        What is RMS?
        detaro 6y ago
        Richard Stallman
        jacquesm 6y ago
        Doubly lucky because if not for that continent he likely wouldn't have made it all the way, a trip about four times further!
        GuB-42 6y ago
        That educated people believed that the Earth was flat is largely a myth. Not only people knew the Earth was round since antiquity, but they also had a good idea about its diameter. Heliocentrism was a bit more debated but for good reasons. Early heliocentric models were actually worse than contemporary geocentric models to calculate the motion of planets. All that to say that "everyone else is wrong" doesn't happen often in practice, at least not among educated people. And when that happens, either the evidence is solid and it is generally well accepted or it is not, and there is no reason for others to accept it. The burden or proof is for the one who makes the claim. To go back to heliocentrism, the reason it is the prevailing theory right now is because the model has been refined and now, it matches observation better than older models based en epicycles. It is not because of some philosophical reason about our place in the universe.
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    Everyone thinks they're saving the world. I'm sure the RIAA sleeps soundly knowing they're defending the rights of creative individuals to make a living and holding the line against the scourge of amoral nihilistic pirates.
    - andrepd 6y ago
      I'm much more cynical. They know they're bastards but they make far far too much money to care.
      - ForHackernews 6y ago
        I doubt it. Every time there's an article on here about the latest outrage from $FaceGoogzon there's no shortage of well-paid rationalisers in the comments. I'd expect the same is true of the RIAA. Especially among their legal team: there are far more unseemly clients than the RIAA out there.
      - jacobr1 6y ago
        Everyone is the hero in their own story. Few people actually gleefully play the scoundrel. The ability humans have to self-rationalize is amazing. And even when folks are doing something they know is wrong, often it gets justified in the balance: the victim deserved it, the perpetrator is Robin Hood and proceeds will benefit those who need it more, the action makes up for a historic injustice, etc ...
        wpietri 6y ago
        People may not play the scoundrel much, but I see plenty of people playing the ronin, the soldier of fortune. E.g., the contract programmer on a 6-month gig where they know the project is fucked, but as long as the check clears, it's not their problem. The sysadmin who doesn't much care what's on the servers. Plenty of others, for sure.
    - RobRivera 6y ago
      There's plenty of people out there who simply do X for financial payout Y. As a matter of fact, the financial services sector thrives with such people
  - johannes1234321 6y ago
    In their self view they ensure that artists earn money for their living, thus allow artists to survive. And there is some truth to it. Finding the right balance is hard ... but in my view they "rights holder industry" is too strong indeed.
    - grumple 6y ago
      I'd be interested in seeing how much money from their suits gets to the artists, or even to distributors - or what effect on revenue their deterrence causes.
      - bigbubba 6y ago
        Right, these lawyers are parasites sucking blood not just from society in general, but also blood from most of the artists ostensibly represented by the RIAA. If any artists come out ahead from anything the RIAA's lawyers do, it's only the elite already-wealthy ones.
      - redwall_hp 6y ago
        It's not really a secret. The music industry has always been about concerts: radio play (or streaming, which uses the same revenue model) doesn't pay anything and artists get pennies on the dollar for record sales. The RIAA represents record labels more than artists.
      - johannes1234321 6y ago
        For German GEMA (which is working a bit different from RIAA, so can't be fully conapred) there are some numbers on Wikipedia, till 2012: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesellschaft_f%C3%BCr_musikalische_Auff%C3%BChrungs-_und_mechanische_Vervielf%C3%A4ltigungsrechte#Umsatz https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesellschaft_f%C3%BCr_musika... They made 820 million € in revenue, 128M€ are their "costs", 692M€ of that 15% are their fees, remainingnis split between labels and artists and artists got 316.5M€, thus a quite low fraction ... and in German law the creator is theoretically stronger positioned than in US copyright. (Now this isn't 100% fair as analysis, as some of the payments to labels go to artits, as well and labels also do some marketing etc benefiting the artist ... and then there is this weird distribution mechanism where a successful artist gets over proportionally more ... but in the end: "small" artists only get a very tiny part of the cake)
  - simias 6y ago
    This line of questioning on Startup News is quite amusing to me, I must say. How many of us can really pretend to make society a better place?
    - madhadron 6y ago
      I work on managed databases. I actually do think that is a positive effect on the world, like many other obscure but important pieces of infrastructure.
    - katsura 6y ago
      At least some of us don't try to actively make it harder/worse. So that's a plus.
      - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
        I'm convinced the companies considered as 'evil' now didn't think they would at first either. Something something unintended consequences. I mean Reddit; bastion of free speech or platform for hate speech? (they cracked down on that over the years) Dropbox; File synchronization and sharing platform or child porn exchange? Airbnb; Great way to find an affordable place to stay and / or rent out unused room, or platform for dodgy landlords that scam people with pretty pictures? Coinbase: Platform for libertarian wet dream crypto exchange, or platform for laundering your ill-gotten gains? Just to name a few YC examples. Everything can be used for bad things and make the world a worse place, and they don't always do the right thing.
        kortilla 6y ago
