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The campaign to shut down YouTube-dl continues

775 points by DiabloD3 5y ago

smashah 5y ago
Where will this relentless pursuit for copyright protection end? Sad.
RobertMiller 5y ago
With luck it will take them a few more years to figure out that yt-dlp and other forks with derivative names exist.
- ZYinMD 5y ago
  I switched to yt-dlp a few months ago, under the impression that youtube-dl was no longer maintained? At least for youtube purposes, at least for the one crucial issue that forced me to switch. I forgot what the issue was, but it had several PRs sitting there for months and nobody was gonna merge it.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    What wasn't maintained for you? In that I mean what feature was missing or broken for you? As software gets more stable, updates should be less frequent. I'm not a fan of feature creep in the name of progress. I am a fan of options though, so if there was an necessity for a fork I support it.
    - gurchik 5y ago
      > As software gets more stable, updates should be less frequent. But a project like youtube-dl needs frequent updates, because otherwise it'll stop working after an update from Google. I'm not the parent, but the "a few months ago" timeline makes me think they switched to yt-dlp in December 2021 when youtube-dl did not work for a few days after it broke due to a change from Google. There were PRs quickly made to fix the issue (some of which actually predated the breakage if I remember correctly) but no one was around to merge them for a few days. This is also the time the project's maintainer officially became inactive[1]. 1: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/21b759057502c6e70d51011cfb3fb86d84055182 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/21b759057502c6...
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        > But a project like youtube-dl needs frequent updates, because otherwise it'll stop working after an update from Google. Right, but as a frequent user of youtube-dl it has been working for me, I was curious what wasn't working. Your explanation of the few day PR merge delay explains the fork though, thank you.
    - heinrich5991 5y ago
      >What wasn't maintained for you? >In that I mean what feature was missing or broken for you? youtube-dl got throttled, it took ages to download videos from Youtube.
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        Interesting. How did they identify youtube-dl to throttle it, and what was the workaround?
        db48x 5y ago
        They didn’t. They added a challenge–response step to downloading the video, and throttled any request for the video that doesn’t include the correct response to the challenge. The webpage has some JS that computes the correct response, so you don’t get throttled if you view a video there. You can find the details in the bug tracker if you want.
        thristian 5y ago
        YouTube throttles the download speed of videos to the real-time playback speed. It also provides (if I recall correctly) a random token and a JS blob; if the client executes the JS and passes in the token, it gets another random token as output that if passed along with a request will unthrottle the downloads speed. As a result, full-speed downloads are only available to clients that can safely execute untrusted JS, which is mostly web-browsers and not command-line tools. I believe the way yt-dlp works is that somebody manually ported the JS blob code to Python, which gets things working but leaves a lot of scope for arms-race escalation in future.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        mekster 5y ago
        With the current toolsets like Puppeteer or Playwright, doesn't seem like a tough matter to solve?
    - anothernewdude 5y ago
      Porn mostly.
    - __turbobrew__ 5y ago
      As of a few weeks ago my download speeds with youtube-dl were about 150Kb/s and 50Mb/s with yt-dlp. The missing feature from youtube-dl is that it could not download videos in a reasonable amount of time — a fairly necessary feature.
webmaven 5y ago
I'm not sure what it says about me that my first thought upon reading this: > an independent club owner in San Francisco tried to run a promotional video given to him for a band he’d booked, only to find Instagram’s filer blocked it. He was able to reinstate the video, 17 months after the band had come and gone. Was "I bet that was jwz". Indeed, a brief web search turned up this (via a recent-ish Cory Doctorow post on Medium): https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/05/fucking-facebook-3/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/05/fucking-facebook-3/
- guiambros 5y ago
  Reminder to not link directly to jwz.org from HN. Here's a sanitized link: (or right click above and open in incognito) https://web.archive.org/web/20220121083848/https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/05/fucking-facebook-3/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220121083848/https://www.jwz.o...
  - webmaven 5y ago
    Oops. Here is Cory Doctorow's post (the jwz reference and link is about ¾ of the way down): https://onezero.medium.com/nonstandard-measures-cf47c67e8f05 https://onezero.medium.com/nonstandard-measures-cf47c67e8f05
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    Anyone know why they block HN referral requests?
    - blendergeek 5y ago
      If you click through to JWZ from HN, you will see an NSFW picture with the following text underneath: > Hackers News: A DDos by finance obsessed man-children and brogrammers.
      - colejohnson66 5y ago
        “A DDOS” (aka the “hug of death”) makes sense, but “man children and brogrammers”?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
md224 5y ago
The interesting thing about this is that YouTube is clearly trying to make it more difficult for non-official clients to stream video, as is evident from the required workaround described here: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326#issuecomment-894619419 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326#issuecom... The legal defense of youtube-dl is premised on the idea that there's no circumvention occurring [0]. I 100% support youtube-dl and I want YouTube to stop interfering with it, but I also think we're being a little too cute when we pretend like ytdl isn't circumventing anything... it seems obvious to me that YouTube is trying to put up roadblocks and we're trying to get around them. I would feel better if we could find a way to defend ytdl without the pretense of acting like this cat-and-mouse game isn't going on. [0] 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...
