[HN Gopher] YouTube-Dl Site Goes Offline as Hosting Provider Enf...
___________________________________________________________________
YouTube-Dl Site Goes Offline as Hosting Provider Enforces Court-
Ordered Ban
Author : marban
Score : 358 points
Date : 2023-08-11 15:07 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (torrentfreak.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (torrentfreak.com)
| KolmogorovComp wrote:
| > A German court previously ruled that stream-ripping software
| bypasses YouTube's 'rolling cipher' download protection. This is
| seen as a circumvention of technical protection measures, a
| violation of intellectual property law in Europe.`
|
| Does someone know what they mean by 'rolling cipher' here?
| tadfisher wrote:
| They are referring to the "s" query parameter which is a short
| ID referring to the next piece of video/audio stream. This is a
| good explanation: https://torrentfreak.com/deciphering-
| youtubes-rolling-cypher...
| nektro wrote:
| this paves the way to make archiving illegal, is that what
| germany wants?
| blooalien wrote:
| It's what our corporate overlords and their pet politicians
| want, and they ain't gonna stop fighting until George Orwell
| spins in his grave, and prolly not even then.
| carrotcarrot wrote:
| We already had mass censorship of wrongthink on social media
| coerced by federal agencies. This is petty by comparison and
| Orwell has been spinning for years now.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| To control the future, control the present; to control the
| present, control the past...
| sigmar wrote:
| There's even a filter on youtube for searching for 'creative
| commons' content. This ruling seems to make it very difficult
| to download that content (explicitly intended to be shared and
| remixed) and illegal to work on software that makes it easier.
| em-bee wrote:
| worse, it's about making download tools illegal, even if the
| download itself is legitimate.
| Pulcinella wrote:
| Its basically the VCR recording uSA Supreme Court case all
| over again.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive.
| ...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Yeah but for some reason in the 90s American Judges decided
| to throw that whole "justice for everyone" thing out the
| window and now explicitly empower ONLY certain giant
| rightsholders to have any rights.
|
| I'm waiting for a judge to accept an argument that web
| browsers should be illegal because they allow you to look
| at infringing content.
| croes wrote:
| It is even more perverse.
|
| There is a right to private copying, you pay additional fees
| for media such as CDs, DVDs and USB sticks, but it is illegal
| to circumvent copy protection for copying.
| hiatus wrote:
| > Speaking with TorrentFreak, Uberspace owner Jonas Pasche says
| that his hands are tied. Failure to comply with the order would
| either result in a massive fine, or worse, a prison sentence.
|
| Prison? Presumably for contempt?
| qingcharles wrote:
| Yeah, that's how they get you. Criminal contempt for failure to
| follow a court order.
| expertentipp wrote:
| American predators and their German tools. Repeatedly, every time
| reliable assholes.
| username223 wrote:
| So you can only legally watch Youtube videos when and where you
| have a fast and unlimited internet connection? That sucks...
|
| Let's say you only have a cellular data plan, but it has a data
| cap, or your cell coverage is slow. So when a friend sends you a
| link to a video, you go to a library or coffee shop to download
| it to watch later. Is that "acting in bad faith?" I guess it gets
| in the way of Youtube's "right" to shove ads at your face, but
| avoiding the ads was not the point.
|
| As was pointed out elsewhere in this thread, they failed to
| outlaw VCRs back in the day, so hopefully this nonsense will also
| get slapped down.
| andai wrote:
| The YouTube app lets you download videos and watch them online,
| but only with YouTube Premium.
|
| Similarly, Google removed any unofficial YouTube apps from the
| Play Store that supported playing with the screen off, because
| they want you to pay for it.
|
| Tangential (but infuriating): there was a several year gap
| between them banning apps with background playback, and
| actually launching that feature (via Premium) in my country...
| qingcharles wrote:
| This is why I'm setting up a reverse proxy on another host in
| front of my web site, in case I get some fake takedown request
| from a competitor that causes my host to delete my account. At
| least if I use a proxy I can spend a small amount of time setting
| up a new proxy.
|
| I used to have a competitor who would email PayPal every couple
| of weeks to tell them our web site had CP on it just so PayPal
| would instantly shut off our payment gateway while they
| investigated and then several days later cleared us and put us
| back online. It's too easy for people to make fake requests to
| take your business down.
| skissane wrote:
| > I used to have a competitor who would email PayPal every
| couple of weeks to tell them our web site had CP on it just so
| PayPal would instantly shut off our payment gateway while they
| investigated
|
| Isn't this sort of behaviour criminal? (I mean the competitor
| submitting a fake child pornography report, not whatever PayPal
| did to respond to it.) And if not, surely it ought to be.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Illegal? Probably, but I'm not a lawyer. I imagine the words
| "unfair competition" might be present somewhere on the legal
| paperwork. And if it's illegal but not criminal, you have to
| sue the competitor yourself, which is expensive and time-
| consuming.
|
| PayPal probably should have some kind of hold on your account
| saying "don't shut off the account until we've investigated"
| but that might itself be abusable (see Facebook Xcheck). If
| this behavior is illegal they might also have standing to sue
| whoever is sending the reports.
|
| All of that requires you to have at least some amount of
| evidence tying the false reports to the competitor, too. Or
| at least enough evidence to survive a motion to dismiss so
| you can use discovery to get the rest of the story.
| skissane wrote:
| > Illegal? Probably, but I'm not a lawyer. I imagine the
| words "unfair competition" might be present somewhere on
| the legal paperwork
|
| I was thinking more along the lines of "child pornography
| is a crime, and making a knowingly false report of a crime
| is a crime".
