7 ms·

"With the software, which is available on the code sharing platform Github, YouTube videos and music files can be downloaded without a web browser." I could ar

by somat 5y ago

"With the software, which is available on the code sharing platform Github, YouTube videos and music files can be downloaded without a web browser." I could argue that the software is a web browser, admittedly one tailored around a specific use case. I feel the music industry has to do a better job explaining how downloading a youtude video via the youtube-dl user agent is different than downloading the same video via the firefox user agent.

Hamuko 5y ago
As far as I can tell, the copyright mafia's legal action plan is "throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks". MPA tried to get the source code repository for Nyaa.si removed from GitHub by saying "the Project, which, when downloaded, provides the downloader everything necessary to launch and host a “clone” infringing website identical to Nyaa.si (and, thus, engage in massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and television shows)." It was completely bullshit since they forgot to mention that the project provides everything necessary to engage in massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and television shows EXCEPT the actual copyrighted motion pictures and television shows. The repo is back up after a reversal: https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/ https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/
- wldcordeiro 5y ago
  It's sort of like saying the ownership of a gun makes you a murderer.
  - bonzini 5y ago
    More like a gun made of soap, as in "Take the money and run".
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    That analogy would work if countries with large numbers of privately owned handguns were as safe as (otherwise comparable) countries where such guns were banned. I think we can agree at least that countries which ban communication tools have worse human rights records than countries which don't restrict them as much. Also, I don't dispute the media industry's premise that a government which had complete control over all software installed on people's computers could decide to reduce the amount of copyright infringement.
- daniel-s 5y ago
  Ban Debian. Their distro supplies all the tools necessary to create a website with precisely the same functionality as Nyaa.si.
  - sattoshi 5y ago
    The only legal platform should be iOS, anything else should require a federal license. Only once regular people can no longer write dangerous code will the music industry finally be safe.
    - contravariant 5y ago
      Don't tempt me to break this rolling cipher with pen and paper.
    - pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
      RMS beat you to that joke. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
      - Shared404 5y ago
        Anyone who's never read this, please do. It's both a good short story, and a chilling reminder - especially to anyone who's dealt with textbook companies recently. RMS was right. Not about everything, but about a lot.
      - dredmorbius 5y ago
        Numerous HN submissions, including within the past year. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22The%20Right%20to%20Read%22&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Originally published in 1996, I believe.
andai 5y ago
I used youtube-dl as my primary way to consume YouTube content (mostly lectures and podcasts) for a year when I had very limited internet access. youtube-dl -f bestaudio [url] then convert to 12kbps Opus with ffmpeg -i [file] -b:a 12K [file].opus I could even do this from my phone over SSH but eventually made a simple web frontend for it. I haven't opened it to the public though, because of, well, news stories like this one.
- Narishma 5y ago
  I still do because Firefox doesn't support hardware video decoding on Linux in any of my machines. Though I use mpv, which then uses youtube-dl in the background.
- Hamuko 5y ago
  Isn't YouTube bestaudio already Opus?
  - jerf 5y ago
    Often yes, but it'll be much higher quality than 12Kb/s. But 12Kb/s is plenty for human speech to be comprehensible, though you'll generally notice the quality loss. Plus, I haven't studied this but I don't think they reencode all old content. New videos seems consistent but older videos can have varying things available. Using bestaudio & ffmpeg will definitely get you a consistent result. I can't promise hard-coded -f options for specific formats will be reliable.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      Also, Opus is actually two codecs. You'll only see CELT, the general purpose codec, from about 32kbps and up. But at super low bitrates it uses SILK, a speech codec. At 12kbps you'd very probably see the hybrid mode, where SILK does the bulk of the work but CELT handles frequencies above 8kHz. So youtube is already Opus, but it's not already SILK.
  - andai 5y ago
    Yeah, my main intention was to save bandwidth, so I used just about the lowest possible bitrate and the best codec to match :)
contravariant 5y ago
I wouldn't be the first time a web browser has been confused with a server agent. And as long as DRM software is in browsers it's a somewhat understandable confusion.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
CJefferson 5y ago
I don't think they would have any trouble explaining that in a court of law, to a jury. While I like youtube-dl, it's clearly not an intended way to interact with YouTube.
