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Music Piracy

RIAA Takedowns Backfire as Pirated MP3s Now Surface on GitHub (torrentfreak.com) 62

Two weeks ago the RIAA asked GitHub to remove the open-source stream-ripper software youtube-dl. This request wasn't well-received by developers, many of whom retaliated by posting copies of the code. Yesterday, things went from bad to worse when a user with the name 'FuckTheRIAA' uploaded three MP3s of the songs the RIAA mentioned in its takedown notice. TorrentFreak reports: A few hours ago we spotted a new GitHub user named 'FuckTheRIAA' who uploaded a copy of youtube-dl as well as a 'FuckTheRIAA' repository that includes three songs. These songs from Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake, and Icona Pop, were not chosen randomly. The same tracks were mentioned in the RIAA's original takedown request, as the YouTube videos were highlighted in the youtube-dl code.

This is yet another example that shows how the RIAA's takedown request has actually made things worse for the music group, at least for now. After nearly a day the three MP3 files are still available on GitHub. [I]t seems likely that it will send another DMCA takedown request to remove the tracks from GitHub. Whether the RIAA will also file takedown notices to remove all of the new youtube-dl forks has yet to be seen. For now, its takedown efforts have only made things worse, so they may let things cool down for a while first while exploring other options.

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RIAA Takedowns Backfire as Pirated MP3s Now Surface on GitHub

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    Linda Richman here. Here's a topic: Barbra Streisand. . . greatest actress in all of history?

    Talk amongst yourselves!

  • Streisand effect (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Narcocide ( 102829 ) on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @08:56PM (#60685620) Homepage

    Every time youtube-dl shows up in a news article, thousands of new people learn of youtube-dl. Will this overall reduce the total usage of youtube-dl, attempts to copycat the tool, the cost of stifling it, or the overhead of just going back to ignoring it? I doubt that, on all counts.

    • by cygnusvis ( 6168614 ) on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @09:32PM (#60685686)
      youtube-dl is awesome, I stopped using ripping sites when this name first popped up on /.
      • Honestly I'm not sure why this is of such interest. This functionality is standard for a lot of download software. I use JDownloader 2. It downloads videos from all video sites (yes those too), it trawls link, can download en batch from various accounts on sites (If you feel ripping every photo from an Instagram user), or hell even github, just past the link in and it'll clone the entire site, on sites like Youtube it'll even give you the choice of every available media, e.g. just the music or just the subt

    • by slazzy ( 864185 )
      Hopefully more people will learn simple things like saying "this should only be used for creative commons licensed content" and making sure the test cases grab creative commons content will reduce legal trouble.
    • No need to copycat. It is open source.
      And it needs constant updating to keep up with the YT obfuscation schemes anyway.
      (Though no obfuscation can ever get around grabbing the compressed media stream straight from RAM or VRAM.Thar is why they wanted TPM electronics on the board and GPU and display. To encrypt stuff in memory and on buses/cables. Which means that the chip would hold keys and decryption hardware that YOU, the PC owner had no access to. Also the main reason for why Bista sucked so badly, by the

  • by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @09:10PM (#60685648)
    They were dying a decade ago [techdirt.com]... and then there was the time they somehow managed to get off light after being convicted of price fixing... [arstechnica.com]

    You'd think, if the legal system in the USA were working correctly, they should have just been shut down by now as an illegal cartel.
    • Somewhere along the line, one of those illegal cartels figured that out too, and simply infiltrated the US legal system.

    • Because they were never dying. There are graphs around, showing how iTunes gradually replaced CDs, and their profit actually went *up* each year! Napster merely filled a need, that they could have instantly filled by offering high-quality MP3s (with full ID3 and album art and lyrics) for 50 cent a pop.

      It was only them crying like poor poor victims, like a SJW would, to secure the legality of their insultingly-high-profit crime schemes beyond the reality-defying border of physical media distribution into the

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        It was only them crying like poor poor victims, like a SJW would,

        Welp, found the fuckwit. Hi fuckwit!

