Youtube-DL DMCA'ed by RIAA

[ARitz Cracker]

On 10/23/2020 at 11:06 PM, poochyena said:

This is a lie. Literally just scroll up and you can see that. What a bold move to lie when the statement proving otherwise is just a few posts up.

From the DMCA takedown request

Quote

"The clear purpose of this source code is to (i) circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube, and (ii) reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings owned by our member companies without authorization for such use. We note that the source code is described on GitHub as “a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites.”

 

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by colonel_mortis
Remove inflammatory emoji use

[ARitz Cracker]

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

So next week we will have Not youtube-dl?

Well, there's still ytdl which requires nodejs

 

edit: sorry for the double-post. Seems auto-merging isn't a thing here

[CyberneticTitan]

1 hour ago, Caroline said:

imagine a world without copyright or DRM

Does this world allow people to profit off of other's ideas willy-nilly?

[PocketNerd]

6 minutes ago, CyberneticTitan said:

Does this world allow people to profit off of other's ideas willy-nilly?

It'd be fine if everyone could make use of the current system equally, but because power is so amazingly (and terrifyingly) skewed towards whoever has the most $$$, we should demolish it. Instead we should create a historical record system so that society knows who originally made the work, but otherwise allow folks to riff or alter the work without fear of reprisal or punishment. Though we should punish for folks claiming something is their's when it is not.

[Trik'Stari]

Honestly, fuck the RIAA.

 

They've blackmailed bars and restaurants by threatening to sue them for playing the radio, claiming that it was a copyright infringement, which it is not, because the license to play said music was already paid by the radio stations.

 

Yeah, no. Screw the RIAA. Someone will just make some other program/app to achieve the same effect, and honestly they deserve it.

[Nowak]

9 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

Someone will just make some other program/app to achieve the same effect, and honestly they deserve it.

It's already been rehosted elsewhere.

[poochyena]

3 hours ago, ARitz Cracker said:

which proved my point was literally right there.

no where in what you quoted said anything about the concern of the "potential" use of the tool like you implied it did.

[PlayStation 2]

Daily reminder that the RIAA can go fuck itself

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, matrix07012 said:

Youtube-DL DMCA'ed by RIAA

 

Summary

Youtube-DL and all it's forks have been taken down from GitHub by DMCA takedown notice from Recording Industry Association of America.

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

I'm not surprised that this has happened as I have been surprised several times just how powerful Youtube-DL is.

I think it's kinda stupid to show stuff like music videos as examples as for example RPCS3 has received DMCA takedown because they mentioned Persona 5. However I believe that this is abuse of DMCA as Youtube-DL is 100% original work.

 

Sources

https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/10/2020-10-23-RIAA.md

 

IMO, it's been around for a long time, and the underlying tech itself is still up. Youtube-DL and Streamlink were both forked from livestreamer. 

 

Which also means YoutubeDL is not 100% original work, as it's a forked project. But besides the point. Streamlink and similar tools to this have two legitimate purposes:

 

a) Downloading your own streams from Twitch, especially if you are not a partner, and Twitch deletes past broadcasts when new ones are started.

b) Downloading your own streams from Youtube.

 

If you fail to record (which does happen) or your service doesn't actually keep recordings, then this is really the only option to keep a recording that otherwise is lost forever.

 

It doesn't have quite the legitimacy if you're just using it to rip someone elses stream, or rip videos just to re-upload them somewhere else, which is more typical of what this is used for. 

 

But this is just a tool, yes, a lot of people use it to rip materials from sites that don't want them to, but people also use it to backup their stuff because the sites don't offer ways to bulk download anything. Like consider the Twitch mass-DMCA from a few days ago which deleted pretty much everything with music in it. Are you going to sit there and review every single video for music? No. I doubt anyone did, and thus they were caught blindsided with their VOD's being deleted, regardless of how little music was in it, despite Twitch knowing what music is being used, and previously muting those parts of videos.

 

[pd.]

25 minutes ago, Kisai said:

but people also use it to backup their stuff

Not only to backup their stuff. It has many other applications: saving playlists with video names and links, saving metadata, fulltext subtitle search, using it for statistical research, list goes on.

[CarlBar]

39 minutes ago, pd. said:

Not only to backup their stuff. It has many other applications: saving playlists with video names and links, saving metadata, fulltext subtitle search, using it for statistical research, list goes on.

 

Watching high quality video from a low speed connection. I used a downloader till i got fibre for that reason.

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, pd. said:

Not only to backup their stuff. It has many other applications: saving playlists with video names and links, saving metadata, fulltext subtitle search, using it for statistical research, list goes on.

And also download videos that are legal to download such as creative commons videos. Or download a video for fair use reasons such as critisism or review. 

There are a ton of valid reasons for using YouTube-DL other than "piracy". 

[Ginger Penguin]

12 hours ago, Sauron said:

Sounds like this wouldn't have a leg to stand on if youtube-dl just changed name and description to not mention youtube directly.

