8 ms·

You have to build it from source to avoid the 60kbps limit. There hasn't been a release since Dec 2021 and there have been some updates since then that implemen

You have to build it from source to avoid the 60kbps limit. There hasn't been a release since Dec 2021 and there have been some updates since then that implement the 'puzzle' to get the right value of the url parameter. It's worth noting that YouTube is trialling a new player and a lot of applications (invidious, new pipe, etc) are experiencing some issues in the last couple of weeks.

danuker 3y ago
It's funny how a trillion-dollar company is playing cat-and-mouse with a few free software projects, and losing most of the time.
- netsharc 3y ago
  I have a feeling Google/Alphabet/YouTube aren't investing a lot of money into this, because they know their opponents have almost infinite resource, of free time and dedication. Besides how would you like to work in the YouTube "DRM" team, where every few weeks you'd show up to work and the news is "well, they cracked it again, your last few months' of work is useless.".
  - roywashere 3y ago
    It is not Google in the courts, it is Sony and Warner, the ‘rights holders’!
  - jagraff 3y ago
    Honestly, that does sound kind of fun. Requires more creativity than building CRUD app after CRUD app
  - brucethemoose2 3y ago
    > I have a feeling Google/Alphabet/YouTube aren't investing a lot of money into this, because they know their opponents have almost infinite resource, of free time and dedication. They aren't investing because its a CLI tool. Its not really a threat. If it was, like, a "1 click download free music from Youtube!" app that was trending like crazy, Google would focus more on fighting it. The project is balanced between reasonable accessibility and not drawing too much attention from Google. Its kinda like the AI Wars video game, where you undermine a distracted/disenterested AI without drawing too much of its attention.
    - f33d5173 3y ago
      There are many websites that provide exactly that function. I suspect most of them are based yt-dl{,p}. By killing cli tools, google can effectively stifle such websites as well.
      - brucethemoose2 3y ago
        But they are too sporadic to become popular.
      - yellowapple 3y ago
        Not even just websites. There are many browser extensions that provide exactly that function right in YouTube's web interface.
    - chasil 3y ago
      Well, I really hope that they don't hear about Skytube. Google, close your eyes! https://f-droid.org/en/packages/free.rm.skytube.oss/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/free.rm.skytube.oss/ Bad Google! No dividends for you!
      - brucethemoose2 3y ago
        Its not on Google Play, so no worries about mass proliferation.
    - account42 3y ago
      Other programs can use CLI tools so the poor users don't have to be confronted with the horror that is a terminal emulator. For example, mpv uses youtube-dl automatically if you give it a URL (or yt-dlp since it installs the same binary).
  - getcrunk 3y ago
    YouTube doesn’t have DRM on non paid content. If they did, the situation would be way different.
    - anticensor 3y ago
      Except in mandatory DRM jurisdictions.
    - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
      They’ll fix that with the web integrity API.
      - account42 3y ago
        Eventually, but they could already use EME on the videos if they wanted.
  - sitzkrieg 3y ago
    their work cycling between shutout and useless is the norm in many cat-mouse industries such as anticheat, malware, drug precursors, you name it. the funds go to the fight and not the endgame, everyone except denuvo customers seem to have figured that
  - pkulak 3y ago
    YouTube has it's hands tied behind its back by the 100s of apps that have been deployed over the last two decades. Shutting down youtube-dlp, but also losing ad revenue from, say, every Roku box in the world, is not a tradeoff anyone is signing on for. So best they can do is nibble around the edges and hope they make it hard on downloaders while not flipping the entire apple cart.
  - IshKebab 3y ago