        But who goes into being an RIAA lawyer position thinking it’s going to be good at first? You have to have believed in the RIAA’s stance from the get-go because it hasn’t really changed.
        HelloNurse 6y ago
        Or you have to be a morally and professionally substandard lawyer who cannot find a better job.
  - blueline 6y ago
    yeah unlike us hackers who are saving the world with targeted ads and food delivery
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      Technology has had an impact on nearly any industry you can think of. As such, there is no shortage of tech work outside of ad tech. Ten years ago I worked on ad tech shit for Amazon, but I quit when I realized that made me a parasite. I don't work in food delivery, but I'd say getting a pizza from point A to B is a hell of a lot more productive than being a lawyer for the RIAA.
      - wpietri 6y ago
        Yeah, same. Years ago I did work for a medical advertising company. They were lovely, smart, creative people. But the more I thought about it, the more I didn't want to aid for-profit manipulation of people. I've stayed away from ads since, and never regretted it.
      - _jal 6y ago
        Appified pizza delivery is rent seeking. There is zero need for a multinational between hungry people and food delivery. Inserting them raises costs, lowers service quality, and lowers revenue to restaurants. Off topic, but I would like to note this thread's congruence to Snow Crash: There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery
        bigbubba 6y ago
        I was thinking more along the line of the people who actually deliver the pizza. It's an honest job, unlike being an RIAA lawyer or ad tech programmer. But next to either of those, even delivery app developers are saints.
        slugiscool99 6y ago
        Snowcrash was kinda crazy in how it predicted where things would go.
  - Yetanfou 6y ago
    I wonder this about a large majority of corporate lawyers who somehow seem like members of a parasitic species which has found a host which they can exploit for resources by inducing changes in their behaviour, comparable to the way the Toxoplasma parasite makes mice less scared of cats [1]. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/104/15/6442 https://www.pnas.org/content/104/15/6442
  - rch 6y ago
    I think if people are paid well enough, they can convince themselves that the harm they do is a net positive because it demonstrates that the system needs to change.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > I wonder if RIAA lawyers believe themselves productive members of society, or if they recognize themselves as the parasites they are. At least one way they could rationalize their actions is by taking an outlandish but not uncommon view of property rights: that no one would bother to create anything without being able to profit from ownership of it, and the more they can profit the more they'll create. There's also the even more outlandish view that whatever the market does is good for society by definition, so if the market pays you to do something you can assume it's beneficial to society.
  - oconnor663 6y ago
    I mean, if we believe it benefits us to have copyright laws, then obviously it benefits us to have copyright lawyers, and the rest is just implementation details. I'd wager 99% of people believe copyright laws are a net good.
    - nybble41 6y ago
      > I'd wager 99% of people believe copyright laws are a net good. If asked, a majority might say that (though IMHO nowhere near 99%). Their actions indicate otherwise, however, and a person's beliefs are better judged by their actions than by their words.
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 6y ago
    Things could be much worse; it's remarkable they don't sue about being called a parasites.
- saynay 6y ago
  I have become convinced that the RIAA lawyers emerge from their crypts every few years, generating a slew of copystrikes to justify their retainer fee.
  - shmerl 6y ago
    That's exactly what they do. Troll everyone they can reach.
  - greggturkington 6y ago
    This software makes it easy for people to download copyrighted movies and the RIAA attorneys (at least some) are acting in good faith to prevent people from breaking copyright law and causing their client damages. Can someone argue against me please? (genuinely contribute to discussion by arguing against my own biases, call me a moron instead of downvoting)
    - pil4rin 6y ago
      By this right, Zoom/ Google Meet / Teams have screen recording that would allow for this as well. How deep should we go down this hypothetical rabbithole?
    - chmod775 6y ago
      Even if we take that as a given, my response would be: "Yes, so what?" The software also a long list of legitimate uses, as was demonstrated by the various prominent users that spoke up. I can use the camera on my phone to record a copyrighted movie, and thus circumventing the DRM, or just use a device like this: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-USB3HDCAP-Video-Capture-Device/dp/B00PC5HUA6/ https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-USB3HDCAP-Video-Capture-... (analog VGA is probably preferred here, for lack of HDCP support). And that is only necessary if we're talking about some modern DRM that makes your OS work against you, so you can't directly capture with OBS or something. We're gonna ban all of those now?
    - evilduck 6y ago
      Creating or providing a tool and using a tool are not the same action. Likewise, since there are legal fair use scenarios of copyrighted materials (short clips, criticism, satire, academic, etc) so even using the tool isn't inherently against the law and the person creating or providing the tools can't know and legally doesn't need to know the end user's intentions. Copyright lawyers working for the highest profile abuser of copyrights absolutely know the very basics of copyright law and are therefore acting in bad faith.
- joseluisq 6y ago
  > Seems like the copyright holders making a big fuss over nothing really. This should be the conclusion. Since they have won nothing with such whole noise. Only increase more the OSS wave.
- userbinator 6y ago
  They don't understand technology, and in this case I don't think they should be told...
- toyg 6y ago