- charcircuit 5y ago
  btw that cipher is only on a subset of videos (usually music videos)
- MereInterest 5y ago
  I thought the most recent legal argument was the 2019 hiQ Labs Inc v LinkedIn Corp[0], in which the Ninth Circuit found web scraping to be legal, and forbid LinkedIn from blocking web scrapers. The exact same argument can be made for accessing YouTube via youtube-dl. The article does indicate that the decision in hiQ v LinkedIn was vacated by SCOTUS following the 2021 Van Buren v United States [0], to be retried by the Ninth Circuit. However, I'm not seeing a way that the decision in Van Buren would change the outcome, as it concluded that the CFAA did not apply to cases where somebody is legally allowed to access a computer at all. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/supreme-court-hacking-cfaa-ruling/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/supreme-court-hacking-cfaa...
  - infogulch 5y ago
    Discussed on HN before: Court: Violating a site’s terms of service isn’t criminal hacking (2020) [1] (probably other discussions as well). My comment on this one: > ... it's the webmaster's own responsibility to "just not serve" if they don't want it to be served, and their failure to implement their own desires as software doesn't suddenly give them carte blanche to claim whatever they want was breaking the law. ... The fact that Microsoft is too lazy to implement a solution that effectively implements their desired policy isn't material to what the actually implemented policy enables. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738180
hbbio 5y ago
The best way to ensure there is no "copyright infringement" would be to shut off Youtube altogether and make sure nobody can see a "music video" without paying a subscription. Other than that, they should assume their content is accessible from any device which was exactly their original intention. The duplicitous attitude of music executives is that they even pay radios to play some songs in loops to turn public attention to them, but then cry wolf when people need tools to see/listen to them as they want. There are so many great artists that we don't know about because they are struggling to be "discovered" beyond the music industry streamroller... edit: typos
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- SixDouble5321 5y ago
  Are you sure? Payola[1] is illegal last I knew. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola
  - hbbio 5y ago
    Not my industry so I don't know but it has been illegal for a long time in the US... and they were still doing it in 2007: https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/2007-04-13-2144814802_x.htm https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/2007-04-13-214... Also probably going on elsewhere where it is still legal. Looks like shilling NFTs has a precedent after all!
BrianHenryIE 5y ago
I signed up for YouTube Premium because I wanted to watch some videos offline (on a flight). The download speed is awful. Now I use YouTube-dl when I want to watch videos offline. I still have Premium because ad-free is great!
- jsmolka 5y ago
  I did the same because I wanted to consume podcasts with the screen locked and not have adds. But the download speed for me is pretty good. Downloading a 2.5h podcast in 480p (which has the same audio quality as 1080p IIRC) takes less than half a minute.
  - RealStickman_ 5y ago
    Why would they not allow audio-only downloads?
    - ravenstine 5y ago
      This is the main reason why I use NewPipe rather than pay YouTube's ransom. Although I have a high bandwidth plan, I just don't like wasting bandwidth and disk space for video data I'm not actually looking at with my eyes. Most of the time I pop on some intellectual content and listen to it, and the video is often unnecessary. Just give me the damn audio and I'm good. YouTube seems to think this isn't a concern, and maybe it isn't if I forced it to download the 140p version of the video, but that's still a clunky solution. Or maybe the execs think that providing audio downloads lets people "steal" music.
      - RealStickman_ 5y ago
        Afaik using the 144p version would be terrible, as YouTube couples the audio bitrate to the video resolution.
  - hhmc 5y ago
    Is there really not a audio only version of the podcasts your interested in. i.e. the classic rss feed of audio files. It's such a shame what has happened to podcasts
vmception 5y ago
“no copyright infringement” is clearly inaccurate but also isn’t a relevant standard here so strange to try to reach a goal of less copyright infringement by going after access to this codebase
lazzlazzlazz 5y ago
How can we create a video platform with high-quality discovery, personalization, subscriptions, comments, voting, and more — while also making it technically incapable of being evil and closed? Are there technologies that we can use to allow network effects to accumulate to software that isn't controlled by a single, rent-extracting, and private entity?
- klabb3 5y ago
  Several different problems. First, we need an architectural design that folks can actually agree on. Then we need open protocols. Then we need implementations. Then we need infrastructure. Then we need to migrate existing content. Finally we need network effects. If we ever get there, I suspect it'll be through a combo between a decentralized registry core and federated and commercial gateway system (similar to VPN or usenet providers). The biggest challenges are related to identity, moderation and abuse, while appealing to a mainstream audience. "It's not the format, it's the business model."
- mateo1 5y ago