|
| I know it is a crime (in many jurisdictions) to make a
| knowingly false report of a crime to law enforcement; but
| PayPal aren't law enforcement. I don't think that should
| matter though - if it isn't already a crime to make a
| knowingly false report of a crime to a business, then it
| should be
| nonameiguess wrote:
| What is considered criminal depends on the jurisdiction, but
| I doubt making false reports to a private company is criminal
| in very many. At least in the US, you could certainly get
| sued for continually disrupting someone else's business, but
| to sue another party, they'd need to also be in the US so
| they could be served and actually subject to being forced to
| appear in a US court and a judgment against them could be
| enforceable. Otherwise, you end up in a situation like some
| Chinese business owner just building their own McDonald's.
| Sure, it violates all kinds of US ip laws, but if their home
| jurisdiction doesn't care about US ip laws, there isn't shit
| you can do about it.
| skissane wrote:
| > What is considered criminal depends on the jurisdiction,
| but I doubt making false reports to a private company is
| criminal in very many.
|
| I live in the Australian state of New South Wales. I just
| looked up our state law on this topic. Section 314 of the
| Crimes Act 1900 says: "A person who makes an accusation
| intending a person to be the subject of an investigation of
| an offence, knowing that other person to be innocent of the
| offence, is liable to imprisonment for 7 years." I haven't
| looked at the case law or anything, but just going by the
| wording of the statute, it seems broad enough to
| potentially include false accusations made to private
| companies in its scope.
|
| Of course, probably none of the parties in the case under
| discussion live in my jurisdiction, so its laws are
| irrelevant. Still, if other jurisdictions don't have a law
| like this on the books, maybe they should
| qingcharles wrote:
| Yes, but it was done anonymously. The competitor denied all
| knowledge of it, but the guy he paid to do the reporting
| would talk to me through chat every day to gloat about it.
|
| I ended up paying 15000EUR bounty to track the guy down.
| Found him in Germany. 15 year old kid. Had somebody talk his
| mother about him. Never had a problem again after that.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Did you ever try to recover the amount spent on the bounty?
| That kid caused damages to your business.
| qingcharles wrote:
| No, I took it as a cost of doing business. I only went
| that far after he managed to find my wife's cell phone
| number and started calling to harass her.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| After the second false claim you should have had your legal
| department reach out to theirs, and to the FBI, and that would
| have solved both your takedown problems and created a huge
| legal headache for your competitor. And by "headache" I mean
| time spent in prison.
|
| Paypal has long had the ability to whitelist websites that are
| subject to this kind of harassment. If you choose not to avail
| yourself of these options, it's not Paypal's fault.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| maybe i missed it but after searching i see this mentioned
| nowhere public. just ips to whitelist for firewalls and junk
| like that.
|
| so like i get they could contact support again and ask about
| avenues but not knowing about this seems unfair?
| can16358p wrote:
| So PayPal's policy is "guilty until proven innocent".
|
| Nice, hope they go bankrupt.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| That's pretty much how all payment processors work. The issue
| for them is that letting fraudsters continue making payments
| will lead to big Ls for the payment processors, since they
| end up being on the hook for the money that card networks
| will clawback or liability from regulations and money
| laundering laws.
| vkou wrote:
| You're free to try running a payment processor with a mantra
| of "Innocent until proven guilty."
|
| You'll be a honeypot for every scammer, fraudster, and con
| artist ready to take advantage of that policy, your
| processing fees will be through the roof because of
| chargebacks, and the only people who will use your platform
| will be the aforementioned scammers, fraudsters, and conmen.
|
| I'm sorry for the GP poster's situation, but there's really
| no way to make everyone happy, here.
| waithuh wrote:
| See: crypto. Marvelous technology. Ruined in the public's
| eye because of the amount of scams in it. Those same scams
| were used as justification for strict KYC laws. Which did
| not do much to stop the fraudsters really, hurt legally
| operating investors' privacy instead.
| grumple wrote:
| Payment processors could assign reputation to longtime
| users, and they could have a vetting process to users as
| well, just like banks do. Get their full credit history,
| all the info of their owners, etc.
|
| They could also communicate problems more clearly and
| provide better support to those who are sanctioned.
|
| It's a reasonably solveable problem.
| mk_stjames wrote:
| Curious, what line of work are you in where your competitors
| are using such a tactic to target your online sales site?
| Because... wow.
| wackget wrote:
| >> "[T]he average user must recognize that YouTube content,
| unlike media content on other websites, cannot be downloaded with
| a simple right-click and must be aware that this is achieved
| using technology on YouTube and that youtube-dl 'overrides' this
| protection. It is therefore to be assumed that the average user
| acts in bad faith," the Hamburg Court wrote.
|
| This argument seems ass-backwards. Why is it not YouTube which
| acts in bad faith by not providing the means for users to
| download videos in the first place?
| digging wrote:
| Because there is no such thing as selling a product in bad
| faith under capitalism. Except the acts explicitly named as
| illegal by existing laws. Those are _obviously_ bad faith acts,
| which is why we made them illegal at the beginning of time. But
| if an act isn 't illegal, and if you believe you'll profit from
| it, then it is by definition a good-faith act.
| javajosh wrote:
| How are people supposed to produce videos that include other
| Youtube clips without a tool like this?
| tamimio wrote:
| Wait few months and you will have youtube "studio premium"
| feature so you can edit these videos there, mockery.
