[HN Gopher] Downloading a video should be "fair use" as recordin...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Downloading a video should be "fair use" as recording a song from
       the radio
        
       Author : luu
       Score  : 342 points
       Date   : 2023-08-13 18:22 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mastodon.social)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mastodon.social)
        
       | Cypher wrote:
       | I do it, come arrest me. I'd download a petrol car too if I could
       | - Come at me tomato soup throwers!
        
         | asddubs wrote:
         | i would download an electric car probably unless the tracker
         | only had petrol ones
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | GhostWhisperer wrote:
         | but would you seed?
        
           | cosmojg wrote:
           | Seed or ban.
        
       | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
       | Mastodon without Javascript enabled:
       | 
       | https://mastodon.social/@HalvarFlake/110883667162838296/embe...
        
         | 38 wrote:
         | ... also without comments. I appreciate the idea, but without
         | the discussion its basically Twitter since they also hide
         | replies with anonymous requests.
        
           | BentonE wrote:
           | In principle, if you want the post and comments without JS
           | you can just pull the underlying ActivityPub document
           | (application/activity+json). I made a command-line browser
           | based on this idea:
           | https://github.com/bentonedmondson/servitor
        
             | userbinator wrote:
             | That's unfortunate. Sites used to not need JS to show
             | static content.
        
               | BentonE wrote:
               | Yep, the web used to be for distributing documents, but
               | now it is becoming/has become more of an application VM
               | [1]. But ActivityPub is a nice format for the document
               | distribution use-case; it is a superset (in terms of
               | features) of semantic HTML [2] and RSS and has higher
               | level semantics (comment sections, profiles, etc) and no
               | server-provided scripting nor styling.
               | 
               | [1]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1peUSMsvFGvqD5yKh
               | 3GprskLC... [2]: any plain HTML page can be represented
               | as an ActivityPub Article
        
       | Buttons840 wrote:
       | I want a machine learning enhanced analog loop. I want to be able
       | to point a device at a screen and have the machine learning clean
       | everything up and restore high quality sound and video.
       | 
       | Training data would be easy. Take a bunch of videos, play them on
       | a screen, record the screen. You now have the input and the
       | output, x and y. It's just supervised learning from there.
       | 
       | I know there are better options currently, but in the end we have
       | this, unless they take away general purpose computing (but that
       | would a huge blow to our economy).
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | This only works as long as the silicon used for deep learning
         | cooperates.
        
           | adhesive_wombat wrote:
           | They can just tattoo all celebrities with EURion
           | constellations on their faces. Don't worry, it's only a
           | short-term measure until the replacement models are fully
           | trained.
        
       | gamblor956 wrote:
       | This is actually correct, since recording a song from the radio
       | by itself generally doesn't fall under fair use. The purpose of
       | the copy is what makes it fair use, for example, as a sample
       | played in a classroom, or for reference for readers/viewers as
       | part of a critical work.
        
       | userbinator wrote:
       | There's technically no difference between downloading and
       | streaming, and in fact nearly all of the videos I "download" from
       | YouTube don't get retained after I watch them --- I'm just doing
       | so in order to be able to use alternative software that respects
       | my freedom.
       | 
       | Since we're talking about video, I think a better analogy would
       | be using a VCR to record broadcasting, and there was certainly a
       | legal battle over that too.
        
       | kmeisthax wrote:
       | The problem is that whether or not downloading a YouTube video
       | _can_ be fair use, the RIAA is alleging that youtube-dl is a copy
       | protection circumvention tool. 17 USC 1201(a)(2) does not care
       | about your fair use, it only cares about keeping copying tools
       | off the market.
       | 
       | To bring this back into the home recording of radio, it'd be as
       | if Congress decided to ban the sale of tape decks that could
       | record radio transmissions[0]. That ban would work regardless of
       | fair use.
       | 
       | This is why Section 1201(a)(2) needs to be struct from the law,
       | BTW - your access to copying tools should not evaporate because
       | of a lack of ability to enforce copyright on you.
       | 
       | [0] How this ban is actually implemented is immaterial, but
       | perhaps radios can't have detachable speakers or audio out ports
       | to hook a tape deck into, or tape decks have to only have an
       | integral speaker and no audio in ports. This wouldn't stop home
       | recording of radio but it'd be significantly worse.
        