  The only functional model so far is patreon-like funding of independent creators.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  > rent-extracting, and private entity? Google isn't really rent seeking with Youtube. It pays for distribution (even for demonetized content), site development, building recommendation systems, content moderation, accessibility though subtitles, etc. That doesn't mean they don't make money on it, that their decisions are always just, or what they promote is good for society, just that they add a lot of value beyond someone hosting a webm file on s3.
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    I think maybe this was true five years ago, but at some point they decided to turn the screws and really ramp up advertising. I don’t follow their financials but I assume the site was self sufficient with far fewer ads than today, and that now they are extracting profit (rents) from their established behemoth. Of course I could be wrong.
usrbinbash 5y ago
So, what is the point of this again? Even if they win, what would it remove? A website, which essentially just hosts some links to github. Within German jurisdiction only. So it would probably be up and running from a different provider within a day or two. And the repository itself would remain completely untouched anyway.
- danuker 5y ago
  There's no end in sight. My guess is the point is to make it difficult to get videos from their platform without seeing the ads.
  - zirobi 5y ago
    Google being Google: Decides it has the requisite resources to get into an arms race with both adblockers and the open source community.
    - hirako2000 5y ago
      bring it on.
- WhyNotHugo 5y ago
  It's also about setting a precedent. Anyone else wanting to host it in Germany will think twice if the courts have already ruled one way.
  - usrbinbash 5y ago
    Can't imagine it's hard to find a hosting provider in one of the other 194 countries.
    - Mindwipe 5y ago
      The German verdict would apply EU wide unless another court overrules it, and is useful precedent to getting similar judgements elsewhere. To be honest though, I don't think they need to win, just get clarity. YouTube have almost certainly committed to the labels that they do apply DRM to YouTube videos containing their content, and are telling them that the rolling cypher is it. If the labels take it to court and the court rules in Europe that the rolling cypher is not sufficient to be considered DRM contractually then Google are in breach of their contract, and will have to apply Widevine to YouTube videos containing any music.
zeepzeep 5y ago
Okay, what again prevents me from making a service that films a browser watching youtube? Could they do anything against that? No? Then ytdl will continue to be a thing.
- YetAnotherNick 5y ago
  Maybe fear of law. e.g. recording a movie from theatre is a criminal offence.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Presumably they can take legal action against you if you distribute it and make it harder to access and find by others. Also the quality will likely be lower.
- izacus 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure DMCA has a clause that can hit you with a massive fine over that. Remember, US has sold all of their freedoms off to DRM content owners.
  - zeepzeep 5y ago
    I mean technically. And yes the US (and EU) needs a copyright reform :)
- Mindwipe 5y ago
  You mean for other people to use? You'd lose any copyright case in Europe. You mean for your own personal use? I'm pretty sure if they limit it only to people who can be bothered to set up a camera pointing to a monitor and cleaned of reflections and lighting artefacts etc etc then the labels would be okay with that given 99.999999% of people won't.
qwerty456127 5y ago
99% time I use YouTube the following way: I download the videos for archival, extract the audio tracks and listen to the in an audiobook app (which is good at adjusting the speed up to 3x and remembering positions I pause at in every track I listen) while commuting or doing chores. I think would consume up to 98% less content if I couldn't do it this way. It is also important to mention that the YouTube website itself (I don't mean the videos - only the HTML&JS part) is among the slowest websites on the internet, painfully slow to use on Raspberry Pi and old computers.
- sdoering 5y ago
  May I ask what audio book app you are using?
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    It's Smart AudioBook Player by Alex Software on Google Play. The paid version - extremely cheap and totally worth it.
- _0ffh 5y ago
  For stuff I know I'll only listen to anyway, I usually download with "-f140" from the get-go. Saves bandwidth and storage space.
- numlock86 5y ago
  > I download the videos for archival, extract the audio tracks and listen to the in an audiobook app There's the "-x" option flag (combine with "-f bestaudio") which will only download the audio. No need for manually extracting.
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    But I also want to archive the video. I used to "like" videos I'm interested in to be able to re-visit them in future but soon found the percent of deleted videos among my likes disastrous so I concluded I must archive everything. I also rarely want the highest quality.
5350-uiop-1130 5y ago
i always read eff.org as eff.off, i dont know why...
- harryvederci 5y ago
  I'm sorry to hear that, that sounds effin offul!
sylware 5y ago
It seems many people are missing one of the most important points: This is reverse engineering of obfuscated javascript for the sake of interoperability with software which are not google(blink|geeko)/apple(webkit) browsers. The real problem is the other way around: streaming services not providing support for noscript/basic (x)html browsers (with the <video> HTML element) should not be legal in the first place. The only real technical issue is with seeking of streamed big videos: only HLS has a standard way to do that as far as I know (I may be wrong). Don't know for mpeg DASH. Because, a noscript/basic (x)html browser would pass the URI of a streamed big video to a media player and must know how to seek into it.
hk1337 5y ago
Start a campaign to shut down YouTube?
JZL003 5y ago
I like YT-DL but I'm amazed it still works. Google pushes use of widevine for netflix/etc to try to around this issue. I know there's a difference b/w 'premium' netflix content where it's only professionals vs youtube where it's semi-ad-supported, but they could just pull the widevine switch on principle if they got serious

