5 ms·

Amazing tool and thankful for the project, but it's really sad something that should just be a download button on every site, is instead a large project that ha

Amazing tool and thankful for the project, but it's really sad something that should just be a download button on every site, is instead a large project that has controversies, lawsuits and other issues.

mvdtnz 3y ago
Why do you think something "should" be a download button on every site? Who are you to tell someone who has created something that they must give it away? How much work do you do for free?
- sufficer 3y ago
  I'd like to be able to download YouTube videos easily. Maybe it's a feature uploaders can toggle on and off per video
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    If you pay for Youtube Premium you can download any video to your device for offline viewing. I'm not sure if this is configurable by the video uploader. The video can still only be viewed from within the Youtube app so it's not like a general-purpose mp4. I suspect this is in part so that Youtube can continue to monitor how many times you watched a video so they can correctly compensate the uploader (and, obviously, to maintain control over their library).
  - judge2020 3y ago
    How does YouTube operate the service with this feature? If enough people use it to download all the videos they want and then play them back without ads, then they're just hosting and delivering video for free. It's no secret that YouTube is already subsidized by ad-supported views and premium subscribers. And YouTube Premium already offers a Download button. It downloads it in the exact same format as they send it to your device in - m3u8 parts.
- musicale 3y ago
  When exactly did we decide that digital video shouldn't be easily recordable like analog video? In any case, a download button is basically like a DVR. It is also an obvious feature that - is easy to add - is logically part of any video hosting site - is wanted by most users DVRs may be legal according to the law, but youtube and other sites spend an extraordinary amount of effort to make it hard for users to record the videos they are watching. It's basically a technologically enforced ban on video recording for the 99% of users who can't easily use youtube-dl or other tools.
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    Where are DVRs banned? Edit - the parent wildly edited their comment so mine no longer makes sense.
    - jcotton42 3y ago
      GP's point, aiui, is that using a DVR/VCR isn't really that different in concept from downloading a video off YouTube.
  - JadeNB 3y ago
    > When exactly did we decide that digital video shouldn't be easily recordable like analog video? > In any case, a download button is basically like a DVR. > DVRs may be legal according to the law … The recordability of analog video (in the sense of whether it's OK to do so, not whether it is physically possible—although there was that useless tab on videocassettes), and the acceptability of using a DVR, have not always been settled subjects. To the extent that such things can be quantified, I'd suspect that the amount of conflict over them was roughly comparable if you account for (1) the increased number of people in a position to have an informed opinion and (2) the increased visibility of conflict.
    - musicale 3y ago
      > The recordability of analog video (in the sense of whether it's OK to do so, not whether it is physically possible—although there was that useless tab on videocassettes), and the acceptability of using a DVR, have not always been settled subjects Analog seems pretty well settled in the US for the past ~40 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios%2C_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive.... But my point is actually a bit different. Weren't VCRs a good thing? Isn't it a bad thing that it is so much harder now to record internet TV than it was to record broadcast and cable TV in the 1980s-2000s?
- zeta0134 3y ago
  They've already given it away for free by uploading it to YouTube. That I choose to consume the content outside of the free web player is not their business at that point. Most frequently I do this because I am analyzing the audio, and it's hard to reliably seek in the web player; my offline tools are much better at this task.
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    Many people who upload videos to Youtube are getting paid based on the number of people who view the video. They also may choose platforms like Youtube in order to maintain some control over the distribution of their videos.
    - specialist 3y ago
      Does youtube distinguish between downloading while watching and downloading for watching later?
  - rngname22 3y ago
    Videos uploaded to YouTube that have ads enabled are explicitly not given away for free.
    - zeta0134 3y ago
      Sure they are. They were delivered to my browser, for free, without any exchange of currency on my part. The page offered to deliver the ads alongside the content. Whether I chose to consume the ad is, again, my business, not the site's. Maybe I loaded the link to the ad but never downloaded it; the site didn't require this. Maybe I downloaded the ad but my user agent chose not to display it. Maybe it did get displayed, and my eyes chose not to look at it. It's the same thing either way: I, the user, did not consume that content. All of this content is offered for free on request. There is no moral obligation to consume one piece of content just because it is delivered alongside another.
      - rngname22 3y ago
- lhamil64 3y ago
  How is downloading a video "giving it away"? You're already consuming the content. I guess the one angle I can see is that by watching the local copy, you aren't seeing any ads that might be on the page/video. But the website could embed ads into the downloaded video. Really, how is this any different than recording TV on a VCR (or DVR)?
  - musicale 3y ago
    > Really, how is this any different than recording TV on a VCR (or DVR)? It really isn't. Except that we don't have easy-to-use DVRs for internet TV the way we used to have easy-to-use VCRs/DVRs for broadcast and cable TV.
