GitHub Reinstates YouTube-dl Library After EFF Intervention (zdnet.com) 47
GitHub has reinstated today the youtube-dl open-source project, a Python library that lets users download the source audio and video files behind YouTube videos. From a report: GitHub, a code-hosting repository, had previously removed the library from its portal after it received a controversial DMCA takedown request from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on October 23. In a DMCA takedown letter, RIAA argued that the library was being used to "circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube" and to allow users to "reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings [...] without authorization." RIAA also noted that the project's source code "expressly suggests its use to copy and/or distribute the following copyrighted works." More specifically, RIAA used Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to claim that the youtube-dl library was breaking copyright by providing a tool to circumvent copyrighted material -- even if the youtube-dl library didn't contain copyright-infringing code itself.
But in a blog post today, GitHub said the library did not actually break Section 1201 of the DMCA, citing a letter it received from Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyers, who to take up the youtube-dl project's case. In the letter, the EFF team explained that Google does not have any technical measures in place to prevent the download of its videos -- all of which need to be made freely available to all kinds of apps, browsers, smart TVs, and more. Hence, EFF lawyers argued that the library could never be taken down under Section 1201 of the DMCA since the library doesn't actually circumvent any sort of copyright protection system in the first place.
But in a blog post today, GitHub said the library did not actually break Section 1201 of the DMCA, citing a letter it received from Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyers, who to take up the youtube-dl project's case. In the letter, the EFF team explained that Google does not have any technical measures in place to prevent the download of its videos -- all of which need to be made freely available to all kinds of apps, browsers, smart TVs, and more. Hence, EFF lawyers argued that the library could never be taken down under Section 1201 of the DMCA since the library doesn't actually circumvent any sort of copyright protection system in the first place.
Not to mention... (Score:5, Interesting)
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The enormous amount of kickbacks Samsung and Sony gave them just to be able to play youtube videos shittily.
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I'm disappointed in Github for taking it down in the first place. As you said the RIAA would not have a claim even if it was valid reason for a take down request as it was not a service they own. I was under the impression you can't file a DMCA on someone else's behalf? Isn't there a penalty for misrepresenting a claim?
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You most definitely can assign and have that right reassigned to others specifically lawyers to take care of these sort of matters for you. Your going to have a whole chain by the time you get to the RIAA who then contracts with sleaze ball law firm who has a 1st year sign everything, on advice from a more senior lawyer that everything is above board. If anything goes bad you stake that 1st year out as a sacrificial lamb.
Now you have a technical expert saying that this infringes because their software say
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https://slashdot.org/~silas_moeckel claimed:
You most definitely can assign and have that right reassigned to others specifically lawyers to take care of these sort of matters for you.
No, you most definitely can't [wikipedia.org].
(Full disclosure: IANaL. If you need legal advice, contact an attorney - but don't bother contacting Steven Gibson, former CEO of Righthaven, unless you're looking to lose a lawsuit, bankrupt your legal firm, and cause everyone who knows you to laugh and point ... )
Re:Not to mention... (Score:4, Insightful)
Righthaven claimed overship as a basis to sue for things they did not in fact have ownership of. That is far different than assigning a right to a lawyer to go assert your rights for you.
You implication would be that eavy copyright holder would have to personally fill out DMCA takedowns is asinine. Not a lawyer either but I've gotten clear instructions from one about DMCA takedowns and validating them.
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silas_moeckel insisted:
Righthaven claimed overship as a basis to sue for things they did not in fact have ownership of. That is far different than assigning a right to a lawyer to go assert your rights for you.
No, it's not. You are conflating the assignment of copyrights with legal representation by counsel. They're two entirely different things.
You implication would be that eavy copyright holder would have to personally fill out DMCA takedowns is asinine. Not a lawyer either but I've gotten clear instructions from one about DMCA takedowns and validating them.
Again, you're failing to understand what lawyers do and do not do for their clients. They do NOT take ownership of your copyrights in order to represent you. Period. Instead, they act as your legal agent, upon your instructions (which can take the form of standing instructions), to demand action in accordance with YOUR rights. Not their rights - yo
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You are entirely failing at reading comprehension or willfully misinterpreting what I said.