         | rusk wrote:
         | This is a DMCA concept that is presumably recongised by various
         | international treaties ... but is it widely implemented and
         | enforced?
        
           | kmeisthax wrote:
           | WIPO requires signatory countries have some sort of legal
           | protections to back copy protection, but it does not mandate
           | the exact language of DMCA 1201. The WIPO requirement was
           | actually added by the US after the EFF managed to kill a
           | precursor bill a few years prior[0].
           | 
           | Implementation among signatory countries is high enough to
           | laugh when people say "Well, this doesn't affect me because
           | I'm not American." Unless you live in North Korea or Russia,
           | DMCA 1201 applies to you.
           | 
           | Copyright law is so foundational to world trade that the only
           | way 1201 _would_ get repealed would be if there was some kind
           | of mass uprising against copyright overreach in many
           | signatory countries. In that case, so many large countries
           | would have repealed their DMCA 1201 equivalent legislation
           | that nobody would dare actually try to enforce WTO sanctions
           | against them. At worst, a few countries would demand some
           | horse trades[1].
           | 
           | Practically speaking, however, democracies are bad at
           | protecting against small harms exacted against large numbers
           | of people[2], so this never happens. Europe has the Pirate
           | Party but the most successful national iterations of it have
           | had to adopt broader Green[3] and technolibertarian agendas
           | in order to have any semblance of electoral viability. In the
           | US, first-past-the-post is an insurmountable hurdle despite
           | the fragility and incompetence of our two major parties.
           | Here, political issues don't so much form new parties as much
           | as they infect the shambling corpses of existing ones.
           | 
           | Barring that, if only one country decided to repeal their
           | anti-circumvention laws I imagine there'd be a _lot_ of
           | grumbling from the US or Japan, potentially new tariffs, but
           | no outright sanctions. The weird part about world trade is
           | that a lot of these provisions are only enforceable on very
           | poor countries. China blatantly violates WIPO all the time
           | and we, practically speaking, cannot quit them. There is no
           | international leviathan capable of, say, rolling tanks on
           | Beijing and demanding market access and copyright
           | enforcement.
           | 
           | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_laundering
           | 
           | [1] Term of art for "unrelated and usually minuscule things
           | used to bargain for a larger purpose"
           | 
           | [2] e.g. how Intuit got the US government to not provide tax
           | preparation services or software to the public for a decade
           | and a half so they could sell their own offering. It's a
           | thing that annoys people but not enough to get voters to flip
           | sides.
           | 
           | [3] including German "Green", i.e. "nuclear is bad, so we
           | shut down all our nuke plants and started burning lignite[4]
           | instead"
           | 
           | [4] What's lignite? Lignite balls.
        
             | rusk wrote:
             | Thank you. I've been away from HN for a while, but you
             | really could not get this kind of illumination anywhere
             | else x
        
             | EMIRELADERO wrote:
             | There's actually a potential line of attack that rose due
             | to two SCOTUS decisions a few years ago. The Eldred and
             | Golan cases essentially established that fair use is
             | constitutionally necessary in order for copyright to
             | coexist with the 1st amendment.
             | 
             | If the DMCA is found to hinder the effective exercise of a
             | fair use right, it could be struck down (either facially or
             | in an as-applied challenge)
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | Aaargh20318 wrote:
         | > RIAA is alleging that youtube-dl is a copy protection
         | circumvention tool
         | 
         | How is it circumventing copy protection? IIRC videos on Youtube
         | aren't DRMed. What protection method do they claim is being
         | circumvented exactly?
        
