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Why can't YouTube and Alphabet simply provide a download button or a public API? When you are running the worlds largest digital museum of rare video footage, y

Why can't YouTube and Alphabet simply provide a download button or a public API? When you are running the worlds largest digital museum of rare video footage, you have some obligations to the society.

selfhoster11 5y ago
Apparently, copyright law makes this an unwise proposition. But the least they could do is offer the Internet Archive with some privileged access so all this can be mirrored and viewed when it's out of copyright in 80 years.
- caractacus 5y ago
  It's not copyright law, it's the agreements that YT has with copyright owners. No one is going to license their content to YT if the site allows anyone to download whatever is there.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    If it wasn't for copyright law, there wouldn't be copyright owners. So copyright law is ultimately responsible for the status quo.
- alerighi 5y ago
  They could at least let you download videos for which the author specified a free license, such as Creative Commons, or videos that are public domain. There are a lot of these videos so why not?
  - thomasfl 5y ago
    Just discovered that several video sharing sites, like pexels.com, have a download button on videos with creative commons license. They are off course useless for professional YouTubers, but great for everybody else.
gmemstr 5y ago
Can't run ads on them, and you risk lawsuits of all kind if you let people easily download copyrighted content. They aren't running a museum, it just happens to be the largest video sharing platform on the planet.
- hansel_der 5y ago
  > it just happens to be the largest video sharing platform on the planet. china might want to disagree
  - caractacus 5y ago
    No chance. YT has 2bn+ unique logins a month. China only has 800m internet users max. Further the video streaming landscape in China is much more fragmented than outside the country where YT is dominant.
    - hansel_der 5y ago
      i stand corrected. totally forgot about india

selfhoster11 5y ago

Apparently, copyright law makes this an unwise proposition. But the least they could do is offer the Internet Archive with some privileged access so all this can be mirrored and viewed when it's out of copyright in 80 years.

caractacus 5y ago
It's not copyright law, it's the agreements that YT has with copyright owners. No one is going to license their content to YT if the site allows anyone to download whatever is there.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  If it wasn't for copyright law, there wouldn't be copyright owners. So copyright law is ultimately responsible for the status quo.
alerighi 5y ago
They could at least let you download videos for which the author specified a free license, such as Creative Commons, or videos that are public domain. There are a lot of these videos so why not?
- thomasfl 5y ago
  Just discovered that several video sharing sites, like pexels.com, have a download button on videos with creative commons license. They are off course useless for professional YouTubers, but great for everybody else.

gmemstr 5y ago

Can't run ads on them, and you risk lawsuits of all kind if you let people easily download copyrighted content. They aren't running a museum, it just happens to be the largest video sharing platform on the planet.

hansel_der 5y ago
> it just happens to be the largest video sharing platform on the planet. china might want to disagree
- caractacus 5y ago
  No chance. YT has 2bn+ unique logins a month. China only has 800m internet users max. Further the video streaming landscape in China is much more fragmented than outside the country where YT is dominant.
  - hansel_der 5y ago
    i stand corrected. totally forgot about india