        How about not dragging your identity politics into every thread, eh? Us actual nerds have been ragging on the RIAA for years without the need for such crap.

  • " Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake, and Icona Pop"

    I do know who 2 of these are... but would never listen, much less purchase their "product".

    • by alexhs ( 877055 )

      I do know who 2 of these are... but would never [snip] purchase their "product".

      Pirate!!!
      -- RIAA

      • I do know who 2 of these are... but would never [snip] purchase their "product".

        Pirate!!!
        -- RIAA

        I am old, but I never liked pop music when I wasn't. Or "hair bands".

        I stopped buying music altogether about 30 years ago.

        • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          More accurately. Your memories were created with different tunes at the time and hearing those tunes, now associated with good memories makes you 'feels' better. That is what they exploit for profit, selling you back your memories associated with the music you were listening to at the time. They know this, they are cunts, slimey pieces of shite. Copyright should be cut back to 25year max.

        • That was the core upon which this entire bullshit built.

          Go take out an old vinyl record or CD of yours. Read that license you never read.
          It clearly states you bought a *license*. For *access* to some information. (Like a [former] secret... e.g. a song.) Which happened to come on some physical medium back then...

          That is because everybody knew, that information is obviously not a physical good, and does not adhere to the same rules. Making a copy does not take that work, but is trivial, and can by done by the

    • Re:*Snort* (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @09:25PM (#60685670)

      That's just because you're old. When you were young, your parents thought what you listened to was crap too.

      On the subject of purchasing their products, the last time I bought any music was when I purchased a Michael Jackson LP when I was a teenager. I sunk a goodly portion of my paper route money into that thing, because it was so ridiculously overpriced. That quickly taught me the next thing I should save for is a tape recorder and a pack of tapes. Then I could record stuff on the radio, or make trade copies with my friends.

      Since then, I've never paid a dime for any music. If there's one thing the RIAA taught me, it's how to avoid giving money to the RIAA.

      • Re:*Snort* (Score:5, Interesting)

        by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @11:46PM (#60685970)

        > When you were young, your parents thought what you listened to was crap too.

        The difference is:

        1. I actually liked the music my parents listened it (Jazz / Rock / Folk.) I was able to appreciate being exposed to different music styles.

        2. My generation of music -- the 70s, 80s, 90s didn't rely on modern auto-tune shit or "loudness" wars. While pop music has always been formulaic [youtu.be] the music of 60's and 70's, and to some degree the 80s, artists weren't afraid to push the genre and new things.These days there is very little innovation.

        3. The dynamic range of CDs basically lost as music got stuck in stupid loudness wars [wikipedia.org].

        PLR measurements show a trend of reduced dynamic range throughout the 1990s.

        4. Modern music is extremely homogenous, [theverge.com] bland, and sounds the same [mic.com]

        They found that in nearly every case, as genres increase in popularity, they also become more generic.

        5. Frank Zappa explains the decline of the music business [youtube.com].

        6. Excessive commercialization such as radio stations playing the same shit over and over didn't help. Music became more about flash over substance, marketing, and ratings with the introduction of the music video. MTV cemented this decline [youtu.be] and funeral.

        So yeah, music DID sound better last century. Obviously there are some exceptions. The barrier of entry has never been lower with anyone being able to post their video / music on YouTube and get instant recognition. The other problem is we have so more much crap to wade through. /Oblg. Sturgeon's law: ninety percent of everything is crap.

        • by sconeu ( 64226 )

          Should I use youtube-dl to examine those youtube links?

        • You can condense that to one line:

          Commercial interests and art interests are mutually exclusive.

          Or one line of.pseudo-code:

          makeProfitable(art) = meh

          In both cases, because commercal interests go for broadest appeal even if that appeal is juust big enough to fall for it and hate it until you fall for it another time. (Hey, just like both political parties!)

          And art interests go for the strongest appeal even if that appeal doesn't include most of the population. In other words: People differ.