- akersten 5y ago
  > it's clearly not an intended way to interact with YouTube I'm curious how you reached that conclusion. The maintainers of YouTube-DL would certainly disagree!
  - nmilo 5y ago
    They would certainly agree. Most of their work involves playing the cat-and-mouse game of youtube-dl vs. YouTube, all coming from the fact that YouTube never intended people to view their content using youtube-dl.
    - akersten 5y ago
      You're missing my point, which is that you're assuming what YouTube wants is somehow more correct than what users want.
      - CJefferson 5y ago
        IANAL, but things like the computer misuse act literally say how someone means their computer/server to be used is the correct way to use it. Trying to do things not originally intended is hacking, and youtube clearly don't want you downloading videos unless you pay for Youtube Plus (and even then it's still just into the app, not a seperate mp4).
- pessimizer 5y ago
  Neither is an adblocker, or the youtube-classic extension I use. There's no reason to care about google's intentions.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
The music industry has no explanation for anything. Its entire existence is based on made up concepts that are irrelevant in the 21st century, ideas such as copyright. To actually explain things is to prove their own irrelevance. They're not like us, they don't know or care what user agents are. The only thing that matters to them is control. To them, the idea that someone might do something they didn't approve of is an atrocity that must be combated at all costs. They actually think that browsers are glorified passive content consumption platforms where they get to set the rules and it's take it or leave it. Even something as basic as user scripts is an affront to them because it means the user is not a passive consumer anymore.
- KarlKemp 5y ago
  What does this drivel even mean? What interest does the music industry specifically have against anything but "passive consumers"? It's a shallow attempt to recast people not paying for their music as some sort active citizenry? What's the music industry's fear? People making their own remixes and becoming too powerful, rhythmically? No. They don't like people not paying. People don't like paying. Therefore they avoid it. It's not courageous nor morally repugnant, but the motivation is entirely self-interested and the result is mildly negative for the actual people working in creative industries.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tonguez 5y ago
    What does this drivel even mean? Everyone likes to be paid. Everyone does not like to pay. Digital technology has eliminated media scarcity. Some people want to artificially create scarcity so that other people are forced to pay them. Fortunately it is pretty obvious to most people that there is no real advantage to anyone in society to artificially create this scarcity.
  - Kaze404 5y ago
    > People making their own remixes and becoming too powerful, rhythmically? No. Yes, actually. It's not uncommon for remixes to be taken down.
nmilo 5y ago
The law isn't based around technical gotcha's but instead on how human judges judge things. It doesn't matter that, if in some very techincally-correct viewpoint, youtube-dl is in theory performing the same actions as a browser. youtube-dl is not a browser, you and I both know that.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  No, we don't know that. You're using "technically-correct" here as FUD code for completely correct.
- onli 5y ago
  No. The law is very clear that you are allowed to make copies. For some time now you are not allowed anymore to circumvent copy protection for that, which is an illegal law but still standing, but even this is not happening here. The industry has no leg to stand on, this is just terror-by-suing, trying desperately to stiffle fundamental rights of german people.
  - nmilo 5y ago
    I'm not defending the industry or the case at all. I'm just saying that saying "youtube-dl is technically a browser", and letting the defense rest its case, is the kind of technically-correct nonsense that often gets written on HN but would never work in the real world.
    - zaroth 5y ago
      IANAL, but it seems to me that there would be a strong ADA/accessibility defense for youtube-dl as a user agent. The other major defense is that it’s a tool with significant lawful use. Many digital tools can be used to infringe. It’s only a problem for the tool maker if the tool’s primary purpose is circumventing copyright.
    - onli 5y ago
      That's not nonsense, it's very relevant to this case and just the facts. That the judges in Hamburg are not suspectible to facts or reality is on them, not on HN. And actually, it is what an expert courts should and do commission in such cases would explain.
pvg 5y ago
I could argue that the software is a web browser, admittedly one tailored around a specific use case. Most people, including the court, would easily see through this as trivial sophistry. It's not much of a legal strategy.
spicybright 5y ago
On a technical level you're right, of course. But the industry is more concerned with how content is delivered to non software savvy people (the vast majority). So controlling the tools leads to less overall downloads (in theory anyways.) They'd probably have the same issue if youtube added a "download as audio" button to every video without paying studios.