  It's a shot across the bow, to achieve a chilling effect. They've achieved a few weeks of downtime, for now, and sent a message to the project that they're being watched. It might well not be the end of hostilities.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    I think you may be right about the fight not being over, I don't think they actually achieved any downtime. Youtube-dl didn't stop working for me while the takedown was in effect, and was even updated during that period.
  - goerz 6y ago
    Seems to me they got much more of a Streisand effect than a chilling effect! ;-)
    - toyg 6y ago
      In terms of usage, yes. In terms of development, we'll have to see. I am an optimist, but I have to recognise that good devs tend to skew away from opensource projects that are in lawyers' crosshairs, because they bring more trouble than fame.
- dastx 6y ago
  My experience has been that Github doesn't ever purge commits from the history. Even when you rewrite the history, all the dangling commits are still there and can be access. I've yet to find a way to force Github to do a gc so such commits are removed. Without Github running a GC on the repo, the commits will not be removed.
  - leafmeal 6y ago
    You can contact their support to do it for you, for example in the case of pushed secrets.
    - dastx 6y ago
      That shouldn't be necessary. Something as fundamental should be made available as some sort of API.
    - pabs3 6y ago
      Pushed secrets in public repos are automatically archived by third parties so removing commits containing them would not be enough to prevent their use, just rotating the secrets is the way to go here. https://twitter.com/andrzejdyjak/status/1324360905237372929 https://twitter.com/andrzejdyjak/status/1324360905237372929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25013756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25013756
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- izietto 6y ago
  I guess that if they want to run those tests they can cherry-pick that commit, run the tests and then drop it
- mr_mitm 6y ago
  The way I read it, the test cases weren't really the problem. The RIAA was alleging that the purpose of youtube-dl is to circumvent DRM and they try to back this statement up by pointing out that copyrighted works are being downloaded in the test cases. Here is a bit of a discussion about it by seemingly knowledgeable people: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/57421/is-youtube-dl-takedown-due-to-their-tests-which-use-copyrighted-content https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/57421/is-youtube-dl-... > > the source code expressly suggests its use to copy and/or distribute the following copyrighted works owned by our member companies: > > Icona Pop – I Love It (feat. Charli XCX) [Official Video], owned by Warner Music Group Justin Timberlake – Tunnel Vision (Explicit), owned by Sony Music Group Taylor Swift – Shake it Off, owned/exclusively licensed by Universal Music Group > Complainants are "confused" about actual infringement (which is prohibited by copyright law), and creating a method for infringing copyright. Under DMCA and US copyright law, copying is infringing, programming is not infringing. The complaint does not clearly allege unauthorized copying of another person's intellectual property, and their complaint is based on the theory that certain programming actions constitute copyright infringement. I don't actually think they are confused, I think they are testing the boundaries.
  - qw3rty01 6y ago
    Hmm they seem to be taking it from the approach that RIAA was sending a takedown on the grounds that youtube-dl was infringing on the copyright of their members, but that doesn't seem to be what the actual takedown claims. Instead it's requesting takedown on the grounds that youtube-dl is breaking protection measures in violation of 1201, and the answer given doesn't really address that except to say that breaking protection measures isn't infringement (which wasn't what they claimed in the first place). EFF represented youtube-dl to get the repository reinstated, and their lawyers instead tried to prove that YouTube doesn't have DRM, and that the test cases provided were neither suggesting other people to infringe, nor infringing themselves (falling under fair use). The full response is here: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/11/2020-11-16-RIAA-reversal-effletter.pdf https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/11/2020-11-1...
echelon 6y ago
It would have been fantastic if every test using RIAA copyrighted music had been replaced with public domain sources. Or, better yet, videos the maintainers created and uploaded themselves.
- gpvos 6y ago
  That won't work, because Youtube applies the particular sort of protection that those tests exercise only to copyrighted music.
  - owaislone 6y ago
    Interesting. Do you know how hard it would be for someone to upload a bunch of original videos with same copyright as the videos in question?
    - teach 6y ago
      As far as I know, that's impossible. The particular DRM applied to those test videos is ONLY available to large partners like Vevo. Which is why they were in the test suite.
  - Thiez 6y ago
    Just about all music you can find online is copyrighted. I think you mean that it applies the protection only to music where the copyright is held by a large organization.
    - gpvos 6y ago
      Yes, yes, it was short for "registered with Youtube's copyright filter".
shawnz 6y ago
Shouldn't these tests be considered fair use since they are arguably necessary to validate interoperability?
- R0b0t1 6y ago
  Yes, and I unfortunately still see no argument related to the DMCA's provision that breaking copy protection is legal if you have a license to use the work. In this case, a license to use it via a specific browser is not mentioned, so you can rightly download it with anything. This was the suspected cause for py-kms's reinstatement but as it related to Windows licensing.
umvi 6y ago
Is there a way to get equivalent tests on non RIAA videos?
Rochus 6y ago
> Looks like they've removed the tests for RIAA member videos as the only change And even that was more likely to allow certain somewhat too loud organizations to save face, not out of legal necessity.