You can definitely go pay a lawyer to go file DCMA notices for you, it's done every day.
STFU and go home troll.
Re:Now let me correct you! (Score:1)
Re: Not to mention... (Score:1)
Github is actually Microsoft, and they are RIAA members. So this was predictable.
I left github for gitlab when they sold out to the devil.
The do-not-copy bit (Score:2)
As I recall, past cases on the DMCA asserted successfully that simply having a single bit that signals "do not copy" was sufficient to be considered techincal compromise of a protection system if you ignored it.
Re:The do-not-copy bit (Score:4, Insightful)
What is it you don't want them to copy?
Their web server gets a request for a video. The tool in question simply downloads the same video that you'd download to display. It doesn't create a different number of copies than viewing it with a web browser; and in both cases, it is the youtube webserver that creates and distributes the copy.
If they put a flag in the header telling you not to make additional copies, that wouldn't apply to the tool at all, it would apply to copies the user might want to make after they've completed the download.
What some people are missing is that this tool is just a command line web browser for video content. And it is named "youtube-dl" but it works with a wide variety of popular websites.
And furthermore, it supports cookies. When I use youtube-dl, I'm doing so logged into youtube as myself. Or on other sites, using the same anonymous cookie as in the GUI web browser.
We have reddit fans here, it worked just fine to download this video of important election recount information. It only receives the copy the webserver makes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Publi... [reddit.com]
Disclaimer: No ballots were defaced in the making of this comment.
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What you're missing is that the actual text of DMCA it's all about the copyright holders of the works which are protected. The maker/vendor/etc of the DRM scam has no particular rights under DMCA. So the only way Google would be involved would be if they have uploaded some videos to youtube too.
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What you're missing is that the actual text of DMCA it's all about the copyright holders of the works which are protected.
IMO, the thing that still strikes me as weird about this is, it's still not the system of the RIAA, or any of the labels under their umbrella. Seems like that being grounds enough for the RIAA to be able to assert power over a GitHub repository would open one hell of a strange, and problematic can of worms.
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The system is Google's (for YouTube specifically) - other systems belonging to the platforms whom yt-dl can use, so wouldn't it be THEM who would be filing the DMCA claims? What am I missing?
Probably the yt-dl code repository does not include any of Google / Youtube's code either, so not even Youtube could say that the program is "copyright infringement."
Possibly: Is content that encourages others or might contribute to others' copyright infringement might be a valid claim, But that would Not be a va
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Not to mention, where the fuck does the RIAA get off DMCAing something that doesn't directly infringe on its rights like this? The system is Google's (for YouTube specifically) - other systems belonging to the platforms whom yt-dl can use, so wouldn't it be THEM who would be filing the DMCA claims? What am I missing?
The creators of youtube-dl put up examples of how to use youtube-dl and foolishly used examples of how to download copyrighted material. That gave lawyers representing that content a tool to use. Those are the specific copyrights they claim are being violated. I don't agree with the logic, but that's what it says in the complaint.
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Not to mention, where the fuck does the RIAA get off DMCAing something that doesn't directly infringe on its rights like this?
You must have missed the battle over the MP3 audio format when MP3 was first put into play. The RIAA essentially tried to get the technology ruled "illegal". See https://www.eff.org/wp/riaa-v-people-five-years-later [eff.org] because going after the actual individual violations was extremely difficult (and that effort was itself rife with highly questionable tactics from the RIAA).
The RIAA is funded by people who were making scads of money off of music publishing (prior to price pressure from Internet distribution
Intellectual Property has the shelf life of a bana (Score:2)
“Intellectual Property has the shelf life of a banana” (Bill gates, 2011)
I think in 2020, IP has an even lower shelf life than in 2011, the Banana outlives it.
RIAA needs to get over this.
Have you hugged a lawyer today? (Score:5, Funny)
But in a blog post today, GitHub said the library did not actually break Section 1201 of the DMCA, citing a letter it received from Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyers, who to take up the youtube-dl project's case.
Bet you all love lawyers now?
Re: Have you hugged a lawyer today? (Score:5, Insightful)
In general, I have always liked the ACLU and EFF lawyers. Even in the few cases where I disagreed with the ACLU ones.
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Yeah, I made the donation and got the teeshirt. Happy to do it again.