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    > Really, how is this any different than recording TV on a VCR (or DVR)? Each time a viewer watches a video a monetised channel makes a little more money. This money either comes from ads or Youtube Premium fees (Premium viewers are worth significantly more than free viewers). Programs like yl-dlp bypass this - non-premium users can download ad-free videos contributing a single view to a video and consume that content any number of times. Youtube no longer makes advertising revenue per view, and content creators no long get their cut. None of this is the case in TV, where ad revenue must be based on metrics other than straight-up view count, which cannot be counted meaningfully. > But the website could embed ads into the downloaded video. Many video creators do embed their own ads, but revenue from these ads are often based on view counts maintained by Youtube as well.
    - giantrobot 3y ago
      > Programs like yl-dlp bypass this - non-premium users can download ad-free videos contributing a single view to a video and consume that content any number of times. Youtube no longer makes advertising revenue per view, and content creators no long get their cut. Why should they get a cut every time I view a video? If I watch a video saved to disk I use 0% of YouTube's infrastructure and cost the creator 0% in extra expenses. Do I owe them a cut if I remember part of a video? Do I owe them a double amount of ad watching if I watch the video with someone else? Do they owe me a cut if they repeated a detail from a Wikipedia article I edited or web page I wrote? What about their college history professor that taught them a historical fact, do they need to go back and pay them when they reference it in their video? For any bit of created media there are hundreds of uncredited and uncompensated second order contributions. The idea that someone making a YouTube video should get compensated every time I watch it is absolutely absurd. They're certainly not tracking down every second order contribution to the video and compensating them in turn.
- kcb 3y ago
  If you don't want to give away your video, news article, blog post etc. Then don't post it publicly on the Internet.
- zzo38computer 3y ago
  They don't have to give it away, but if they publish it so that someone can view it, then others who can view it should also make their own copy to do what they want with, e.g. adjust volume, make a recorded copy to work without internet connection, convert file formats, downgrade resolution (if you want to save disk space), time shifting, deleting ads, etc. It isn't the problem that the site doesn't have a download; it is that the computer should have a record button but doesn't.
musicale 3y ago
It's astonishing how much effort Google and other companies spend fighting their users.
- haltist 3y ago
  PeerTube is decentralized video sharing software that works with a federated protocol but not enough people choose to host their content on PeerTube. The problem isn't Google or the law on copyrighted content and who can make copies of it. The problem is people choose centralized content hosts like YouTube and all that it entails because it is more convenient than running and federating PeerTube nodes.
  - Sebguer 3y ago
    Does Peertube address all of the moderation / illegal content problems enumerated here, as they relate especially to video? https://telegra.ph/why-not-matrix-08-07 https://telegra.ph/why-not-matrix-08-07
  - d0gbread 3y ago
    You have your facts correct and your conclusion backwards.
    - haltist 3y ago
      Great feedback.
  - shalomv 3y ago
    I remember an interesting project in 2009 from Opera called Opera Unite. Its goal was to turn the browser into a server so that you can share back out into the web. They had a few demos "apps" built in but sadly it never went anywhere. It's interesting to imagine how the structure of the web would have evolved if that idea took off. Here's their original post about it: https://dev.opera.com/blog/taking-the-web-into-our-own-hands/ https://dev.opera.com/blog/taking-the-web-into-our-own-hands...
    - 3y ago
dylan604 3y ago
Sure, if you throw out all concerns about copyright and all of that other mumbojumbo, sure, why not just let all of the users of a website download the content with no compensation for the creators at all? I like to make fun of YT as much as anyone, but even this "everything, all the time should be mine" is a farcical concept to me.
- stalfosknight 3y ago
  How dare a profit-seeking corporation want to make money!
- tourmalinetaco 3y ago
  Nice strawman. He didn’t even say any of that, simply that all websites should have options to download videos. No mentions of price, nothing that would harm copyright (which is an absolute joke). Maybe, if you weren’t an RIAA shill, we could have a productive conversation.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Thanks for the name calling, but thinking i'm a RIAA shill is laughable and shows the level of (lack thereof) intellect people have on this issue. Has the copyright system been corrupted by major corporate players? Of course it has. However, throwing it out to have no concept of copyright is an insult to those that do create content without being those corporate players. It takes time and effort and a not insignificant amount of money to bring content to the world. Removing any protections from those creators to be able to monetize their work product is just infantile tantrum throwing.
rjzzleep 3y ago
As someone else has stated is supports a lot of different sites, not just streaming, but also just video upload and sharing sites. I once spent some weeks maintaining a handful of extractors just for myself and this is definitely much better.
tasty_freeze 3y ago
If you pay for a youtube subscription, there is a download button right next to the share button.
- user_7832 3y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that forcing you to use their system when offline and not truly giving you a copy of the mp4 file?
  - shric 3y ago
    Correct, and I believe you can't even access the video if you the app can't phone home after a certain time. Also if you're in (or even visiting) some (most?) countries this feature doesn't work. You don't get any refund either.