| tamimio wrote:
| Downloading videos now from youtube is illegal!? What's next, you
| can't save this webpage too!?
| branon wrote:
| It's laughable how symbolic and ultimately meaningless this is.
| GitHub has already proven themselves to be a good actor in this
| particular fight, so not only is the repo online, but we also
| have http://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/
|
| The Uberspace provider is appealing the decision as well. Even
| with the site down, this looks incredibly positive from where I
| sit. Rightsholders and litigators get stuffed, we always win!
| white_dragon88 wrote:
| It's easy to defend the 'right' of something. Not so easy to go
| beyond that.
| tempodox wrote:
| The site is online, but the download link (https://yt-
| dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl) is borked: _Due to a ruling
| of the Hamburg Regional Court, access to this website is
| blocked._
| codetrotter wrote:
| They can resolve that by not using absolute URLs maybe
| Sinescape wrote:
| Shame it merely responds with HTTP 403 and not 451.
| d0mine wrote:
| Microsoft is the freedom fighter? That it is indeed laughable.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Microsoft did not face a court order, if they did they would
| surely immediately comply. They faced a seemingly fraudulent
| DMCA takedown notice, as takedowns are not designed to target
| circumvention tools.
|
| They did a good thing restoring youtube-dl, but I'd hardly
| say it puts them in "freedom fighter" territory, more so
| compared to Uberspace who are actively fighting for youtube-
| dl.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Microsoft has largely stopped giving a fuck about piracy of
| their consumer products.
|
| py-kms is freely available on GitHub, and so are Windows
| Activation Tools.
|
| While arguably py-kms doesn't violate anything, as it's a
| cleanroom implementation of the KMS server, Windows
| Activation Tools definitely does.
|
| Either way, MS could eradicate all of those repositories,
| they aren't doing it.
| autoexec wrote:
| MS has done a good thing by defending youtube-dl but their
| lax enforcement concerning windows piracy is a bit
| different. MS turns a blind eye to windows piracy for the
| same reasons malware authors don't care if their software
| is spread on GitHub or P2P sites.
|
| Microsoft cares much more about getting their hands on all
| your personal data than they care about the money they'd
| get from an OEM license. People can download an ISO for
| Windows 11 for free from microsoft.com and simply never
| activate it.
| skeaker wrote:
| It's also because MS makes way, way, way more money on
| business licenses than they do on individual consumer
| ones. They don't have much incentive to care about
| individuals not giving them a sale. Meanwhile, businesses
| are actively audited if they're suspected of violating
| license agreements.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I don't think so. I think the real reason is that a
| pirated Windows install is not Mac or Linux, and will
| probably, eventually, become a legal Windows install.
|
| Imagine telling a bunch of possibly talented and/or
| ambitious poor people that they should use another
| (better) operating system. Instead, let them become
| Windows experts and ultimately make Microsoft more money.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| indeed, even if never a valid purchase, still a valuable
| datapoint for 99% of those "non tech savvy didnt block
| all the telemetry domains in their personal pihole, but
| managed to activated w massgrave" crowd
| stu2b50 wrote:
| The rise of SaaS has made piracy much less of a threat to
| revenue. Can't pirate it if you need a server to do
| anything.
| TillE wrote:
| It is remarkable how easy they've made it to cleanly pirate
| Windows recently. You don't even need to run your own KMS
| thing, there are several public servers, and you just type
| in three terminal commands.
|
| Totally different from the Vista/7/8 era where activation
| required real cracking software. It's an explicit signal
| that they don't really care about consumer licensing.
| pengaru wrote:
| > Either way, MS could eradicate all of those repositories,
| they aren't doing it.
|
| yet
| kzrdude wrote:
| Youtube didn't care about piracy and copyright at all
| either. In their audience growth phase.
| em-bee wrote:
| i'd rephrase that, rightsholders should not get stuffed, but
| these are not rightsholders because their rights are not being
| infringed by the mere existance of youtube-dl
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Exactly. If youtube DL should go down, then so should all gun
| manufacturers.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| It's too late, I have both a python interpreter and a 3D
| printer
|
| _Become ungovernable_
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I have a bootloader, an internet connection and the C
| manual! I shall conquer the world!
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| what next, an open source DRAM controller? :D
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| I'll take that trade
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I would too. But i am saying if we are okay with gun
| manufacturers enabling death and murder, then by all
| means ytdl can and should stay up.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| > gun manufacturers enabling death and murder, then by
| all means ytdl can and should stay up.
|
| I assume you're referring to arms makers selling weapons
| that are obviously not for hunting game to the civilian
| market, rather than overall, because (such as it is)
| countries generally need defence-forces, and those forces
| do need arms.
| [deleted]
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Well, of course I am referring to the obvious one.
| Humanity isn't ready for the other one.
| agensaequivocum wrote:
| Except one is an explicitly enumerated constitutional
| right.
| tivert wrote:
| > Except one is an explicitly enumerated constitutional
| right.
|
| The Second Amendment only grants the _government_ a right
| to have armed national guard units, it says it right
| there:
|
| > A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the
| security of a free State, the right of the people to keep
| and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
|
| The words "the people" mean the government, just like it
| means in the First Amendment (properly understood). I
| don't know how anyone with a functioning brain could
| interpret it to mean that individual citizens have a
| right to own military-style guns.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> The words "the people" mean the government, just like
| it means in the First Amendment (properly understood). I
| don't know how anyone with a functioning brain could
| interpret it to mean that individual citizens have a
| right to own military-style guns.