775 points by DiabloD3 5y ago

smashah 5y ago

Where will this relentless pursuit for copyright protection end? Sad.

RobertMiller 5y ago

With luck it will take them a few more years to figure out that yt-dlp and other forks with derivative names exist.

ZYinMD 5y ago
I switched to yt-dlp a few months ago, under the impression that youtube-dl was no longer maintained? At least for youtube purposes, at least for the one crucial issue that forced me to switch. I forgot what the issue was, but it had several PRs sitting there for months and nobody was gonna merge it.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  What wasn't maintained for you? In that I mean what feature was missing or broken for you? As software gets more stable, updates should be less frequent. I'm not a fan of feature creep in the name of progress. I am a fan of options though, so if there was an necessity for a fork I support it.
  - gurchik 5y ago
    > As software gets more stable, updates should be less frequent. But a project like youtube-dl needs frequent updates, because otherwise it'll stop working after an update from Google. I'm not the parent, but the "a few months ago" timeline makes me think they switched to yt-dlp in December 2021 when youtube-dl did not work for a few days after it broke due to a change from Google. There were PRs quickly made to fix the issue (some of which actually predated the breakage if I remember correctly) but no one was around to merge them for a few days. This is also the time the project's maintainer officially became inactive[1]. 1: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/21b759057502c6e70d51011cfb3fb86d84055182 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/21b759057502c6...
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      > But a project like youtube-dl needs frequent updates, because otherwise it'll stop working after an update from Google. Right, but as a frequent user of youtube-dl it has been working for me, I was curious what wasn't working. Your explanation of the few day PR merge delay explains the fork though, thank you.
  - heinrich5991 5y ago
    >What wasn't maintained for you? >In that I mean what feature was missing or broken for you? youtube-dl got throttled, it took ages to download videos from Youtube.
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      Interesting. How did they identify youtube-dl to throttle it, and what was the workaround?
      - db48x 5y ago
        They didn’t. They added a challenge–response step to downloading the video, and throttled any request for the video that doesn’t include the correct response to the challenge. The webpage has some JS that computes the correct response, so you don’t get throttled if you view a video there. You can find the details in the bug tracker if you want.
      - thristian 5y ago
        YouTube throttles the download speed of videos to the real-time playback speed. It also provides (if I recall correctly) a random token and a JS blob; if the client executes the JS and passes in the token, it gets another random token as output that if passed along with a request will unthrottle the downloads speed. As a result, full-speed downloads are only available to clients that can safely execute untrusted JS, which is mostly web-browsers and not command-line tools. I believe the way yt-dlp works is that somebody manually ported the JS blob code to Python, which gets things working but leaves a lot of scope for arms-race escalation in future.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        mekster 5y ago
        With the current toolsets like Puppeteer or Playwright, doesn't seem like a tough matter to solve?
  - anothernewdude 5y ago
    Porn mostly.
  - __turbobrew__ 5y ago
    As of a few weeks ago my download speeds with youtube-dl were about 150Kb/s and 50Mb/s with yt-dlp. The missing feature from youtube-dl is that it could not download videos in a reasonable amount of time — a fairly necessary feature.