by envy2 6y ago

offtop5 6y ago

Fantastic compromise. Arguing that you have a right to break RIAA DRM is much harder that taking it out entirely. I use this for downloading national archive videos off youtube, I'm very happy about this news

crumbshot 6y ago

And not even purged from the repo, it's still in the history if needed. Seems like the copyright holders making a big fuss over nothing really.

bigbubba 6y ago
I wonder if RIAA lawyers believe themselves productive members of society, or if they recognize themselves as the parasites they are.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  They see themselves as the last bastion of decency in a world full of violation.
  - contravariant 6y ago
    This is neither here nor there but Nobel Prize winner Gerard 't Hooft has written an opinion piece on wrong-way drivers in science who seem convinced that everyone else is going the wrong way [1] (it's in Dutch unfortunately, but then the Dutch the word 'spookrider' (lit. 'ghostrider') is a lot cooler than 'wrong-way driver' IMHO). It's a concept that's somehow always stuck with me whenever I hear about people who seem convinced everyone else is wrong. [1]: https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/spookrijders.html https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/spookrijders.html
    - codetrotter 6y ago
      Yeah but sometimes it really is everyone else that is wrong. For example, when most people used to think the world was flat.
      - bigbubba 6y ago
        'Everybody' thinks RMS is wrong. He has the worst case of Cassandra's curse I've ever heard of. But I think it tends to not work like this. Incidentally, the flat earth thing is mostly a myth; literate people have know the earth is round since the ancient Greeks figured it out. Columbus was ridiculed for thinking the Earth was smaller than it really is (his critics were right) and the only reason his trip didn't end badly for him is shear dumb luck in running into another continent in his quest to reach Asia the looooong way around.
        drilldrive 6y ago
        What is RMS?
        detaro 6y ago
        Richard Stallman
        jacquesm 6y ago
        Doubly lucky because if not for that continent he likely wouldn't have made it all the way, a trip about four times further!
      - GuB-42 6y ago
        That educated people believed that the Earth was flat is largely a myth. Not only people knew the Earth was round since antiquity, but they also had a good idea about its diameter. Heliocentrism was a bit more debated but for good reasons. Early heliocentric models were actually worse than contemporary geocentric models to calculate the motion of planets. All that to say that "everyone else is wrong" doesn't happen often in practice, at least not among educated people. And when that happens, either the evidence is solid and it is generally well accepted or it is not, and there is no reason for others to accept it. The burden or proof is for the one who makes the claim. To go back to heliocentrism, the reason it is the prevailing theory right now is because the model has been refined and now, it matches observation better than older models based en epicycles. It is not because of some philosophical reason about our place in the universe.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Everyone thinks they're saving the world. I'm sure the RIAA sleeps soundly knowing they're defending the rights of creative individuals to make a living and holding the line against the scourge of amoral nihilistic pirates.
  - andrepd 6y ago
    I'm much more cynical. They know they're bastards but they make far far too much money to care.
    - ForHackernews 6y ago
      I doubt it. Every time there's an article on here about the latest outrage from $FaceGoogzon there's no shortage of well-paid rationalisers in the comments. I'd expect the same is true of the RIAA. Especially among their legal team: there are far more unseemly clients than the RIAA out there.
    - jacobr1 6y ago
      Everyone is the hero in their own story. Few people actually gleefully play the scoundrel. The ability humans have to self-rationalize is amazing. And even when folks are doing something they know is wrong, often it gets justified in the balance: the victim deserved it, the perpetrator is Robin Hood and proceeds will benefit those who need it more, the action makes up for a historic injustice, etc ...
      - wpietri 6y ago
        People may not play the scoundrel much, but I see plenty of people playing the ronin, the soldier of fortune. E.g., the contract programmer on a 6-month gig where they know the project is fucked, but as long as the check clears, it's not their problem. The sysadmin who doesn't much care what's on the servers. Plenty of others, for sure.