|
| This very question was settled by SCOTUS in District of
| Columbia v. Heller:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Hel
| ler
| jakeogh wrote:
| It's a very well written opinion. Here is the audio of
| Justice Antonin Scalia reading Heller(2008)[1] for the
| majority:
|
| https://s3.amazonaws.com/oyez.case-
| media.ogg/case_data/2007/... (Justice Breyer also reads
| the dissent)
|
| [1] https://www.oyez.org/cases/2007/07-290
| agensaequivocum wrote:
| It was widely understood prior to the 20th century that
| the right applied to the people. Here is a long thread
| with dozens of sources https://threadreaderapp.com/thread
| /1645290263299117056.html. Overwhelming they all agree
| that military weapons are most protected of all.
|
| > Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
| of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
| abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the
| right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
| petition the government for a redress of grievances.
|
| Understanding "the people" here to mean the government is
| absurd. The government doesn't need to petition itself
| for redress. Moreover, they could have used the word
| `government` instead.
|
| The Bill of Rights was added because the anti-federalist
| were worried that the constitution didn't protect
| individual liberty enough.
| agensaequivocum wrote:
| > The constitutions of most of our states assert that all
| power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise
| it by themselves, in all cases to which they think
| themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries
| executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of
| themselves, both fact and law, in all judiciary cases in
| which any fact is involved) or they may act by
| representatives, freely and equally chosen; _that it is
| their right and duty to be at all times armed;_ that they
| are entitled to freedom of person; freedom of religion;
| freedom of property; and freedom of the press.
|
| ~ Thomas Jefferson
|
| https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-0
| 2-4...
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I don't know how any sane person thinks a bunch of
| larpers - even if they themselves don't see them as such
| - can defend themselves against a willing US military...
| tivert wrote:
| > I don't know how any sane person thinks a bunch of
| larpers - even if they themselves don't see them as such
| - can defend themselves against a willing US military...
|
| I know, that's why Afghanistan is a shining star of
| liberalism in the Central Asia. The Taliban never was
| able to defend itself from the willing US military and
| was defeated years ago.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Do you, in all honesty, think the US showed its full
| might against the taliban in an all out war?
|
| The war served its purpose and when it was no longer
| profitable enough they moved.
| tivert wrote:
| > Do you, in all honesty, think the US showed its full
| might against the taliban in an all out war?
|
| No, the one thing the US government held back were nukes.
|
| Of course, I could see how those were off the table
| against a foreign country, but those concerns wouldn't
| apply to domestic use. The LARPers would stand no chance
| against H-bombs, which shows the truth of your original
| point. Small arms can't defend against a willing US
| military, because a willing US military will just nuke
| them.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| The US would infiltrate and dismantle any uprising before
| it could pose a threat to the local state.
|
| The sheer number of things that must go wrong for the US
| army to reach out to nukes is enormous.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It might have been, if it hadn't been for the fact that
| the US leadership at the time didn't want to fight them
| at all, it wanted to fight Iraq, and when it turned out
| that it couldn't use 9/11 direcrly as an excuse to do so
| it went to work directly on making that excuse so it
| could, producing a lingering disaster in Iraq, Syria, and
| elsewhere instead of getting the job done in Afghanistan.
| hamhock666 wrote:
| I mean what about the Viet Cong?
|
| I think the main idea is that a well armed population
| creates a different relationship with the government. It
| is much harder to round up people and send them to camps
| if they can actually put up a fight. The idea is to avoid
| that conflict in the first place by having that threat of
| civilian retaliation. Yes the government could still do
| it, but it would be costly.
| zirgs wrote:
| The Americans are so lucky that they only have to fear
| their own government.
|
| I don't fear my government. I fear the Russian
| government. It's very unlikely that my government is
| going to send me to a camp. But the Russians totally
| could - they are already doing that in Ukraine.
| agensaequivocum wrote:
| A few points:
|
| * How effective one may be in defending himself does not
| change the right in anyway.
|
| * This is why the right extends to all arms of modern
| warfare. E.g., machine-guns, mortars, grenades, tanks,
| night vision, etc.
|
| * The Founder were very much against a standing army...we
| should probably abolish it.
|
| * When combatants are mixed with non-combatants, one
| cannot just drop a bomb. Because of this, well armed
| individuals can absolutely resist the military.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| You can't own guns banned by your state. Afaik you can't
| own a rocket launcher, missiles, AAs, AT mines, nukes
| etc.
|
| Re 4: a willing army can very much do whatever it wants.
| There are no laws of physics that prevent whatever
| happened in Bakhmut from happening.
| agensaequivocum wrote:
| Aside from machine-guns made after 1986 and possibly
| nukes, you can own any weapon in most states. The things
| you mentioned are considered Destructive Devices and
| require payment of a $200 tax stamp.
|
| Sure. If the government just preemptively nukes all
| American cities and towns then so be it. But to say that
| civilian firearm possession cannot slow, stop, or impede
| a tyrannical government is wrong.
| [deleted]
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Do you have a more substantial breaking down of the text
| and the intended meaning? It doesn't make sense for it to
| only apply to the government. The Constitution puts
| limits on government, not the other way around. In fact,
| it lists a variety of things that are recognized as
| inalienable rights, such as the right to Life, Liberty,
| and the Pursuit of Happiness.
|
| Gonna try to twist that to opposite day, too?