Re:Have you hugged a lawyer today? (Score:5, Insightful)
But in a blog post today, GitHub said the library did not actually break Section 1201 of the DMCA, citing a letter it received from Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyers, who to take up the youtube-dl project's case.
Bet you all love lawyers now?
Not really no. It's like the army: we only need the armed services to protect us from the sort of people who join the armed services. We only need lawyers to protect us from other lawyers.
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When even a patent lawyer is against Imaginary Property with a free ebook Against Intellectual Property [mises.org] you know the world has gone crazy.
Not so fast there, sparky (Score:2)
It was lawyers who started all this. Without an army of lawyers, the entertainment industry would never have been able to go after people in the first place with LAWsuits for copyright violations. Without lawyers, the entertainment industry would not have gotten the congress to put "takedown notices" into the lawyer-written DMCA in the first place. Without lawyers, companies would not be easily bullied into taking stuff down to protect themselves from other lawyers.
If a few "good guy" lawyers come along and
Good (Score:1)
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
They're a bunch of predators who have convinced the recording and movie industries that they are needed and invaluable
That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. The RIAA was CREATED and is RUN by the record companies. Not the other way around.
the cat has my toungue (Score:2)
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It costs very little to tell the truth when nobody is listening. I wonder what it cost this time to force the truth to be heard.
The cat has my wallet. (Score:2)
Whatever your donation to the EFF was.
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Reminder that smile.amazon.com lets you set them as your beneficiary.
I only buy off them once or twice a year so I guess this gesture helps more.
I don't agree with 100% of the EFF's movements but I'd rather have them than not.
A temporary win (Score:2)
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Re: A temporary win (Score:2)
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Careful they will go push some plugin that throws DMR on the whole thing.
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They should make it so web browsers can't download them either. You never know what the user is going to do with them once they are on the client machine.
Be careful what you suggest. I would be surprised if the RIAA hasn't considered making the claim that they have to control browser software in order to make sure copyright law is properly administered in the browsers. It would kill the cash cow to not let the hoi polloi view the content, but as long as they control all means of viewing the content, it would be allowed.
If they could have gotten their way, all media playback would be through licensed technology only, that enforced all kinds of marketing sc
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Now the RIAA will demand YouTube enact measures to prevent downloading or expand the law to encompass YouTube-dl... probably with bipartisan support of politicians sucking off the billionaires teats instead of representing their constituents.
Dicks. Very few billionaires have teats.
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Now the RIAA will demand YouTube enact measures
And Google can go tell them to fuck off. They are a DMCA compliant company and are under no obligation to support the RIAA with copy protection mechanisms.
"circumvent copyrighted material" EDITORS ! EDIT ! (Score:3)
"the youtube-dl library was breaking copyright by providing a tool to circumvent copyrighted material"
"CIRCUMVENT COPYRIGHT MATERIAL" ?!
Do the editors EVER read what they quote ?
Hmmm that's funny (Score:3)
When I said precisely what the EFF said I had a torrent of people claim that I was wrong and that any action of viewing the footage outside of a youtube approved way was in fact running afoul of "copy protection" because it was being copied in an unintended way.
Glad to hear it from actual lawyers now that it's bullshit.
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I'm surprised the mafRIAA didn't try to make a bullshit claim that "buffering the video" was making a copy of the video. /s
The world may be changing, but the RIAA..? (Score:2)
One would think they'd at least have one or two capable technology consultants informing them of these realities, and of their poor chances of it succeeding. More than a bit surreal actually.
will the RIAA try to stop right to repair with BS (Score:2)
will the RIAA try to stop right to repair with BS like this??
distribution is OR is NOT controlled by receiver (Score:1)
The conflict of accounting for distribution has run up against whether a computer is an appliance offering features or a fully programmable tool. The RIAA has no qualms about appliances because their dependency on authorization is their designed feature. But for
This is how the law is supposed to work (Score:2)
Github was sent a take down notice and has to follow it. (whether or not that notice was bogus doesn't matter). Now they have been presented with a counter notice and (per the law) have reinstated the content.
The law now says that the submitter of the original take down notice can either do nothing (in which case the content stays there) or fight in court (with the courts deciding if the content gets to stay up or not)