by somat 5y ago

Hamuko 5y ago

As far as I can tell, the copyright mafia's legal action plan is "throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks". MPA tried to get the source code repository for Nyaa.si removed from GitHub by saying "the Project, which, when downloaded, provides the downloader everything necessary to launch and host a “clone” infringing website identical to Nyaa.si (and, thus, engage in massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and television shows)." It was completely bullshit since they forgot to mention that the project provides everything necessary to engage in massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and television shows EXCEPT the actual copyrighted motion pictures and television shows. The repo is back up after a reversal: https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/ https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/

wldcordeiro 5y ago
It's sort of like saying the ownership of a gun makes you a murderer.
- bonzini 5y ago
  More like a gun made of soap, as in "Take the money and run".
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  That analogy would work if countries with large numbers of privately owned handguns were as safe as (otherwise comparable) countries where such guns were banned. I think we can agree at least that countries which ban communication tools have worse human rights records than countries which don't restrict them as much. Also, I don't dispute the media industry's premise that a government which had complete control over all software installed on people's computers could decide to reduce the amount of copyright infringement.
daniel-s 5y ago
Ban Debian. Their distro supplies all the tools necessary to create a website with precisely the same functionality as Nyaa.si.
- sattoshi 5y ago
  The only legal platform should be iOS, anything else should require a federal license. Only once regular people can no longer write dangerous code will the music industry finally be safe.
  - contravariant 5y ago
    Don't tempt me to break this rolling cipher with pen and paper.
  - pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
    RMS beat you to that joke. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
    - Shared404 5y ago
      Anyone who's never read this, please do. It's both a good short story, and a chilling reminder - especially to anyone who's dealt with textbook companies recently. RMS was right. Not about everything, but about a lot.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Numerous HN submissions, including within the past year. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22The%20Right%20to%20Read%22&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Originally published in 1996, I believe.

andai 5y ago

I used youtube-dl as my primary way to consume YouTube content (mostly lectures and podcasts) for a year when I had very limited internet access. youtube-dl -f bestaudio [url] then convert to 12kbps Opus with ffmpeg -i [file] -b:a 12K [file].opus I could even do this from my phone over SSH but eventually made a simple web frontend for it. I haven't opened it to the public though, because of, well, news stories like this one.

Narishma 5y ago
I still do because Firefox doesn't support hardware video decoding on Linux in any of my machines. Though I use mpv, which then uses youtube-dl in the background.
Hamuko 5y ago
Isn't YouTube bestaudio already Opus?
- jerf 5y ago
  Often yes, but it'll be much higher quality than 12Kb/s. But 12Kb/s is plenty for human speech to be comprehensible, though you'll generally notice the quality loss. Plus, I haven't studied this but I don't think they reencode all old content. New videos seems consistent but older videos can have varying things available. Using bestaudio & ffmpeg will definitely get you a consistent result. I can't promise hard-coded -f options for specific formats will be reliable.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    Also, Opus is actually two codecs. You'll only see CELT, the general purpose codec, from about 32kbps and up. But at super low bitrates it uses SILK, a speech codec. At 12kbps you'd very probably see the hybrid mode, where SILK does the bulk of the work but CELT handles frequencies above 8kHz. So youtube is already Opus, but it's not already SILK.
- andai 5y ago
  Yeah, my main intention was to save bandwidth, so I used just about the lowest possible bitrate and the best codec to match :)

contravariant 5y ago

I wouldn't be the first time a web browser has been confused with a server agent. And as long as DRM software is in browsers it's a somewhat understandable confusion.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

CJefferson 5y ago

I don't think they would have any trouble explaining that in a court of law, to a jury. While I like youtube-dl, it's clearly not an intended way to interact with YouTube.