  - RobRivera 6y ago
    There's plenty of people out there who simply do X for financial payout Y. As a matter of fact, the financial services sector thrives with such people
- johannes1234321 6y ago
  In their self view they ensure that artists earn money for their living, thus allow artists to survive. And there is some truth to it. Finding the right balance is hard ... but in my view they "rights holder industry" is too strong indeed.
  - grumple 6y ago
    I'd be interested in seeing how much money from their suits gets to the artists, or even to distributors - or what effect on revenue their deterrence causes.
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      Right, these lawyers are parasites sucking blood not just from society in general, but also blood from most of the artists ostensibly represented by the RIAA. If any artists come out ahead from anything the RIAA's lawyers do, it's only the elite already-wealthy ones.
    - redwall_hp 6y ago
      It's not really a secret. The music industry has always been about concerts: radio play (or streaming, which uses the same revenue model) doesn't pay anything and artists get pennies on the dollar for record sales. The RIAA represents record labels more than artists.
    - johannes1234321 6y ago
      For German GEMA (which is working a bit different from RIAA, so can't be fully conapred) there are some numbers on Wikipedia, till 2012: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesellschaft_f%C3%BCr_musikalische_Auff%C3%BChrungs-_und_mechanische_Vervielf%C3%A4ltigungsrechte#Umsatz https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesellschaft_f%C3%BCr_musika... They made 820 million € in revenue, 128M€ are their "costs", 692M€ of that 15% are their fees, remainingnis split between labels and artists and artists got 316.5M€, thus a quite low fraction ... and in German law the creator is theoretically stronger positioned than in US copyright. (Now this isn't 100% fair as analysis, as some of the payments to labels go to artits, as well and labels also do some marketing etc benefiting the artist ... and then there is this weird distribution mechanism where a successful artist gets over proportionally more ... but in the end: "small" artists only get a very tiny part of the cake)
- simias 6y ago
  This line of questioning on Startup News is quite amusing to me, I must say. How many of us can really pretend to make society a better place?
  - madhadron 6y ago
    I work on managed databases. I actually do think that is a positive effect on the world, like many other obscure but important pieces of infrastructure.
  - katsura 6y ago
    At least some of us don't try to actively make it harder/worse. So that's a plus.
    - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
      I'm convinced the companies considered as 'evil' now didn't think they would at first either. Something something unintended consequences. I mean Reddit; bastion of free speech or platform for hate speech? (they cracked down on that over the years) Dropbox; File synchronization and sharing platform or child porn exchange? Airbnb; Great way to find an affordable place to stay and / or rent out unused room, or platform for dodgy landlords that scam people with pretty pictures? Coinbase: Platform for libertarian wet dream crypto exchange, or platform for laundering your ill-gotten gains? Just to name a few YC examples. Everything can be used for bad things and make the world a worse place, and they don't always do the right thing.
      - kortilla 6y ago
        But who goes into being an RIAA lawyer position thinking it’s going to be good at first? You have to have believed in the RIAA’s stance from the get-go because it hasn’t really changed.
        HelloNurse 6y ago
        Or you have to be a morally and professionally substandard lawyer who cannot find a better job.
- blueline 6y ago
  yeah unlike us hackers who are saving the world with targeted ads and food delivery
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    Technology has had an impact on nearly any industry you can think of. As such, there is no shortage of tech work outside of ad tech. Ten years ago I worked on ad tech shit for Amazon, but I quit when I realized that made me a parasite. I don't work in food delivery, but I'd say getting a pizza from point A to B is a hell of a lot more productive than being a lawyer for the RIAA.
    - wpietri 6y ago
      Yeah, same. Years ago I did work for a medical advertising company. They were lovely, smart, creative people. But the more I thought about it, the more I didn't want to aid for-profit manipulation of people. I've stayed away from ads since, and never regretted it.
    - _jal 6y ago