Good point. To be honest, I barely use it for YouTube. Its primary use for me is downloading from broadcast TV catch-up sites (yes, I do still watch some broadcast TV) that use an m3u8 stream. youtube-dl always seemed like the only way of getting those easily.

[Soppro]

I guess they're going to start DMCA'ing every screen and audio capture tool as well since they can record YouTube music videos, what a bunch of pricks.

[Doobeedoo]

The whole digital content and how it works law wise needs to change. Corporations just go max greed and types of licensing used for physical can't translate to digital the same way. Be it with music, games being mostly digital already, whatever. 

[Mark Kaine]

15 hours ago, Vanderburg said:

The complaint points out that the source code expressly suggests downloading/copying specific copyrighted work. IANAL, but that seems pretty significant and is a pretty good justification for the complaint.

Exactly and it never ceases to amaze me how makers of such programs blatantly advertise the unlawful side of things... 

 

Makers of emulators seem to have wised up, but not everyone did, obviously. 

[Mark Kaine]

24 minutes ago, Doobeedoo said:

The whole digital content and how it works law wise needs to change. Corporations just go max greed and types of licensing used for physical can't translate to digital the same way. Be it with music, games being mostly digital already, whatever. 

I say IF you buy a 'license' you should be entitled to have access to it on any available platforms and also to make 'copies' for your own personal use as you please... 

 

 

Otherwise this is really just glorified rentals and not purchases... 

 

I guess you 'purchase' the 'rental' from corporate perspective...

[Delicieuxz]

Guess people will just have to download it from their website now?

 

https://youtube-dl.org/

[Zodiark1593]

14 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

Honestly, fuck the RIAA.

 

They've blackmailed bars and restaurants by threatening to sue them for playing the radio, claiming that it was a copyright infringement, which it is not, because the license to play said music was already paid by the radio stations.

 

Yeah, no. Screw the RIAA. Someone will just make some other program/app to achieve the same effect, and honestly they deserve it.

Couldn’t the source code be hosted or posted elsewhere? Would be fun to see the Streisand Effect in full force.  
 

Edit: Half of wish already granted by post above. 

[pd.]

53 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

download it from their website

Downloading it will never be a problem. Loss of commit history, loss of bugtracker and loss of order in the community around it, is a problem. Even worse, this creates a precedent of huge organisation using DMCA to destroy opensource project by attacking a few lines of its source code just because that they did not like.

[Mark Kaine]

4 minutes ago, pd. said:

Downloading it will never be a problem. Loss of commit history, loss of bugtracker and loss of order in the community around it, is a problem. Even worse, this creates a precedent of huge organisation using DMCA to destroy opensource project by attacking a few lines of its source code just because that they did not like.

Always remember open source is only good if it can save corporate a few pennies for licensing fees, otherwise it is evil and must be DMCA'D! 

 

Also isn't github Microsoft owned? Weird platform to host your stuff if you want it to be secured for the future... 

 

ps: yes yes why, of course it is

[Donut417]

22 hours ago, AbydosOne said:

I feel like there needs to be a provision in DCMA that for any claim filed, the defendant needs automatic free representation to prevent huge corporations for whacking one-man-bands with lawsuits that they can't hope to afford to counter.

Yeah because public defenders do such a great job of helping you thru a criminal trial. The fact is the people of the US are not going to pay for people to have a public defender for civil issues, which is what this is. What needs to happen is people need to call their representivies in Washington and tell them to change the DMCA. DMCA was put in to law in 1998, it could probably use an update. 

[Kisai]

25 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Yeah because public defenders do such a great job of helping you thru a criminal trial. The fact is the people of the US are not going to pay for people to have a public defender for civil issues, which is what this is. What needs to happen is people need to call their representivies in Washington and tell them to change the DMCA. DMCA was put in to law in 1998, it could probably use an update. 

The DMCA was designed to remove copyright infringing materials with the assumption it was people operating counterfeiting operations, not incidental or incorrectly licensed music. Those take down provisions are to remove people uploading entire copies of Disney's Mulan (1998) not reviewing it, making fun of it, criticizing it's inaccuracies, or re-inacting it with period-accurate costumes and settings.

 

The fact is the DMCA get's used as a cudgel against "any use" of a copyrighted work, be it licenced or not. If it's used to take down a ROM piracy site, that's what it's meant for. If it's used to take down a Library, that's not what it's meant for.

 

Music has always had this ugly carve-out in copyright law where the "exact" mechanical use of the music/lyrics was considered a separate thing from the syncronization of it. And yes, the recording industry wants you to licence every single use of every bit of every song used in anything in any context, and it's impossible to do so, because these big companies won't even give the time of day to anyone who won't make them millions of dollars.

 

Like this is an example of unacceptable "no way no how"

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Legal-information/Copyright/Copyright-625949.html

Quote

Can I Write in and Request Permission?

Nintendo does not grant permission to individuals to use any content from this website. Because we receive thousands of such requests, our policy is to decline use of our trademarks and copyrights.

That blanket "no way, no how, never" is ignoring fair use, and if a company has this kind of stance that they will never give permission, ever, then you just use it anyway and make sure it's within what you believe to be fair use.