| [deleted]
| b59831 wrote:
| [dead]
| eastbound wrote:
| I wish it weren't seen as a battle against rightholders.
|
| It's a big burden for freedom of expression. When there is a
| lie spread by actual journalists, it's extremely important to
| be able to download the video, criticize it, show the moment
| the journalist lies, reupload it.
|
| Otherwise we become like DDR Germany where the people in power
| never get criticized or held accountable for what they say.
|
| The shareholder rights are collateral damage, not the main
| damage. We're not mainly using youtube-dl to copy copyrighted
| material.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| It seems fitting that it was a German court who handed down
| the braindead ruling.
| [deleted]
| skyyler wrote:
| As noted in the article, the project still has a page on github:
|
| http://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/
|
| I've moved on to https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp anyways.
|
| But this is still an infuriating move. youtube-dl wasn't doing
| anything infringing on its site, was it?
| charcircuit wrote:
| yt-dlp is not youtube-dl
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| [flagged]
| xeromal wrote:
| They said they moved on to yt-dlp
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| Are you two trying to train GPT-5 for the correct dialogues
| even more or WTF...
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| I would run any such binary in a container og some sort
| anyway
| somat wrote:
| The main difference in the fork is that yt-dlp uses the
| android interface and youtube-dl uses the web interface.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Yeah, youtube-dl has been uselessly slow for me for over a
| year. Long since switched to yt-dlp.
| keybpo wrote:
| https://github.com/ytdl-patched/youtube-dl/
| AugustoCAS wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| deadbunny wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| 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.
| netsharc wrote:
| 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.".
| pkulak wrote:
| 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.
| roywashere wrote:
| It is not Google in the courts, it is Sony and Warner,
| the 'rights holders'!
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| 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
| IshKebab wrote:
| 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.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| But they are too sporadic to become popular.
| chasil wrote:
| 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/
|
| Bad Google! No dividends for you!
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| Its not on Google Play, so no worries about mass
| proliferation.
| getcrunk wrote:
| YouTube doesn't have DRM on non paid content. If they
| did, the situation would be way different.
| anticensor wrote:
| Except in mandatory DRM jurisdictions.
| jagraff wrote:
| Honestly, that does sound kind of fun. Requires more
| creativity than building CRUD app after CRUD app
| II2II wrote:
| They don't have to win in absolute terms. They only have
| to prevent people from adopting alternative players en
| masse.
| squarefoot wrote:
| 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.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Shh... don't tell anyone about the other project.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Lol I mean it has ~53k stars on GitHub. Not exactly a
| secret. :p
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The wider internet has some kind of brain damage where they
| think spreading stuff like this is a smart way of
| protesting.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I agree and I don't. We can rip dvds almost precisely,
| because spreading stuff beyond the ability for it to be
| easily controlled under single point of failure.
| philistine wrote:
| Almost precisely? The bits are correct or they're not.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I apologize, I may have not expressed myself clearly.
| What I meant to indicate was that the bits being
| distributed the way they were was the likely reason we
| were able to rip dvds based on the fact entities trying
| to quash distribution of they key stopped.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Nothing could really be done about DVDs because the
| hardware was immutable and already out in the wild.
|
| Highlighting a still operating service though just draws
| legal attention to it.
|
| It's like finding a crappy bar everyone hates that stores
| beers out back in a alley. You can keep it to yourself
| and enjoy it for years, or you can "protest" the bar by
| telling the whole town about it.
|
| See ad-blocking for a real world example of this.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| [dead]
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I absolutely get your point and I personally struggle
| with this as a concept, because, well, I was young once.
| There is a benefit to knowledge staying from being too...
| easily distributed, especially if it is used poorly.
| But.. having benefited from it in terms of general
| knowledge, I am not sure it is my place to lock the gates
| behind me.
|
| Ad-blocking is definitely an interesting story, but, to
| me at least, it seems like another cat and mouse game
| resulting from lack of any pro-consumer enforcement.
| Corps have legal batting for them. What do we get?
| Control over our computers and even that is being eroded
| daily..
|
| I still remember the first time I looked at the log from
| raspberry pihole. I am not much of a revolutionary, but
| seeing it all was a radicalizing moment for me. And it
| wasn't the childish 'I want to see X'. It was 'the fuck
| is all this on my network'?
|
| Overall, I think you are wrong. Were it not for people
| drawing attention to this, we would not even have legal
| streaming now. Just like with music, pirates actually
| forced an adoption of somewhat sane standards..
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| I bought a tshirt with the decss key on it when that went
| public.
| pteraspidomorph wrote:
| Back then, I seem to recall there was an issue with an example
| given in the documentation.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| That was a completely different thing, this is a court order
| ruling youtube-dl a circumvention tool and that somehow means
| hosting a website that links to their github is unacceptable.
| riidom wrote:
| It was a thread just like this, some years ago, where I heard
| first from youtube-dl. I never uninstalled something faster
| than JD2 afterwards.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Currently, AFAICT, the "rolling cipher" is not even required
| for unthrottled speed. I could be wrong. I am not an expert on
| YT. However I tested all the 30+ sample videos in youtube.py^1
| outside the browser, without using "youtube-dl" or "youtube-
| dlp", and got only unthrottled speeds. Perhaps someone can
| provide an example to prove that this "rolling cipher" is
| actually required.
|
| 1. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/yt-dlp/yt-
| dlp/master/yt_dl...
|
| Another point I never see discussed is that every YT video page
| contains download links in the source of the page. No "rolling
| cipher" is needed to use them. I think it's fair to call them
| "download" links because the speed is throttled to be too slow
| for "streaming".