      Appified pizza delivery is rent seeking. There is zero need for a multinational between hungry people and food delivery. Inserting them raises costs, lowers service quality, and lowers revenue to restaurants. Off topic, but I would like to note this thread's congruence to Snow Crash: There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery
      - bigbubba 6y ago
        I was thinking more along the line of the people who actually deliver the pizza. It's an honest job, unlike being an RIAA lawyer or ad tech programmer. But next to either of those, even delivery app developers are saints.
      - slugiscool99 6y ago
        Snowcrash was kinda crazy in how it predicted where things would go.
- Yetanfou 6y ago
  I wonder this about a large majority of corporate lawyers who somehow seem like members of a parasitic species which has found a host which they can exploit for resources by inducing changes in their behaviour, comparable to the way the Toxoplasma parasite makes mice less scared of cats [1]. [1] https://www.pnas.org/content/104/15/6442 https://www.pnas.org/content/104/15/6442
- rch 6y ago
  I think if people are paid well enough, they can convince themselves that the harm they do is a net positive because it demonstrates that the system needs to change.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > I wonder if RIAA lawyers believe themselves productive members of society, or if they recognize themselves as the parasites they are. At least one way they could rationalize their actions is by taking an outlandish but not uncommon view of property rights: that no one would bother to create anything without being able to profit from ownership of it, and the more they can profit the more they'll create. There's also the even more outlandish view that whatever the market does is good for society by definition, so if the market pays you to do something you can assume it's beneficial to society.
- oconnor663 6y ago
  I mean, if we believe it benefits us to have copyright laws, then obviously it benefits us to have copyright lawyers, and the rest is just implementation details. I'd wager 99% of people believe copyright laws are a net good.
  - nybble41 6y ago
    > I'd wager 99% of people believe copyright laws are a net good. If asked, a majority might say that (though IMHO nowhere near 99%). Their actions indicate otherwise, however, and a person's beliefs are better judged by their actions than by their words.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 6y ago
  Things could be much worse; it's remarkable they don't sue about being called a parasites.
saynay 6y ago
I have become convinced that the RIAA lawyers emerge from their crypts every few years, generating a slew of copystrikes to justify their retainer fee.
- shmerl 6y ago
  That's exactly what they do. Troll everyone they can reach.
- greggturkington 6y ago
  This software makes it easy for people to download copyrighted movies and the RIAA attorneys (at least some) are acting in good faith to prevent people from breaking copyright law and causing their client damages. Can someone argue against me please? (genuinely contribute to discussion by arguing against my own biases, call me a moron instead of downvoting)
  - pil4rin 6y ago
    By this right, Zoom/ Google Meet / Teams have screen recording that would allow for this as well. How deep should we go down this hypothetical rabbithole?
  - chmod775 6y ago
    Even if we take that as a given, my response would be: "Yes, so what?" The software also a long list of legitimate uses, as was demonstrated by the various prominent users that spoke up. I can use the camera on my phone to record a copyrighted movie, and thus circumventing the DRM, or just use a device like this: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-USB3HDCAP-Video-Capture-Device/dp/B00PC5HUA6/ https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-USB3HDCAP-Video-Capture-... (analog VGA is probably preferred here, for lack of HDCP support). And that is only necessary if we're talking about some modern DRM that makes your OS work against you, so you can't directly capture with OBS or something. We're gonna ban all of those now?
  - evilduck 6y ago
    Creating or providing a tool and using a tool are not the same action. Likewise, since there are legal fair use scenarios of copyrighted materials (short clips, criticism, satire, academic, etc) so even using the tool isn't inherently against the law and the person creating or providing the tools can't know and legally doesn't need to know the end user's intentions. Copyright lawyers working for the highest profile abuser of copyrights absolutely know the very basics of copyright law and are therefore acting in bad faith.
joseluisq 6y ago