akersten 5y ago
> it's clearly not an intended way to interact with YouTube I'm curious how you reached that conclusion. The maintainers of YouTube-DL would certainly disagree!
- nmilo 5y ago
  They would certainly agree. Most of their work involves playing the cat-and-mouse game of youtube-dl vs. YouTube, all coming from the fact that YouTube never intended people to view their content using youtube-dl.
  - akersten 5y ago
    You're missing my point, which is that you're assuming what YouTube wants is somehow more correct than what users want.
    - CJefferson 5y ago
      IANAL, but things like the computer misuse act literally say how someone means their computer/server to be used is the correct way to use it. Trying to do things not originally intended is hacking, and youtube clearly don't want you downloading videos unless you pay for Youtube Plus (and even then it's still just into the app, not a seperate mp4).
pessimizer 5y ago
Neither is an adblocker, or the youtube-classic extension I use. There's no reason to care about google's intentions.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

The music industry has no explanation for anything. Its entire existence is based on made up concepts that are irrelevant in the 21st century, ideas such as copyright. To actually explain things is to prove their own irrelevance. They're not like us, they don't know or care what user agents are. The only thing that matters to them is control. To them, the idea that someone might do something they didn't approve of is an atrocity that must be combated at all costs. They actually think that browsers are glorified passive content consumption platforms where they get to set the rules and it's take it or leave it. Even something as basic as user scripts is an affront to them because it means the user is not a passive consumer anymore.

KarlKemp 5y ago
What does this drivel even mean? What interest does the music industry specifically have against anything but "passive consumers"? It's a shallow attempt to recast people not paying for their music as some sort active citizenry? What's the music industry's fear? People making their own remixes and becoming too powerful, rhythmically? No. They don't like people not paying. People don't like paying. Therefore they avoid it. It's not courageous nor morally repugnant, but the motivation is entirely self-interested and the result is mildly negative for the actual people working in creative industries.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tonguez 5y ago
  What does this drivel even mean? Everyone likes to be paid. Everyone does not like to pay. Digital technology has eliminated media scarcity. Some people want to artificially create scarcity so that other people are forced to pay them. Fortunately it is pretty obvious to most people that there is no real advantage to anyone in society to artificially create this scarcity.
- Kaze404 5y ago
  > People making their own remixes and becoming too powerful, rhythmically? No. Yes, actually. It's not uncommon for remixes to be taken down.

nmilo 5y ago

The law isn't based around technical gotcha's but instead on how human judges judge things. It doesn't matter that, if in some very techincally-correct viewpoint, youtube-dl is in theory performing the same actions as a browser. youtube-dl is not a browser, you and I both know that.

pessimizer 5y ago
No, we don't know that. You're using "technically-correct" here as FUD code for completely correct.
onli 5y ago
No. The law is very clear that you are allowed to make copies. For some time now you are not allowed anymore to circumvent copy protection for that, which is an illegal law but still standing, but even this is not happening here. The industry has no leg to stand on, this is just terror-by-suing, trying desperately to stiffle fundamental rights of german people.
- nmilo 5y ago
  I'm not defending the industry or the case at all. I'm just saying that saying "youtube-dl is technically a browser", and letting the defense rest its case, is the kind of technically-correct nonsense that often gets written on HN but would never work in the real world.
  - zaroth 5y ago
    IANAL, but it seems to me that there would be a strong ADA/accessibility defense for youtube-dl as a user agent. The other major defense is that it’s a tool with significant lawful use. Many digital tools can be used to infringe. It’s only a problem for the tool maker if the tool’s primary purpose is circumventing copyright.
  - onli 5y ago
    That's not nonsense, it's very relevant to this case and just the facts. That the judges in Hamburg are not suspectible to facts or reality is on them, not on HN. And actually, it is what an expert courts should and do commission in such cases would explain.

pvg 5y ago

I could argue that the software is a web browser, admittedly one tailored around a specific use case. Most people, including the court, would easily see through this as trivial sophistry. It's not much of a legal strategy.

spicybright 5y ago

On a technical level you're right, of course. But the industry is more concerned with how content is delivered to non software savvy people (the vast majority). So controlling the tools leads to less overall downloads (in theory anyways.) They'd probably have the same issue if youtube added a "download as audio" button to every video without paying studios.