| tadfisher wrote:
| Correct, the only ones claiming YouTube's "rolling cipher" is
| an anti-piracy control are the RIAA. YouTube themselves have
| not claimed this to my knowledge.
| nadermx wrote:
| This point is specifically up on appeal in the US Second
| circut https://torrentfreak.com/yout-counters-riaa-in-
| court-quoting...
| appleflaxen wrote:
| > "[T]he average user must recognize that YouTube content, unlike
| media content on other websites, cannot be downloaded with a
| simple right-click and must be aware that this is achieved using
| technology on YouTube and that youtube-dl 'overrides' this
| protection. It is therefore to be assumed that the average user
| acts in bad faith," the Hamburg Court wrote.
|
| I don't think this is a good ruling.
| nomadspiritnet wrote:
| Thankfully still in the freebsd repos.
| blackfawn wrote:
| The weird capitalization on this headline in HN had me thinking
| "youtube-di? is that another fork like yt-dlp?"
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Such a complex topic.
|
| On one hand YouTube has tons of public domain content which
| should be free to download.
|
| On the other hand, YT DL had explicit test cases for downloading
| music videos with specific DRM. Don't poke the bear.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| thatsright666 wrote:
| I would like to piss in the mouth of every person and their fat
| wife who works to prevent others from getting access to
| information.
| ldehaan wrote:
| [dead]
| mellosouls wrote:
| Discussion on the RIAA attack from a couple of years ago
| mentioned in the article.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24872911
|
| The github reversal at the time, including a link to evidence
| received in support:
|
| https://github.blog/2020-11-16-standing-up-for-developers-yo...
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| "it's good enough to signal to average users that downloading
| content from YouTube is not permitted."
|
| that sure seems like doublespeak. i have to download the video to
| watch it.
| netsharc wrote:
| It's probably "download" (legal definition) and not "download"
| (technical definition), and Mr. Judge will only care about the
| legal definition.
| digging wrote:
| Yes it seems obvious to me that "download" here means "store
| outside the browser in a format that can be viewed in any
| player and copied indefinitely". of course my browser is
| downloading a video I watch but not in a form that is useful
| to me outside of viewing it on that site in that browser.
| superkuh wrote:
| It's amazing what kind of mental gymnastics can allow someone to
| think you can watch a video without downloading it. Lawyers live
| in a world very unlike reality.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Not very amazing, really.
|
| You used to watch video all the time without downloading it -
| over TV, the theater, etc. Some people see video playing on a
| computer and assume it must work exactly like something they
| grew up with.
| Espionage724 wrote:
| I can listen to music on the radio, but it's a whole different
| issue when I pick specific songs to pirate for my own personal
| listening :p But that's not where the caring comes in; it's the
| tools I can use to pirate songs; hence youtube-dl going down
| and not the users who used it.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if there's a TOS clause about videos on
| YT not being your property and that you can't export them off
| the platform unless you own the rights to the specific video.
| People that watch videos on YT are using someone else's
| platform; don't like it, don't use the platform, and tell the
| content creator to upload somewhere else. Nobody is entitled to
| bypass intentional blocks by YT and use 3rd-party tools to
| download other people's videos.
|
| Personally I only used youtube-dl to pirate songs from HQ
| videos :p I can't imaging there being a large percentage of
| "legitmate" and fair usage.
| agloe_dreams wrote:
| But then again, in the US at least, it is perfectly legal to
| record TV and watch it any time you want. That was a good
| ruling. Thanks, Mr. Rogers.
| Espionage724 wrote:
| I wonder how specific that ruling is; nowadays you'd have
| to break HDCP if you want to record from most devices with
| something in-between, and it seems like that wouldn't be
| as-legal with bypassing copy-protection
| tamimio wrote:
| >I can listen to music on the radio, but it's a whole
| different issue when I pick specific songs to pirate for my
| own personal listening :p But that's not where the caring
| comes in; it's the tools I can use to pirate songs; hence
| youtube-dl going down and not the users who used it.
|
| So basically you are not allowed to listen to what your mood
| wants but rather what their sponsors want, that or pay us!
| Yeah no thanks.
|
| Btw, you can still record songs from FM/AM radio too, just
| use any SDR and pass that to your preferred application and
| record it, I would love to see how they will prevent that.
| Espionage724 wrote:
| I can pick specific songs and even download them for
| offline playback with Spotify. A problem in that case would
| come if I try to bypass Spotify's copy protection and play
| the offline songs in a different player.
|
| youtube-dl was bypassing geo-blocks.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >youtube-dl was bypassing geo-blocks.
|
| I don't think it was. I've been told by youtube-dl that
| content is blocked in my region many times.
|
| The article spells out how they claim youtube-dl is
| bypassing copy protection.
| pessimizer wrote:
| In order to watch these videos, your computer downloads the
| videos. Your radio doesn't have to download a copy of the
| song to play it.
|
| > I can't imaging there being a large percentage of
| "legitmate" and fair usage.
|
| My usage is usually no less legitimate than youtube's usage.
| I'm usually downloading things that were uploaded without
| permission from the copyright holders from a platform that is
| distributing them without permission from the copyright
| holders.
| pwdisswordfishc wrote:
| > Your radio doesn't have to download a copy of the song to
| play it.