           | cookiengineer wrote:
           | Youtube is using base64 "encryption" * and the reason the
           | court decided in favor of youtube in the youtube-dl case was
           | exactly this reason.
           | 
           | The court thinks that base64 is a legitimate way to establish
           | copyright protection online.
           | 
           | Yeah, not kidding you. The lawyers are this stupid.
           | 
           | Honestly I think the law is broken, because it is designed by
           | people not capable of doing technological decisions, for
           | technologically relevant cases. It is gonna take years to
           | unfuck this.
           | 
           | * duh, they don't even know differences of encoding vs
           | encryption...
        
             | dataflow wrote:
             | > Youtube is using base64 "encryption" * and the reason the
             | court decided in favor of youtube in the youtube-dl case
             | was exactly this reason. [...] The lawyers are this stupid.
             | 
             | The law has other things listed beside encryption. Did they
             | really call this "encryption" as you're claiming
             | (citation?) or did it fall under another bucket?
        
             | kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
             | They must have the same lawyers and be getting the same
             | judges as anti-2A groups. The level of misinformation and
             | lack of understanding about the topic in contention feels
             | similar.
        
             | schrodinger wrote:
             | I feel like it doesn't make a difference how good the
             | "encryption" is, it displays intent that you wouldn't like
             | your data downloaded. Just like an open door to your house
             | vs a really easy to pick locked door makes a big
             | difference.
        
               | Aaargh20318 wrote:
               | But base64 is not an a form of encryption, it's just a
               | different encoding. It's not bad encryption, it isn't
               | encryption at all. How does that show intent?
        
               | userbinator wrote:
               | IMHO it displays intent to require a browser that has JS,
               | which yt-dl has sort of implemented.
        
             | Aaargh20318 wrote:
             | They base64 encode the video files? Why? That doesn't do
             | anything except increase the bandwidth needed.
        
               | cookiengineer wrote:
               | It's not the video files but the m3u playlist iirc that
               | is base64 encoded and contains the urls+tokens for all
               | the chunks of the videostream
        
           | ForHackernews wrote:
           | > videos on Youtube aren't DRMed
           | 
           | They are: https://developers.google.com/widevine/drm/overview
        
             | sodality2 wrote:
             | Only for paid products (movies, TV shows, etc). Regular
             | videos (even music videos) do not use WideVine DRM or else
             | no tool would be able to download YouTube videos. (Or at
             | least, public tool - private scene groups do of course have
             | bypasses for it)
        
           | Brian_K_White wrote:
           | Where is the button on any official YouTube app or web
           | interface that offers to save a local unencrypted file for an
           | anonymous user?
        
         | kristopolous wrote:
         | Am I the only one that finds it hard to engage with the RIAA as
         | good faith actors?
        
           | porkbeer wrote:
           | As a musician who has dealt with them, no. They are for the
           | big labels and distributors, not the artists.
        
           | kmeisthax wrote:
           | No, they're not good faith actors, far from it. However, the
           | sorts of bad faith actions they engage in are not violations
           | of the law. "Implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing"
           | is a provision of contract law, not copyright law.
        
         | akira2501 wrote:
         | > RIAA is alleging that youtube-dl is a copy protection
         | circumvention tool
         | 
         | "(3) As used in this subsection-- (A) to "circumvent a
         | technological measure" means to descramble a scrambled work, to
         | decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass,
         | remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without
         | the authority of the copyright owner; and (B) a technological
         | measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure,
         | in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the
         | application of information, or a process or a treatment, with
         | the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the
         | work"
         | 
         | The argument would seemingly be that youtube is in no way
         | "effectively controlling access to a work." And none of the
         | peculiar details of it's implementation are designed to operate
         | in this capacity. Quite the opposite, it's technology is
         | designed to broadcast, for the purposes of inserting ads,
         | content to anyone who merely requests it.
         | 
         | Moreover, youtube is in no way connecting the "authority of the
         | copyright owner" with the particular videos on it's site and
         | has nothing but an ad-hoc system with limited availability that
         | takes action only after content is uploaded. As there are many
         | videos that are past copyright protection or have been
         | explicitly released into the public domain, and they make no
         | distinction in the "technical measures" used in those videos,
         | that they aren't effectively controlling access, and the tools
         | aren't circumventing them for this purpose.
        