    I don't think that's necessarily true. People said that about Blu-ray for ages, and for a while they were right but in the end the industry had people paid to keep updating keys and fixing bugs forever, and the open source world only has volunteers. Last I checked (which was a very long time ago) the only way to rip a Blu-ray was through a commercial program. That's probably partly because Blu-ray waned in popularity compared to streaming. Still I definitely think it's wrong to assume that Google couldn't win this battle.
    - account42 3y ago
      > People said that about Blu-ray for ages, and for a while they were right but in the end the industry had people paid to keep updating keys and fixing bugs forever, and the open source world only has volunteers. I can rip Blu-Rays easily with freely available tools [0] - even shiny new UHD ones. Doesn't seem the industry won that one. Pirates don't distribute the leaked device keys anymore so you need to get disc-specific encryption keys derived from that but that's all done automatically for you and I imagine is only because this is currently the path of least resistence - if this was not an option then device keys would leak faster than they can be removed from new releases. > Still I definitely think it's wrong to assume that Google couldn't win this battle. DRM is an inherently unwinnable battle. Won't stop anyone from trying and making things worse for regular users in the process though. [0] https://www.makemkv.com/ https://www.makemkv.com/
  - bradknowles 3y ago
    We did that at AOL with regards to fighting spam, when I was the Sr. Internet Mail Adminstrator in the mid-90s. We would put in weeks and months of work to come up with a new method of fighting spam that would actually work [0], and over the span of a weekend after launch, the spammers would already have worked around it. [0] As opposed to the random crackpot ideas that every damn stupid AOL VP came up with that started with "Why don't you just ...". If I had a nickel for every damn stupid AOL VP crackpot idea, I'd be a multi-millionaire by now.
    - account42 3y ago
      > [0] As opposed to the random crackpot ideas that every damn stupid AOL VP came up with that started with "Why don't you just ...". I hope you used https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt as your resignation letter.
      - bradknowles 3y ago
        We had a similar document that we had developed over time which I believe pre-dated this one. Ours may even have been the inspiration upon which this one was based. For me, by that time AOL had become a sufficiently toxic place that we came to a mutual agreement that it was time for me to leave. If it hadn't been for that, I would never have gotten a chance to work at Collective Technologies, where we had more O'Reilly authors on staff than any other company in the world!
- squarefoot 3y ago
  This seems normal when lawyers are involved; they're slow and to act quicker they sometimes shoot in the dark by pushing for excessive measures and/or draconian laws that ultimately could backfire against their clients image. Also, they cost a lot more than say the cost of opening a new site, so resistance in this context is not futile at all.
- II2II 3y ago
  They don't have to win in absolute terms. They only have to prevent people from adopting alternative players en masse.
- deadbunny 3y ago
  I guess you missed the "not" Google proposal for the Browser Attestation API? No need to put too many respurces fighting for a single site when you can just lock it down to blessed browsers.
  - armchairhacker 3y ago
    In order for web DRM to be feasible, it has to work without issues for 99% of average users while blocking the few who will go to great lengths to simulate attestation. That’s a hard goal. TPM1.2 (used up until a few years back) is already broken because it uses SHA-1. If someone finds an exploit for TPM2.0, a dedicated team could manipulate the entire sandbox down to the hardware to simulate a “blessed browser”, making it even harder for google to detect until nearly everyone moves to devices which don’t even exist yet.
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      Last I heard, sha-1 isn’t broken for any arbitrary hash.
- amelius 3y ago
  Except few people use the tool, so it is not hurting them much. If this were to change, then I'm sure the battle would look very different, both legally and from a technical viewpoint.