webmaven 5y ago

I'm not sure what it says about me that my first thought upon reading this: > an independent club owner in San Francisco tried to run a promotional video given to him for a band he’d booked, only to find Instagram’s filer blocked it. He was able to reinstate the video, 17 months after the band had come and gone. Was "I bet that was jwz". Indeed, a brief web search turned up this (via a recent-ish Cory Doctorow post on Medium): https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/05/fucking-facebook-3/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/05/fucking-facebook-3/

guiambros 5y ago
Reminder to not link directly to jwz.org from HN. Here's a sanitized link: (or right click above and open in incognito) https://web.archive.org/web/20220121083848/https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/05/fucking-facebook-3/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220121083848/https://www.jwz.o...
- webmaven 5y ago
  Oops. Here is Cory Doctorow's post (the jwz reference and link is about ¾ of the way down): https://onezero.medium.com/nonstandard-measures-cf47c67e8f05 https://onezero.medium.com/nonstandard-measures-cf47c67e8f05
- colejohnson66 5y ago
  Anyone know why they block HN referral requests?
  - blendergeek 5y ago
    If you click through to JWZ from HN, you will see an NSFW picture with the following text underneath: > Hackers News: A DDos by finance obsessed man-children and brogrammers.
    - colejohnson66 5y ago
      “A DDOS” (aka the “hug of death”) makes sense, but “man children and brogrammers”?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

md224 5y ago

The interesting thing about this is that YouTube is clearly trying to make it more difficult for non-official clients to stream video, as is evident from the required workaround described here: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326#issuecomment-894619419 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326#issuecom... The legal defense of youtube-dl is premised on the idea that there's no circumvention occurring [0]. I 100% support youtube-dl and I want YouTube to stop interfering with it, but I also think we're being a little too cute when we pretend like ytdl isn't circumventing anything... it seems obvious to me that YouTube is trying to put up roadblocks and we're trying to get around them. I would feel better if we could find a way to defend ytdl without the pretense of acting like this cat-and-mouse game isn't going on. [0] 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...

charcircuit 5y ago
btw that cipher is only on a subset of videos (usually music videos)
MereInterest 5y ago
I thought the most recent legal argument was the 2019 hiQ Labs Inc v LinkedIn Corp[0], in which the Ninth Circuit found web scraping to be legal, and forbid LinkedIn from blocking web scrapers. The exact same argument can be made for accessing YouTube via youtube-dl. The article does indicate that the decision in hiQ v LinkedIn was vacated by SCOTUS following the 2021 Van Buren v United States [0], to be retried by the Ninth Circuit. However, I'm not seeing a way that the decision in Van Buren would change the outcome, as it concluded that the CFAA did not apply to cases where somebody is legally allowed to access a computer at all. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn [1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/supreme-court-hacking-cfaa-ruling/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/supreme-court-hacking-cfaa...
- infogulch 5y ago
  Discussed on HN before: Court: Violating a site’s terms of service isn’t criminal hacking (2020) [1] (probably other discussions as well). My comment on this one: > ... it's the webmaster's own responsibility to "just not serve" if they don't want it to be served, and their failure to implement their own desires as software doesn't suddenly give them carte blanche to claim whatever they want was breaking the law. ... The fact that Microsoft is too lazy to implement a solution that effectively implements their desired policy isn't material to what the actually implemented policy enables. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738180

hbbio 5y ago

The best way to ensure there is no "copyright infringement" would be to shut off Youtube altogether and make sure nobody can see a "music video" without paying a subscription. Other than that, they should assume their content is accessible from any device which was exactly their original intention. The duplicitous attitude of music executives is that they even pay radios to play some songs in loops to turn public attention to them, but then cry wolf when people need tools to see/listen to them as they want. There are so many great artists that we don't know about because they are struggling to be "discovered" beyond the music industry streamroller... edit: typos