> Seems like the copyright holders making a big fuss over nothing really. This should be the conclusion. Since they have won nothing with such whole noise. Only increase more the OSS wave.
userbinator 6y ago
They don't understand technology, and in this case I don't think they should be told...
toyg 6y ago
It's a shot across the bow, to achieve a chilling effect. They've achieved a few weeks of downtime, for now, and sent a message to the project that they're being watched. It might well not be the end of hostilities.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  I think you may be right about the fight not being over, I don't think they actually achieved any downtime. Youtube-dl didn't stop working for me while the takedown was in effect, and was even updated during that period.
- goerz 6y ago
  Seems to me they got much more of a Streisand effect than a chilling effect! ;-)
  - toyg 6y ago
    In terms of usage, yes. In terms of development, we'll have to see. I am an optimist, but I have to recognise that good devs tend to skew away from opensource projects that are in lawyers' crosshairs, because they bring more trouble than fame.
dastx 6y ago
My experience has been that Github doesn't ever purge commits from the history. Even when you rewrite the history, all the dangling commits are still there and can be access. I've yet to find a way to force Github to do a gc so such commits are removed. Without Github running a GC on the repo, the commits will not be removed.
- leafmeal 6y ago
  You can contact their support to do it for you, for example in the case of pushed secrets.
  - dastx 6y ago
    That shouldn't be necessary. Something as fundamental should be made available as some sort of API.
  - pabs3 6y ago
    Pushed secrets in public repos are automatically archived by third parties so removing commits containing them would not be enough to prevent their use, just rotating the secrets is the way to go here. https://twitter.com/andrzejdyjak/status/1324360905237372929 https://twitter.com/andrzejdyjak/status/1324360905237372929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25013756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25013756
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
izietto 6y ago
I guess that if they want to run those tests they can cherry-pick that commit, run the tests and then drop it
mr_mitm 6y ago
The way I read it, the test cases weren't really the problem. The RIAA was alleging that the purpose of youtube-dl is to circumvent DRM and they try to back this statement up by pointing out that copyrighted works are being downloaded in the test cases. Here is a bit of a discussion about it by seemingly knowledgeable people: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/57421/is-youtube-dl-takedown-due-to-their-tests-which-use-copyrighted-content https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/57421/is-youtube-dl-... > > the source code expressly suggests its use to copy and/or distribute the following copyrighted works owned by our member companies: > > Icona Pop – I Love It (feat. Charli XCX) [Official Video], owned by Warner Music Group Justin Timberlake – Tunnel Vision (Explicit), owned by Sony Music Group Taylor Swift – Shake it Off, owned/exclusively licensed by Universal Music Group > Complainants are "confused" about actual infringement (which is prohibited by copyright law), and creating a method for infringing copyright. Under DMCA and US copyright law, copying is infringing, programming is not infringing. The complaint does not clearly allege unauthorized copying of another person's intellectual property, and their complaint is based on the theory that certain programming actions constitute copyright infringement. I don't actually think they are confused, I think they are testing the boundaries.
- qw3rty01 6y ago
  Hmm they seem to be taking it from the approach that RIAA was sending a takedown on the grounds that youtube-dl was infringing on the copyright of their members, but that doesn't seem to be what the actual takedown claims. Instead it's requesting takedown on the grounds that youtube-dl is breaking protection measures in violation of 1201, and the answer given doesn't really address that except to say that breaking protection measures isn't infringement (which wasn't what they claimed in the first place). EFF represented youtube-dl to get the repository reinstated, and their lawyers instead tried to prove that YouTube doesn't have DRM, and that the test cases provided were neither suggesting other people to infringe, nor infringing themselves (falling under fair use). The full response is here: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/11/2020-11-16-RIAA-reversal-effletter.pdf https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/11/2020-11-1...