|
| Yes, it does. It's called 'receiving the signal'.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| All a conventional radio does is translate
| electromagnetic waves that are already surrounding it
| into sound waves that we can hear. An intellectual-
| property-maximalist lawyer could cogently argue that a
| radio that _records_ the signal onto a tape or other
| storage device is somehow violating the IP rights of the
| authors, as it is interacting with the work in materially
| different way than an ordinary radio. Not that I would
| agree with this lawyer in any way, but the lawyer would
| at least have a basis to argue that one thing is not like
| the other.
|
| However, video streams are not a signal floating in the
| EM spectrum. They are 1:1 connections that must be
| requested, their content must be actively downloaded onto
| local memory, and the content must be transcoded and/or
| decoded into images and sound to be consumed by a human.
| The point is that this description is as true for a video
| being watched on the official YouTube app on a Pixel 5 as
| it is for a video that has been downloaded with youtube-
| dl/yt-dl on a PC. There is no material difference in the
| actual events taking place.
| belorn wrote:
| Radio has since the mid 1990 moved towards digital
| signals, and by now almost all conventional radio
| receivers do not covert electromagnetic waves into sound
| waves. They covert electromagnetic waves into a digital
| sound file, which then get copied into local memory and
| run inside a software program that plays the sound (and
| generally outputs meta data). It can also buffer sound if
| it wants to.
|
| As a interesting side-note, Norway has stopped using FM
| radio in favor of digital radio, and Sweden is on route
| to do the same. The primary argument here on Sweden in
| favor of keeping FM radio is that older car models might
| still not be compatible with digital radio, and the FM
| radio could in theory be useful case of national
| emergency.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Uberspace deserves a good amount of praise for this, I can't
| imagine what incentive they have for fighting this battle.
| pengaru wrote:
| What I don't understand is why aren't these companies suing
| YouTube/Alphabet?
|
| They're the one's enabling the purported copyright violations.
| They're the ones profiting. They're the ones with the mountain of
| money attorneys are generally employed to take from.
|
| If anything these attorneys should be supporting youtube-dl/yt-
| dlp maintenance and using it in support of their claims. What
| could be more damming of YouTube's negligence than showing the
| court a silly headless web browser written in python optimized
| for video sites can leech copyrighted materials from youtube.com?
|
| YouTube/Alphabet will only get off their asses and _really_
| prevent this activity the moment it costs more than the neglect
| generates in revenue.
|
| Maybe this is some 4D chess, but from where I'm sitting these
| attorneys look like clowns.
| [deleted]
| notquitehuman wrote:
| Alphabet has a larger legal budget, which makes them
| unattractive targets for baseless lawsuits.
| westmeal wrote:
| The RIAA can get fucked
| LordShredda wrote:
| There's a song, fuck the RIAA. See if you can find it on the
| pirate bay
| ozzmotik wrote:
| I believe the song you are referring to is "Fuck the MPAA" by
| Futuristic Sex Robotz
| hbn wrote:
| Weird Al released a parody "charity song" in 2006 called
| Don't Download This Song that poked fun at them too.
| > Oh you don't want to mess with the RIAA > They'll
| sue you if you burn that CDR > It doesn't matter if
| you're a grandma or a seven year old girl > They'll
| treat you like the evil, hard bitten criminal scum you are
|
| He also ironically hosted links on his website to download
| the song DRM-free!
| Espionage724 wrote:
| Yep that'll encourage content creation :p Never mind RIAA
| became a thing _because_ of content creators.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Content _brokers._
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The RIAA is not a thing because of music artists[0], they
| were created by music labels to represent their interests.
|
| The biggest mistake people make when talking about anything
| to do with copyright or the creative industry is to assume
| that, because publishers of creative works represent or hire
| authors, that we can just collapse authors and publishers
| down into a single entity and treat any copyright related
| argument purely as a struggle between artists getting paid
| and the public wanting free shit.
|
| Of course, publishers do not have interests aligned with
| those of authors and artists. This is, at minimum[1], a
| three-sided war between publishers, authors, and customers.
| Artists want to be paid but need to go through a publisher to
| sell[2], while customers want to watch/listen/read but need
| to buy through a publisher. Publishers have massive
| incentives to screw over artists by reducing or diluting
| their take in favor of whatever keeps the machine fed.
|
| While both publishers and artists need some kind of limited
| coercive copyright arrangement in order to have a market for
| their work, they tend to disagree heavily on who should own
| those rights and how long they should last. Artists want to
| sell the thing they made, but publishers want _assets_ : they
| want a brand that can neatly fit on a marketing schedule or
| an accounting statement. The former only requires short term
| copyright owned by individual artists while the latter
| requires infinity-minus-one-day terms, four companies that
| own the world's culture, and increasingly expansive
| interpretations of DMCA 1201 that invent DRM out of things
| never intended to be DRM.
|
| [0] Let's not call them "content creators"
|
| [1] We can subdivide these groups further still, of course,
| but three groups is enough to make my point.
|
| [2] As per [1] we are treating distributors and publishers as
| part of the same group of middlemen. For example, while
| Amazon Kindle self-publishing does not do some of the same
| marketing or promotion that a traditional book publisher
| might, they are still intermediaries between authors and
| readers.
| 0x_rs wrote:
| Since it's mentioned, I'd like to remind the continued existence
| of the so called "District Court" of Hamburg should be an
| embarrassment to the state of Germany. Their purpose seem to be
| simply coming up with the most inane judgments as proven
| repeatedly in the past.
| Tainnor wrote:
| Somewhat relatedly: I've been using Uberspace for years now to
| host some personal stuff (e.g. my Nextcloud instance). It's
| really cheap (you can start for as low as 5EUR/month), and I
| don't know any other shared hoster that allows so much
| flexibility in what you run on your account. The docs are also
| superb. I can only recommend it.
| ta8645 wrote:
| Thank you for mentioning this. Haven't heard of them before,
| but I really love the ethic they're advocating (and
| demonstrating in their pricing and payment options).
|
| https://uberspace.de/en/
| grousewood wrote:
| Agreed. Will be doing a closer look later. "Cash payment
| through mail" is a gutsy offer.
| Corsome wrote:
| I noticed recently that my distro's youtube-dl stopped working
| (it can't successfully download movies) but thanks to news like
| this one I found a fix in one of the comments here:
|
| > I've moved on to https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp anyways
|
| Thanks!