danuker 3y ago

It's funny how a trillion-dollar company is playing cat-and-mouse with a few free software projects, and losing most of the time.

netsharc 3y ago
I have a feeling Google/Alphabet/YouTube aren't investing a lot of money into this, because they know their opponents have almost infinite resource, of free time and dedication. Besides how would you like to work in the YouTube "DRM" team, where every few weeks you'd show up to work and the news is "well, they cracked it again, your last few months' of work is useless.".
- roywashere 3y ago
  It is not Google in the courts, it is Sony and Warner, the ‘rights holders’!
- jagraff 3y ago
  Honestly, that does sound kind of fun. Requires more creativity than building CRUD app after CRUD app
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  > I have a feeling Google/Alphabet/YouTube aren't investing a lot of money into this, because they know their opponents have almost infinite resource, of free time and dedication. They aren't investing because its a CLI tool. Its not really a threat. If it was, like, a "1 click download free music from Youtube!" app that was trending like crazy, Google would focus more on fighting it. The project is balanced between reasonable accessibility and not drawing too much attention from Google. Its kinda like the AI Wars video game, where you undermine a distracted/disenterested AI without drawing too much of its attention.
  - f33d5173 3y ago
    There are many websites that provide exactly that function. I suspect most of them are based yt-dl{,p}. By killing cli tools, google can effectively stifle such websites as well.
    - brucethemoose2 3y ago
      But they are too sporadic to become popular.
    - yellowapple 3y ago
      Not even just websites. There are many browser extensions that provide exactly that function right in YouTube's web interface.
  - chasil 3y ago
    Well, I really hope that they don't hear about Skytube. Google, close your eyes! https://f-droid.org/en/packages/free.rm.skytube.oss/ https://f-droid.org/en/packages/free.rm.skytube.oss/ Bad Google! No dividends for you!
    - brucethemoose2 3y ago
      Its not on Google Play, so no worries about mass proliferation.
  - account42 3y ago
    Other programs can use CLI tools so the poor users don't have to be confronted with the horror that is a terminal emulator. For example, mpv uses youtube-dl automatically if you give it a URL (or yt-dlp since it installs the same binary).
- getcrunk 3y ago
  YouTube doesn’t have DRM on non paid content. If they did, the situation would be way different.
  - anticensor 3y ago
    Except in mandatory DRM jurisdictions.
  - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
    They’ll fix that with the web integrity API.
    - account42 3y ago
      Eventually, but they could already use EME on the videos if they wanted.
- sitzkrieg 3y ago
  their work cycling between shutout and useless is the norm in many cat-mouse industries such as anticheat, malware, drug precursors, you name it. the funds go to the fight and not the endgame, everyone except denuvo customers seem to have figured that
- pkulak 3y ago
  YouTube has it's hands tied behind its back by the 100s of apps that have been deployed over the last two decades. Shutting down youtube-dlp, but also losing ad revenue from, say, every Roku box in the world, is not a tradeoff anyone is signing on for. So best they can do is nibble around the edges and hope they make it hard on downloaders while not flipping the entire apple cart.
- IshKebab 3y ago
  I don't think that's necessarily true. People said that about Blu-ray for ages, and for a while they were right but in the end the industry had people paid to keep updating keys and fixing bugs forever, and the open source world only has volunteers. Last I checked (which was a very long time ago) the only way to rip a Blu-ray was through a commercial program. That's probably partly because Blu-ray waned in popularity compared to streaming. Still I definitely think it's wrong to assume that Google couldn't win this battle.
  - account42 3y ago
    > People said that about Blu-ray for ages, and for a while they were right but in the end the industry had people paid to keep updating keys and fixing bugs forever, and the open source world only has volunteers. I can rip Blu-Rays easily with freely available tools [0] - even shiny new UHD ones. Doesn't seem the industry won that one. Pirates don't distribute the leaked device keys anymore so you need to get disc-specific encryption keys derived from that but that's all done automatically for you and I imagine is only because this is currently the path of least resistence - if this was not an option then device keys would leak faster than they can be removed from new releases. > Still I definitely think it's wrong to assume that Google couldn't win this battle. DRM is an inherently unwinnable battle. Won't stop anyone from trying and making things worse for regular users in the process though. [0] https://www.makemkv.com/ https://www.makemkv.com/
- bradknowles 3y ago
  We did that at AOL with regards to fighting spam, when I was the Sr. Internet Mail Adminstrator in the mid-90s. We would put in weeks and months of work to come up with a new method of fighting spam that would actually work [0], and over the span of a weekend after launch, the spammers would already have worked around it. [0] As opposed to the random crackpot ideas that every damn stupid AOL VP came up with that started with "Why don't you just ...". If I had a nickel for every damn stupid AOL VP crackpot idea, I'd be a multi-millionaire by now.
  - account42 3y ago
    > [0] As opposed to the random crackpot ideas that every damn stupid AOL VP came up with that started with "Why don't you just ...". I hope you used https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt as your resignation letter.
    - bradknowles 3y ago
      We had a similar document that we had developed over time which I believe pre-dated this one. Ours may even have been the inspiration upon which this one was based. For me, by that time AOL had become a sufficiently toxic place that we came to a mutual agreement that it was time for me to leave. If it hadn't been for that, I would never have gotten a chance to work at Collective Technologies, where we had more O'Reilly authors on staff than any other company in the world!
squarefoot 3y ago
This seems normal when lawyers are involved; they're slow and to act quicker they sometimes shoot in the dark by pushing for excessive measures and/or draconian laws that ultimately could backfire against their clients image. Also, they cost a lot more than say the cost of opening a new site, so resistance in this context is not futile at all.
II2II 3y ago
They don't have to win in absolute terms. They only have to prevent people from adopting alternative players en masse.
deadbunny 3y ago
I guess you missed the "not" Google proposal for the Browser Attestation API? No need to put too many respurces fighting for a single site when you can just lock it down to blessed browsers.
- armchairhacker 3y ago
  In order for web DRM to be feasible, it has to work without issues for 99% of average users while blocking the few who will go to great lengths to simulate attestation. That’s a hard goal. TPM1.2 (used up until a few years back) is already broken because it uses SHA-1. If someone finds an exploit for TPM2.0, a dedicated team could manipulate the entire sandbox down to the hardware to simulate a “blessed browser”, making it even harder for google to detect until nearly everyone moves to devices which don’t even exist yet.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    Last I heard, sha-1 isn’t broken for any arbitrary hash.
amelius 3y ago
Except few people use the tool, so it is not hurting them much. If this were to change, then I'm sure the battle would look very different, both legally and from a technical viewpoint.