 

RIAA companies are more like this though:

https://www.riaa.com/resources-learning/licensing/

Quote

• To offer digital downloads. If you want to offer digital downloads of music (whether they are for sale or not), you need a license. Those licenses are granted by individual copyright owners.
• Offering a jukebox on the Internet. Interactive services do not qualify for a statutory license. Instead, such operators must obtain performance licenses from individual copyright owners. According to the Copyright Act, interactive services include those that permit a listener to choose a particular song and those that create a personalized program for the listener. If copies were being made into the computer server, operators would need to negotiate reproduction rights also.
• To offer a download or performance to someone outside the United States. Copyright law is territorial. In other words, U.S. law covers only reproductions, distributions and performances that occur in the United States. So for any uses of copyrighted sound recordings outside the United States you would need a separate license from the owner of the recording that covers the territory in question.
  • When operating abroad, check local copyright law on two issues. 1) What are the rights of the copyright owner in that country? 2) Who do you contact to negotiate rights? If you are dealing with a major company it is likely to have an affiliate overseas, otherwise look to collecting societies.

So look at it from Twitch's (or Youtube)'s point of view. If someone plays a song, unedited, untransformed on their service, it's "a digital download" or "jukebox", and you need a license for every country in the world that can use the service. That's just impossible. Likewise, if someone produces a cover, or just raps out the lyrics to a song, the RIAA would also want you to obtain 200+ licences just to do that. Even referencing meme'able things like the "never going to give you up" song used in rickrolls would demand a licence.

 

From a fair use perspective, the rickrolls may qualify in territories that have some kind of fair use provision, but not countries that don't (eg Japan's concept of fair use is substantially different, and you need to ask permission for everything, no matter what, before you use it.) They only gave exemptions for AI research last year.

 

You know how you encounter the dreaded "not available in your country" message on Youtube? That is the licensing of the copyright holder only holding US rights (or whatever county they are in) , they're certainly not going to bother getting the rights to other countries if they are only targeting US viewers.

 

Which circles back to this problem with the DMCA. The DMCA only applies to US service providers, not the users themselves. So Amazon/Twitch and Google/Youtube don't exclusively have their services in the US but as a US company the DMCA applies to them. This leads to this problem where you can take content down from Twitch and Youtube with a DMCA , that probably doesn't apply if the content is restricted from being shown in the US.

 

What needs to happen is the DMCA needs to be nerfed so that it can only used to take down full or partial, transformed or not, music, video, text that replaces or competes with the copyrighted content, and can not be used against incidental use (such as any music/video in the background of a video or stream that is not synchronized, or someone reciting the lyrics to a song without a synchronized backing track.)

 

And on YT/TTV's side, they need a way to have users be able to license the tracks in question, and the lack of any reasonable way to do this, is why this keeps happening. Both services clearly have a way of detecting music, so why not have a way to either pre-license the track for the stream, or VOD. Or maybe have the viewers license it if they want to hear it, and anyone who hasn't licensed the track just hears silence.

 

One of the current meme'able tracks on Twitch are Dorime Doge 

 

Which is audio from 

Can't go two hours without someone using it. So let's say the artist or publisher of that song wanted all the moneys from the twitch meme's, just detect it in the stream and do:

a) The twitch streamer is prompted to purchase the song so they can hear it, and the music audio gets punted to a separate track that viewers can only hear once.

b) The viewers are prompted to purchase the song if they want to hear it again, this records a perpetual purchase in their twitch/amazon account and they can download the track themselves. Plus if they already have it, any other streamer who plays it, they won't be prompted again, nor have it muted.

 

Karaoke can be done the same way, the backing track gets kicked to the mutable-track in the audio, and anyone watching the stream wanting to hear the backing track is asked to one-time purchase it.

 

Yet, the RIAA companies have their heads too far up their ass for this and would rather be paid as though it was a radio stream, which is like 5% of all revenue and 50 cents per subscriber, regardless of what is played.

[Bombastinator]

The DMCA was loathed when it was enacted and remains as loathed then as it is now.  It came from owners of the record industry choosing to cash in on CDs even though they knew it would cause the problems it did and eventually destroy the industry.  They didn’t care.  They would be rich and retired.

[Donut417]

8 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The fact is the DMCA get's used as a cudgel against "any use" of a copyrighted work, be it licenced or not. If it's used to take down a ROM piracy site, that's what it's meant for. If it's used to take down a Library, that's not what it's meant for.

 

Not going to read a wall of text. I dont have that kind of attention span. The fact of the matter is the DMCA was made in to existence in 1998. Like I stated in my first post. Its a 20th century law in a 21st century world. It doesn't matter what the law originally applied to, the courts will decide what its applies to. The problem is "Fair use" is not well defined by the law. Until Congress fixes the law, stuff like this will happen. The only way to fix the BS is for Congress to fix the BS. Thats not likely to happen. OR the supreme court need to strike it down, which is wont because copy rights are a protected right under the US constitution.