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > While Uberspace didn't host the open source software, it was
| held responsible for the website linking to the software hosted
| on developer platform GitHub.
|
| Is Google, Bing, and DDG next?
| charcircuit wrote:
| >Is Google, Bing, and DDG next? You already can send a DMCA
| takedown for the links
| croes wrote:
| They already target DNS resolvers.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36878867
| lylejantzi3rd wrote:
| Is apple in on this too? The apple security signing for running
| my local copy of yt-dlp started failing about an hour ago.
| echelon wrote:
| This is why Apple and Google need to hold less power.
| Espionage724 wrote:
| No, people need to stop letting Apple and Google have so much
| power; such silly victim mentality!
|
| There's plenty of software and means to host your own video
| platforms.
| echelon wrote:
| > There's plenty of software and means to host your own
| video platforms.
|
| There's plenty of ways people can start their own countries
| and currencies too.
| Espionage724 wrote:
| Ok I'm curious; how can a person start their own country
| and currency?
|
| Video hosting is as easy as hosting Piwigo, GNU
| mediagoblin, Lychee, Zenphoto, or tossing something
| together in PHP. All that is free and open-source.
| jpc0 wrote:
| Hosting the software isn't free, neither is storing the
| content to be served, neither is serving the said
| content.
|
| I think you vastly underestimate the amount if bandwidth
| video takes.
| TillE wrote:
| Homebrew version of yt-dlp works fine here (Sonoma public beta,
| fwiw).
| Espionage724 wrote:
| I guarantee most people here only ever used youtube-dl to pirate
| music, or videos they don't own the rights to. Are ya'll
| defending the right to pirate?
| cenacio wrote:
| I use mpv to watch videos and streams because my computer and
| my GPU are old and can't manage the amount of RAM these sites
| need, their buggy players, or the chat on streams keeps logging
| and wasting RAM. Without mpv youtube-dl and yt-dlp integration
| I couldn't watch them.
|
| There are a lot of tools to download videos, some of them
| integrated in the web browser as add-ons. You could even
| download them directly using Developer Tools.
|
| This a tantrum against a tool, like the ones against VHS, CD-
| ROMs, cassettes, DVDs or bitorrent.
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| yes
| cenacio wrote:
| Subnormal
| tamimio wrote:
| Doesn't matter, saying you can't download this publicly
| available video is like saying you can't copy the text of this
| article, both are inane to think of.
| Espionage724 wrote:
| I get the point but I've seen some sites even block
| copy/paste :p
| tamimio wrote:
| Just disable js, works every time :)
| eastbound wrote:
| Audiovisual material is the public forum of modern times. It's
| important to be able to review and criticize a movie and
| reupload it on public forums.
|
| Imagine not being able to show the Nuremberg Trial to pupils in
| class, because it would be copyrighted. It would give free
| hands to war criminals. Imagine not being allowed to show
| negative footage of Biden because it's copyrighted and the
| White House doesn't grant the right to anyone.
| joemi wrote:
| But youtube isn't a public utility. The public can use it,
| sure, but they're supposed to abide by the TOS, because it's
| a privately owned company.
|
| Downloading things from Youtube isn't the solution. Turning
| Youtube into a public utility is what's needed, in this case.
| Or even simpler: people need to start using archive.org
| instead of youtube.
| swayvil wrote:
| It's more like communication than high-seas assault.
| leshenka wrote:
| I used to live in a place with very crappy internet and
| watching youtube even in 360p was a no go. And youtube doesn't
| let you buffer entire video since 2012 I guess.
|
| I figured if I feed whatever I want to watch to yt-dlp and give
| it some time I will be able to watch videos without buffering
| and in much better quality too
| pessimizer wrote:
| I've never used it to pirate music, and half of the videos on
| youtube youtube doesn't own the rights to host. They just index
| them, surface and highlight them through the most popular (one
| of the few remaining) search engines in the world, and
| massively distribute them from some of fastest servers on earth
| until the rights owner notices and interacts with them
| personally or through a lawyer to complain.
|
| It's how they built the business.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I've used it to pull the audio off videos of live jazz
| performances, so I can run slow-down tools and play along to
| learn. I could do the same by recording the audio out of my
| laptop.
|
| That type of thing is not the majority use case for youtube-dl,
| but for any type of digital media there are plenty of
| individual, educational use cases that do not involve "pirate"
| activity (i.e. further distribution). Whether or not that's
| officially ok or not, I'd assert it is morally ok.
|
| As an aside, if YouTube is the only or canonical source for
| some material, getting it from the distribution channel (YT)
| and getting any access to the media in question are now one and
| the same problem. But let's not get confused about the value
| YouTube is providing - they are just a distributor, not a
| creative originator.
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