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SixDouble5321 5y ago
Are you sure? Payola[1] is illegal last I knew. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola
- hbbio 5y ago
  Not my industry so I don't know but it has been illegal for a long time in the US... and they were still doing it in 2007: https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/2007-04-13-2144814802_x.htm https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/2007-04-13-214... Also probably going on elsewhere where it is still legal. Looks like shilling NFTs has a precedent after all!

BrianHenryIE 5y ago

I signed up for YouTube Premium because I wanted to watch some videos offline (on a flight). The download speed is awful. Now I use YouTube-dl when I want to watch videos offline. I still have Premium because ad-free is great!

jsmolka 5y ago
I did the same because I wanted to consume podcasts with the screen locked and not have adds. But the download speed for me is pretty good. Downloading a 2.5h podcast in 480p (which has the same audio quality as 1080p IIRC) takes less than half a minute.
- RealStickman_ 5y ago
  Why would they not allow audio-only downloads?
  - ravenstine 5y ago
    This is the main reason why I use NewPipe rather than pay YouTube's ransom. Although I have a high bandwidth plan, I just don't like wasting bandwidth and disk space for video data I'm not actually looking at with my eyes. Most of the time I pop on some intellectual content and listen to it, and the video is often unnecessary. Just give me the damn audio and I'm good. YouTube seems to think this isn't a concern, and maybe it isn't if I forced it to download the 140p version of the video, but that's still a clunky solution. Or maybe the execs think that providing audio downloads lets people "steal" music.
    - RealStickman_ 5y ago
      Afaik using the 144p version would be terrible, as YouTube couples the audio bitrate to the video resolution.
- hhmc 5y ago
  Is there really not a audio only version of the podcasts your interested in. i.e. the classic rss feed of audio files. It's such a shame what has happened to podcasts

vmception 5y ago

“no copyright infringement” is clearly inaccurate but also isn’t a relevant standard here so strange to try to reach a goal of less copyright infringement by going after access to this codebase

lazzlazzlazz 5y ago

How can we create a video platform with high-quality discovery, personalization, subscriptions, comments, voting, and more — while also making it technically incapable of being evil and closed? Are there technologies that we can use to allow network effects to accumulate to software that isn't controlled by a single, rent-extracting, and private entity?

klabb3 5y ago
Several different problems. First, we need an architectural design that folks can actually agree on. Then we need open protocols. Then we need implementations. Then we need infrastructure. Then we need to migrate existing content. Finally we need network effects. If we ever get there, I suspect it'll be through a combo between a decentralized registry core and federated and commercial gateway system (similar to VPN or usenet providers). The biggest challenges are related to identity, moderation and abuse, while appealing to a mainstream audience. "It's not the format, it's the business model."
mateo1 5y ago
The only functional model so far is patreon-like funding of independent creators.
dehrmann 5y ago
> rent-extracting, and private entity? Google isn't really rent seeking with Youtube. It pays for distribution (even for demonetized content), site development, building recommendation systems, content moderation, accessibility though subtitles, etc. That doesn't mean they don't make money on it, that their decisions are always just, or what they promote is good for society, just that they add a lot of value beyond someone hosting a webm file on s3.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  I think maybe this was true five years ago, but at some point they decided to turn the screws and really ramp up advertising. I don’t follow their financials but I assume the site was self sufficient with far fewer ads than today, and that now they are extracting profit (rents) from their established behemoth. Of course I could be wrong.

usrbinbash 5y ago

So, what is the point of this again? Even if they win, what would it remove? A website, which essentially just hosts some links to github. Within German jurisdiction only. So it would probably be up and running from a different provider within a day or two. And the repository itself would remain completely untouched anyway.