           | sillysaurusx wrote:
           | > Moreover, youtube is in no way connecting the "authority of
           | the copyright owner" with the particular videos on it's site
           | 
           | Of course it is. That's the whole point of the three strike
           | system.
        
             | backtoyoujim wrote:
             | Why is there yet another legal framework with basis for
             | legal jurisprudence being a rule from a child's game ?
        
               | sillysaurusx wrote:
               | The question is whether youtube connects the authority of
               | the copyright owner with particular videos. It obviously
               | does. The copyright owner is the entity that receives ad
               | revenue, and the entity that can strike videos that
               | violates its copyright.
        
           | extraduder_ire wrote:
           | I am startled, and also glad, that record labels haven't put
           | the screws to youtube enough to get them to implement
           | widevine for music videos on youtube.
           | 
           | Probably unworkable for the time being.
        
             | ComposedPattern wrote:
             | I'm currently feeling the need to back up youtube videos
             | that are important to me, because I figure it will be much
             | harder soon.
        
               | Modified3019 wrote:
               | They definitely will be, now that google is looking to
               | more proactively enforce ads.
               | 
               | But the biggest danger is that videos and channels can
               | get removed by any, all, or no reason.
               | 
               | -Copyright middlemen/parasites
               | 
               | -Trolls
               | 
               | -Shifts in what's politically or advertiser acceptable
               | (see: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/14ddlng/u
               | nalived/)
               | 
               | -Massive data loss (see myspace)
               | 
               | -And especially the capricious whims of the channel
               | owner.
               | 
               | A few years ago I realized an old playlist of mine was
               | basically swiss cheese due to how many videos had been
               | removed.
               | 
               | If you value it, save it now, because it will be gone
               | sooner than you are prepared for.
               | 
               | There are many ways to handle automated saving of
               | channels, including some gui frontends, but offhand the
               | one I use and modify is:
               | https://github.com/TheFrenchGhosty/TheFrenchGhostys-
               | Ultimate...
        
               | boopmaster wrote:
               | I have music playlists turned to swiss cheese on paid
               | streaming music services, and it's for that reason that
               | I've turned to doing the unthinkable: buying mp3s like
               | some kind of devolved luddite.
        
             | kmeisthax wrote:
             | The problem is that if they implement Widevine they also
             | need to license FairPlay, PlayReady, and Adobe's DRM
             | schemes as well. Otherwise YouTube is effectively Chrome-
             | exclusive.
             | 
             | The reason why EME didn't lead to a catastrophic downfall
             | of freedom on the Web is purely a function of DRM being
             | expensive to license. Netflix can afford it but not
             | YouTube, and YouTube creators generally don't want it[0].
             | 
             | Related note: if YouTube starts putting DRM on videos then
             | every creator that's ever used Kevin Macleod music is now
             | violating the Creative Commons anti-DRM clause. YouTube
             | actually added a feature to mark your video as CC-BY or CC-
             | BY-SA, so they'd be at least marginally aware of this
             | clause, so they'd have to at least make DRM opt-in.
             | 
             | [0] To be clear, this is moreso that what YouTubers are
             | actually worried about is _reuploading_ content back to
             | YouTube and monetizing it. They don 't care so much if you
             | have a stream-ripped copy on your computer that you just
             | watch on your own. But things like Content ID actually work
             | way better for preventing reuploading.
        
         | Delk wrote:
         | I don't know or remember the details of the DMCA, but does it
         | not require the copy protection to be of some reasonable
         | effectiveness (e.g. reasonable cryptography)? Or does it
         | consider the "copy protection" scheme protected regardless of
         | how weak the scheme or claim is?
         | 
         | I remember that in Finland, it was debated in courts whether
         | breaking DVD CSS encryption using readily downloadable software
         | was infringement upon an effective copy protection scheme or
         | not. An appeals court decided it was (i.e. CSS was deemed
         | "effective"), but the requirement that the copy protection
         | scheme be "effective" in order for circumvention to be
         | considered illegal is still there in copyright law. (The
         | legislation is based on whatever the EU-wide regulation is and
         | includes provisions somewhat similar to the DMCA such as the
         | prohibition of circumvention.)
         | 
         | I doubt that "copy protection" that can be circumvented by
         | reading the YouTube web page source code would be deemed
         | effective under that law. Does the DMCA not have a similar
         | limitation? Or is the RIAA just trying to play the lobbying and
         | rhetoric game despite having weak legal grounds? (Wouldn't be
         | surprising.)
        