          • why are my paragraph breaks not workingg? sorry this looks terrible. ++ actually and this is going to be the outlier, i am a lifetime career artist, and i literally see no reason to sell people art. i dont want their money. money is fucking stupid. :) life is all around you, and you dont need money to experience it. life is free. these folks that like selling people food only sell people food to those who dont know how to tend a seed in the ground. you all perhaps see where im going and doubting t
            • > why are my paragraph breaks not working?

              You need to either:

              * Change posting mode to: Plain Old Text, OR
              * Manually add in paragraph breaks via: <p>

              There is a reason we have a Preview button. ;-)

              I don't know your original intent but here is your comment with some line breaks and capitalization applied:

              Actually and this is going to be the outlier, I am a lifetime career artist, and I literally see no reason to sell people art. I don't want their money. money is fucking stupid. :) :ife is all around

        • Your comment, and the links, should be required reading for people who want to have an intelligent discussion about where music is today.

        • Please don't talk about generations as if everyone only listens to what comes through on the latest pop radio channel in between add breaks.

          I too love my parent's music. I too love my current music.
          There are many songs and albums still out there that sound dynamic and amazing.
          There are many songs and albums out there where autotune is barely used (I say barely as a reflection of the fact that your parent's music was also not a true performance, but rather a cut together of tracks made of many takes in order

          • The reality is he's a better singer than most actual professional singers: https://www.youtube.com/watch [youtube.com]?... and used auto-tune to simulate the sound of the 70s era vocoder. But then I'm sure you dismissed that as poor singing.

            It doesn't sound like the 70s vocoder, and why would you want to sound like the 70s vocoder? He might be talented, but then he hides it behind a wall of low-grade autotune. Daft Punk at least does complicated things with it.

            • It doesn't sound like the 70s vocoder, and why would you want to sound like the 70s vocoder?

              You might not. He might. You might not like it (I don't either). He does. As do people who used vocoders, of which many famous artists did. Of course it doesn't sound exactly like a 70s vocoder. If that was the goal you could just use that instead.

              He might be talented, but then he hides it behind a wall of low-grade autotune.

              See why should anyone dare try a new thing when people like you exist to criticise them. Better go back to music like formula to please drinkypoo. I hope the GP sees this

          • Did you miss the part where I said ?

            Obviously there are some exceptions.

        • You're talking about radio music and only radio music. Radio music homogenized as the number of radio station owners declined and all stations were fed the same list of payola songs. The decline you chart above coincides in lock step with the consolidation of more and more radio stations into fewer and fewer hands.

          Streaming music is the opposite of everything you just said, the variety is mind-boggling and in no way driven by rigid formulas. If you're listening to the same thing over and over that's becaus

  • he's just making Trouble for GitHub, who now has to find and take down the offending content.
  • When I used to download music in the 00's, I would create text files with roughly the same file size as the most popular songs at the time and change the extension to mp3. I would usually misspell the filename, just in case they tried to claim copyright over that! I would then prey they would send me a cease and desist. Fuck the RIAA.
  • Misdirection (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @10:12PM (#60685776) Homepage Journal

    This is misdirection - don't fall for it.

    youtube-dl is the #1 tool used by indy media for doing video commentary on news events. Download, clip, comment, upload. Repeat. The RIAA & Google are working together to take down independent news reporting and social commentary - the music thing is just the misdirection the magician says when he wants you to "look over here".

    On Election Day, many huge indy media channels found themselves locked out of YouTube uploads and the YouTube Studio tools.

    At the same time there was a coordinated attack on BitChute's hosting infrastructure providers and it was down all Election Day.

    My YouTube contents is all CC-licensed - I encourage users to use youtube-dl to remix it and create derivative works in the spirit of the CC. That's why YouTube has that license option.

    Go ahead and believe this is Napster redux if it makes you feel any better, but it's not.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      My YouTube contents is all CC-licensed

      Congratulations. Speaking of misdirection, what does *your* little CC-licensed channel have to do with the fact that Youtube is the Videohits of the modern era?

      Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it misdirection. The RIAA's complaint (however shaky it legally is) is not counteracted because you exist and offer an alternative. People do actively rip music from Youtube all the time. I do too. The RIAA can go fuck itself though since ripping from Youtube is no different to hitting the reco

    • I have not seen a single video on YouTube use the term "fair use" without it actually being fair use. Not a single fucking one.

    • Go ahead and believe this is Napster redux if it makes you feel any better, but it's not.

      "People" (*ahem*) commonly use youtube-dl to download copyrighted material from youtube, whether it's illicitly uploaded, or on official channels. Saying "This tool is used by journalists" can be true and still not speak to how it is most commonly used.

      On the other hand, the legal standard so far as I am aware is whether a tool has "substantial non-infringing use", and youtube-dl does that, so it still shouldn't be taken down. Your argument isn't precisely wrong, it's just incorrectly put.

  • That's all they're doing.
    Whac one so-called 'pirate', another one pops up somewhere else.
    And so on.. and so on.. and so on.. ad infinitum.
  • by zenlessyank ( 748553 ) on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @10:15PM (#60685788)

    Thanks guys.

    I bought my music twice, once on cassette and once on CD. For the same thing. I will download what the fuck ever I want. Fuck the RIAA also. With hot mustard.

    • I'm 100% with you. I've paid for some of my music three times...vinyl, tape and CD. I still have a lot of vinyl and all of the CDs. Some tapes died in an old Toyota's failing stereo, and I got rid of the rest.

      So if, for the sake of convenience, I want music I've already paid for as a sound file, I'm going to download it. The RIAA can suck a bag of diseased dicks.

    • Try rhaphanidosis (radish punishement) [wikipedia.org].
      The original hot mustard fucking!

      I suggest using traditional Japanaese-grade wasabi roots.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Because we're dealing with these scumbags by mass-forging DMCA counter-notices.

    • That aleady plays a game with rules designed by the enemy.

      Never do that.
      As they do rig the rules, and themselves not adhere to them anyway.
      Same reason you should not argue with an idiot.

      You need to be the rulemaker. The gamemaster.
      That means you need mass-lobbyism to fire legislative proposals and dinners and conference talks with politicians and media pieces, talking heads, PR, ads, etc until it is repeated enough that the enemy's stuff drowns and you can fix their reality distortion, so actual legislation

  • Does YouTube-dl work on pornhub? Asking for a friend.

    • Video DownloadHelper works great on countless porn sites.

      The most amazing part: They got a list of such sites, sorted by porn quality, etc: https://www.downloadhelper.net... [downloadhelper.net]
      (Sadly, the column indicating the type of content [e.g. kinks catered to] seems to be gone.)

  • not kindness, not intelligence, not love, pure spite
    • Speak for yourself. I run on Mountain Dew, weed and Hungry Man TV dinners.

    • You seem to confuse whatever is dominating the US with homo sapiens, a social animal that puts its group before itself.

      I think as soon as enough people have realized the distinction, and refuse to fuck such a person, or fail to produce offspring, we can call them a new species. Homo psychopathis seems appropriate.

      No hate. May the better species win.
      And I think I know who that might be ... ;)

  • In this context, that term was specifically made up as hate-speech by the content industry, to make you think of violence, murder, robbery, and rape on the high seas!
    In its moral foundation, it is similar to "The Jew" posters by Germany before 1945.

    And it furthers the deliberate confusion between physical objects, that can be owned and sold, as a token of the work it took to make it, because ot takes some more work to make another, and *services* that produce information (like music), that (see below for wh

  • I gave those 3 songs priority seeding in my seedbox.

  • There was no legitimate reason to request youtube-dl takedown. However RIAA is well within their rights to request takedown of songs by these pop stars. How is that backfiring?
  • I equate this with the old days of taping something off the radio, which as far as I know, was legal.
  • Fuck the MPAA! Fuck the RIAA! Fuck the suits behind the BSA! And fuck them all for the DMCA!

A committee is a group that keeps the minutes and loses hours. -- Milton Berle

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