echelon 6y ago

It would have been fantastic if every test using RIAA copyrighted music had been replaced with public domain sources. Or, better yet, videos the maintainers created and uploaded themselves.

gpvos 6y ago
That won't work, because Youtube applies the particular sort of protection that those tests exercise only to copyrighted music.
- owaislone 6y ago
  Interesting. Do you know how hard it would be for someone to upload a bunch of original videos with same copyright as the videos in question?
  - teach 6y ago
    As far as I know, that's impossible. The particular DRM applied to those test videos is ONLY available to large partners like Vevo. Which is why they were in the test suite.
- Thiez 6y ago
  Just about all music you can find online is copyrighted. I think you mean that it applies the protection only to music where the copyright is held by a large organization.
  - gpvos 6y ago
    Yes, yes, it was short for "registered with Youtube's copyright filter".

shawnz 6y ago

Shouldn't these tests be considered fair use since they are arguably necessary to validate interoperability?

R0b0t1 6y ago
Yes, and I unfortunately still see no argument related to the DMCA's provision that breaking copy protection is legal if you have a license to use the work. In this case, a license to use it via a specific browser is not mentioned, so you can rightly download it with anything. This was the suspected cause for py-kms's reinstatement but as it related to Windows licensing.

umvi 6y ago

Is there a way to get equivalent tests on non RIAA videos?

Rochus 6y ago

> Looks like they've removed the tests for RIAA member videos as the only change And even that was more likely to allow certain somewhat too loud organizations to save face, not out of legal necessity.