           | kmeisthax wrote:
           | This sounds like a transposition[0] and translation error.
           | The word "effective" has two meanings:
           | 
           | - Is strong enough to keep you from copying the thing
           | 
           | - Has the effect of keeping you from copying the thing
           | 
           | Congress intended the latter meaning and US courts adopted
           | that. The first meaning would be self-defeating: once someone
           | figured out how to break a copy protection system, it would
           | no longer be effective, so you'd only be able to prosecute
           | the first person to break the system.
           | 
           | If effective meant "is strong enough" I don't think DVD CSS
           | would count because they specifically used export-grade
           | encryption. The rule (part of ITAR, AFAIK) was that 40-bits
           | was the max entropy you could have, specifically so the NSA
           | could break foreign-operated encryption systems. But this is
           | kind of silly - computers are getting faster all the time, so
           | it seems odd that a measure considered copy protection
           | yesterday would stop being copy protection today just because
           | we can crack passwords faster.
           | 
           | [0] Transposition is the concept of copying EU regulations
           | into member state law. I'm using the term slightly broader
           | than EU law. While WTO rules don't have a direct
           | transposition requirement, USTR conditioned lots of trade
           | deals on transposing DMCA 1201 into local law.
        
         | actionfromafar wrote:
         | I wonder if a cassette deck connected to the computer is _also_
         | a copy protection circumvention tool.
         | 
         | I suppose it is?
        
           | kmeisthax wrote:
           | 1201(a)(2) prohibits selling tools that are either...
           | 
           | - Only capable of breaking copy protection
           | 
           | - Have minimal commercial utility other than to break copy
           | protection
           | 
           | - Are advertised as being able to break copy protection
           | 
           | If you sold someone an aux cord with the marketing slogan
           | "Copy music off Spotify and stop paying for your
           | subscription", that'd violate 1201(a)(2) because of that
           | third prong[0]. There's also plenty of copy protection
           | circumvention tools that DON'T trip 1201(a)(2) because they
           | aren't marketed as such and have noninfringing uses. For
           | example, Google Chrome. You can use it to bypass right-click
           | blockers because it lets you open Devtools without right-
           | clicking. However, browsers have loads of commercial utility
           | outside of this, and they don't specifically advertise their
           | ability to get around annoying right-click scripts, so
           | they're legal.
           | 
           | We don't normally contemplate this sort of thing because most
           | DRM is specifically designed to be both obvious and separable
           | from other permissible behavior. You cannot _accidentally_
           | write a DVD decryptor that doesn 't trip 1201(a)(2). This has
           | led to people mistakenly assuming that the DMCA requires
           | encryption to be involved or something for a copy protection
           | circumvention tool to be illegal.
           | 
           | [0] I've actually seen this happen. There was someone selling
           | VGA cables marketed as a way to copy Netflix.
        
             | jameshart wrote:
             | Surprising then that Apple launched iTunes with the 'rip.
             | mix. burn.' slogan in 2000 right after the DMCA was
             | introduced.
        
               | px43 wrote:
               | There was no copy protection being bypassed in that era,
               | and ripping CDs was just a normal thing that people did
               | to listen to music on their computer without having to
               | worry about scratch discs etc.
        
               | actionfromafar wrote:
               | Apple had copy protection.
        
               | sbuk wrote:
               | Not in 2001 when the commercials were airing - the iTunes
               | Store was two years away...
        