mvdtnz 3y ago

Why do you think something "should" be a download button on every site? Who are you to tell someone who has created something that they must give it away? How much work do you do for free?

sufficer 3y ago
I'd like to be able to download YouTube videos easily. Maybe it's a feature uploaders can toggle on and off per video
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  If you pay for Youtube Premium you can download any video to your device for offline viewing. I'm not sure if this is configurable by the video uploader. The video can still only be viewed from within the Youtube app so it's not like a general-purpose mp4. I suspect this is in part so that Youtube can continue to monitor how many times you watched a video so they can correctly compensate the uploader (and, obviously, to maintain control over their library).
- judge2020 3y ago
  How does YouTube operate the service with this feature? If enough people use it to download all the videos they want and then play them back without ads, then they're just hosting and delivering video for free. It's no secret that YouTube is already subsidized by ad-supported views and premium subscribers. And YouTube Premium already offers a Download button. It downloads it in the exact same format as they send it to your device in - m3u8 parts.
musicale 3y ago
When exactly did we decide that digital video shouldn't be easily recordable like analog video? In any case, a download button is basically like a DVR. It is also an obvious feature that - is easy to add - is logically part of any video hosting site - is wanted by most users DVRs may be legal according to the law, but youtube and other sites spend an extraordinary amount of effort to make it hard for users to record the videos they are watching. It's basically a technologically enforced ban on video recording for the 99% of users who can't easily use youtube-dl or other tools.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  Where are DVRs banned? Edit - the parent wildly edited their comment so mine no longer makes sense.
  - jcotton42 3y ago
    GP's point, aiui, is that using a DVR/VCR isn't really that different in concept from downloading a video off YouTube.
- JadeNB 3y ago
  > When exactly did we decide that digital video shouldn't be easily recordable like analog video? > In any case, a download button is basically like a DVR. > DVRs may be legal according to the law … The recordability of analog video (in the sense of whether it's OK to do so, not whether it is physically possible—although there was that useless tab on videocassettes), and the acceptability of using a DVR, have not always been settled subjects. To the extent that such things can be quantified, I'd suspect that the amount of conflict over them was roughly comparable if you account for (1) the increased number of people in a position to have an informed opinion and (2) the increased visibility of conflict.
  - musicale 3y ago
    > The recordability of analog video (in the sense of whether it's OK to do so, not whether it is physically possible—although there was that useless tab on videocassettes), and the acceptability of using a DVR, have not always been settled subjects Analog seems pretty well settled in the US for the past ~40 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios%2C_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive.... But my point is actually a bit different. Weren't VCRs a good thing? Isn't it a bad thing that it is so much harder now to record internet TV than it was to record broadcast and cable TV in the 1980s-2000s?
zeta0134 3y ago
They've already given it away for free by uploading it to YouTube. That I choose to consume the content outside of the free web player is not their business at that point. Most frequently I do this because I am analyzing the audio, and it's hard to reliably seek in the web player; my offline tools are much better at this task.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  Many people who upload videos to Youtube are getting paid based on the number of people who view the video. They also may choose platforms like Youtube in order to maintain some control over the distribution of their videos.
  - specialist 3y ago
    Does youtube distinguish between downloading while watching and downloading for watching later?
- rngname22 3y ago
  Videos uploaded to YouTube that have ads enabled are explicitly not given away for free.
  - zeta0134 3y ago
    Sure they are. They were delivered to my browser, for free, without any exchange of currency on my part. The page offered to deliver the ads alongside the content. Whether I chose to consume the ad is, again, my business, not the site's. Maybe I loaded the link to the ad but never downloaded it; the site didn't require this. Maybe I downloaded the ad but my user agent chose not to display it. Maybe it did get displayed, and my eyes chose not to look at it. It's the same thing either way: I, the user, did not consume that content. All of this content is offered for free on request. There is no moral obligation to consume one piece of content just because it is delivered alongside another.
    - rngname22 3y ago
lhamil64 3y ago
How is downloading a video "giving it away"? You're already consuming the content. I guess the one angle I can see is that by watching the local copy, you aren't seeing any ads that might be on the page/video. But the website could embed ads into the downloaded video. Really, how is this any different than recording TV on a VCR (or DVR)?
- musicale 3y ago
  > Really, how is this any different than recording TV on a VCR (or DVR)? It really isn't. Except that we don't have easy-to-use DVRs for internet TV the way we used to have easy-to-use VCRs/DVRs for broadcast and cable TV.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  > Really, how is this any different than recording TV on a VCR (or DVR)? Each time a viewer watches a video a monetised channel makes a little more money. This money either comes from ads or Youtube Premium fees (Premium viewers are worth significantly more than free viewers). Programs like yl-dlp bypass this - non-premium users can download ad-free videos contributing a single view to a video and consume that content any number of times. Youtube no longer makes advertising revenue per view, and content creators no long get their cut. None of this is the case in TV, where ad revenue must be based on metrics other than straight-up view count, which cannot be counted meaningfully. > But the website could embed ads into the downloaded video. Many video creators do embed their own ads, but revenue from these ads are often based on view counts maintained by Youtube as well.
  - giantrobot 3y ago
    > Programs like yl-dlp bypass this - non-premium users can download ad-free videos contributing a single view to a video and consume that content any number of times. Youtube no longer makes advertising revenue per view, and content creators no long get their cut. Why should they get a cut every time I view a video? If I watch a video saved to disk I use 0% of YouTube's infrastructure and cost the creator 0% in extra expenses. Do I owe them a cut if I remember part of a video? Do I owe them a double amount of ad watching if I watch the video with someone else? Do they owe me a cut if they repeated a detail from a Wikipedia article I edited or web page I wrote? What about their college history professor that taught them a historical fact, do they need to go back and pay them when they reference it in their video? For any bit of created media there are hundreds of uncredited and uncompensated second order contributions. The idea that someone making a YouTube video should get compensated every time I watch it is absolutely absurd. They're certainly not tracking down every second order contribution to the video and compensating them in turn.
kcb 3y ago
If you don't want to give away your video, news article, blog post etc. Then don't post it publicly on the Internet.
zzo38computer 3y ago
They don't have to give it away, but if they publish it so that someone can view it, then others who can view it should also make their own copy to do what they want with, e.g. adjust volume, make a recorded copy to work without internet connection, convert file formats, downgrade resolution (if you want to save disk space), time shifting, deleting ads, etc. It isn't the problem that the site doesn't have a download; it is that the computer should have a record button but doesn't.