danuker 5y ago
There's no end in sight. My guess is the point is to make it difficult to get videos from their platform without seeing the ads.
- zirobi 5y ago
  Google being Google: Decides it has the requisite resources to get into an arms race with both adblockers and the open source community.
  - hirako2000 5y ago
    bring it on.
WhyNotHugo 5y ago
It's also about setting a precedent. Anyone else wanting to host it in Germany will think twice if the courts have already ruled one way.
- usrbinbash 5y ago
  Can't imagine it's hard to find a hosting provider in one of the other 194 countries.
  - Mindwipe 5y ago
    The German verdict would apply EU wide unless another court overrules it, and is useful precedent to getting similar judgements elsewhere. To be honest though, I don't think they need to win, just get clarity. YouTube have almost certainly committed to the labels that they do apply DRM to YouTube videos containing their content, and are telling them that the rolling cypher is it. If the labels take it to court and the court rules in Europe that the rolling cypher is not sufficient to be considered DRM contractually then Google are in breach of their contract, and will have to apply Widevine to YouTube videos containing any music.

zeepzeep 5y ago

Okay, what again prevents me from making a service that films a browser watching youtube? Could they do anything against that? No? Then ytdl will continue to be a thing.

YetAnotherNick 5y ago
Maybe fear of law. e.g. recording a movie from theatre is a criminal offence.
Tenoke 5y ago
Presumably they can take legal action against you if you distribute it and make it harder to access and find by others. Also the quality will likely be lower.
izacus 5y ago
I'm pretty sure DMCA has a clause that can hit you with a massive fine over that. Remember, US has sold all of their freedoms off to DRM content owners.
- zeepzeep 5y ago
  I mean technically. And yes the US (and EU) needs a copyright reform :)
Mindwipe 5y ago
You mean for other people to use? You'd lose any copyright case in Europe. You mean for your own personal use? I'm pretty sure if they limit it only to people who can be bothered to set up a camera pointing to a monitor and cleaned of reflections and lighting artefacts etc etc then the labels would be okay with that given 99.999999% of people won't.

qwerty456127 5y ago

99% time I use YouTube the following way: I download the videos for archival, extract the audio tracks and listen to the in an audiobook app (which is good at adjusting the speed up to 3x and remembering positions I pause at in every track I listen) while commuting or doing chores. I think would consume up to 98% less content if I couldn't do it this way. It is also important to mention that the YouTube website itself (I don't mean the videos - only the HTML&JS part) is among the slowest websites on the internet, painfully slow to use on Raspberry Pi and old computers.

sdoering 5y ago
May I ask what audio book app you are using?
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  It's Smart AudioBook Player by Alex Software on Google Play. The paid version - extremely cheap and totally worth it.
_0ffh 5y ago
For stuff I know I'll only listen to anyway, I usually download with "-f140" from the get-go. Saves bandwidth and storage space.
numlock86 5y ago
> I download the videos for archival, extract the audio tracks and listen to the in an audiobook app There's the "-x" option flag (combine with "-f bestaudio") which will only download the audio. No need for manually extracting.
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  But I also want to archive the video. I used to "like" videos I'm interested in to be able to re-visit them in future but soon found the percent of deleted videos among my likes disastrous so I concluded I must archive everything. I also rarely want the highest quality.

5350-uiop-1130 5y ago

i always read eff.org as eff.off, i dont know why...

harryvederci 5y ago
I'm sorry to hear that, that sounds effin offul!

sylware 5y ago

It seems many people are missing one of the most important points: This is reverse engineering of obfuscated javascript for the sake of interoperability with software which are not google(blink|geeko)/apple(webkit) browsers. The real problem is the other way around: streaming services not providing support for noscript/basic (x)html browsers (with the <video> HTML element) should not be legal in the first place. The only real technical issue is with seeking of streamed big videos: only HLS has a standard way to do that as far as I know (I may be wrong). Don't know for mpeg DASH. Because, a noscript/basic (x)html browser would pass the URI of a streamed big video to a media player and must know how to seek into it.

hk1337 5y ago

Start a campaign to shut down YouTube?

JZL003 5y ago

I like YT-DL but I'm amazed it still works. Google pushes use of widevine for netflix/etc to try to around this issue. I know there's a difference b/w 'premium' netflix content where it's only professionals vs youtube where it's semi-ad-supported, but they could just pull the widevine switch on principle if they got serious