musicale 3y ago

It's astonishing how much effort Google and other companies spend fighting their users.

haltist 3y ago
PeerTube is decentralized video sharing software that works with a federated protocol but not enough people choose to host their content on PeerTube. The problem isn't Google or the law on copyrighted content and who can make copies of it. The problem is people choose centralized content hosts like YouTube and all that it entails because it is more convenient than running and federating PeerTube nodes.
- Sebguer 3y ago
  Does Peertube address all of the moderation / illegal content problems enumerated here, as they relate especially to video? https://telegra.ph/why-not-matrix-08-07 https://telegra.ph/why-not-matrix-08-07
- d0gbread 3y ago
  You have your facts correct and your conclusion backwards.
  - haltist 3y ago
    Great feedback.
- shalomv 3y ago
  I remember an interesting project in 2009 from Opera called Opera Unite. Its goal was to turn the browser into a server so that you can share back out into the web. They had a few demos "apps" built in but sadly it never went anywhere. It's interesting to imagine how the structure of the web would have evolved if that idea took off. Here's their original post about it: https://dev.opera.com/blog/taking-the-web-into-our-own-hands/ https://dev.opera.com/blog/taking-the-web-into-our-own-hands...
  - 3y ago

dylan604 3y ago

Sure, if you throw out all concerns about copyright and all of that other mumbojumbo, sure, why not just let all of the users of a website download the content with no compensation for the creators at all? I like to make fun of YT as much as anyone, but even this "everything, all the time should be mine" is a farcical concept to me.

stalfosknight 3y ago
How dare a profit-seeking corporation want to make money!
tourmalinetaco 3y ago
Nice strawman. He didn’t even say any of that, simply that all websites should have options to download videos. No mentions of price, nothing that would harm copyright (which is an absolute joke). Maybe, if you weren’t an RIAA shill, we could have a productive conversation.
- dylan604 3y ago
  Thanks for the name calling, but thinking i'm a RIAA shill is laughable and shows the level of (lack thereof) intellect people have on this issue. Has the copyright system been corrupted by major corporate players? Of course it has. However, throwing it out to have no concept of copyright is an insult to those that do create content without being those corporate players. It takes time and effort and a not insignificant amount of money to bring content to the world. Removing any protections from those creators to be able to monetize their work product is just infantile tantrum throwing.

rjzzleep 3y ago

As someone else has stated is supports a lot of different sites, not just streaming, but also just video upload and sharing sites. I once spent some weeks maintaining a handful of extractors just for myself and this is definitely much better.

tasty_freeze 3y ago

If you pay for a youtube subscription, there is a download button right next to the share button.

user_7832 3y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that forcing you to use their system when offline and not truly giving you a copy of the mp4 file?
- shric 3y ago
  Correct, and I believe you can't even access the video if you the app can't phone home after a certain time. Also if you're in (or even visiting) some (most?) countries this feature doesn't work. You don't get any refund either.