               | WWLink wrote:
               | Apple only had copy protection (m4p files) if you bought
               | music from the itunes store during the time period where
               | their contract with the music companies demanded they do
               | that. When that clause ended, they stopped doing it, and
               | IIRC when you redownload music purchased during that era
               | from apple, you'll now get unprotected m4a files instead.
               | 
               | The files iTunes produced from ripping CDs were never
               | copy protected.
        
               | blangk wrote:
               | Or share them on soulseek libraries
        
               | kmeisthax wrote:
               | If you think that's crazy, a year prior Steve Jobs went
               | up on stage at MacWorld and showed off a PlayStation
               | emulator[0]. Today Apple has been extremely adamant in
               | trying to kill off companies emulating iOS, specifically
               | citing DMCA 1201 as some sort of right to not be
               | emulated.
               | 
               | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectix_Virtual_Game_
               | Station
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | verisimi wrote:
         | > This is why Section 1201(a)(2) needs to be struct from the
         | law
         | 
         | Perhaps it is becoming clearer that the law is an ass, written
         | to serve special interests, and nothing to do with some sort of
         | expression of morality or right and wrong. And that is all it
         | has ever been.
         | 
         | For myself, I cannot conceive of the hybris required in writing
         | down a set of words that I would then expect others to follow.
         | Imagine doing this at a family gathering! (I'm not talking
         | about writing a guide or means to help others learn/improve
         | themselves by their own choice.)
         | 
         | The very idea of law is a false one, imo. Who has the moral
         | high ground, who can relay that in writing to others? Is it not
         | actually a subterfuge to allow others to do harm and yet call
         | it good?
         | 
         | Basically, one needs to find one's heart, and follow that. The
         | law is a merely another control structure.
        
         | indymike wrote:
         | > youtube-dl is a copy protection circumvention tool
         | 
         | Wait until they find out that Microsoft has been providing
         | tools like COPY and XCOPY with their OS for decades...
        
           | kmeisthax wrote:
           | COPY and XCOPY cannot copy a copy protected program.
           | 
           | The Amiga's X-COPY, on the other hand...
        
           | veave wrote:
           | COPY and XCOPY are okay as long as they aren't written to
           | intentionally bypass DRM (they aren't)
        
         | nadermx wrote:
         | Posted this in the other thread, but this thorny topic is up
         | for appeal in the US Second Circuit
         | https://torrentfreak.com/yout-counters-riaa-in-court-quoting...
        
         | mpalmer wrote:
         | No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public,
         | provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product,
         | service, device, component, or part thereof, that--
         | (A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of
         | circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls
         | access to a work protected under this title;              (B)
         | has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other
         | than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively
         | controls access to a work protected under this title; or
         | (C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert
         | with that person with that person's knowledge for use in
         | circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls
         | access to a work protected under this title.
         | 
         | I'm not a lawyer but how does youtube-dl fit any one of these
         | criteria? despite the name, it's not "primarily designed to
         | circumvent copyright", nor is copyright circumvention its only
         | use (though "commercial significance" seems to be doing a lot
         | of work here).
        
           | kmeisthax wrote:
           | It's not "circumventing copyright", it's circumventing copy
           | protection. The RIAA alleges that YouTube rotating their URLs
           | is a copy protection measure. If that's true[0] then youtube-
           | dl would fit plainly in category (A), since downloading
           | YouTube videos is all it does. Category (B) is there to
           | prevent someone from selling, say, a "DVD decrypting can
           | opener" and then arguing that the can opener part makes the
           | DVD part legal. Category (C) is there to prevent people from
           | selling you the analog hole.
           | 
           | My objection to the RIAA's copy protection argument is that
           | they did not actually create the copy protection measure.
           | They are alleging that some third party's product feature
           | happens to look close enough to copy protection that it
           | should count as such. Would they be able to sue YouTube if
           | they were to stop rotating their URLs? Do social media
           | platforms suddenly have an obligation to continue to maintain
           | features that accidentally frustrate illegal copying of text?
           | Do I have to reimplement spacebar heating?[1]
           | 
           | Another potential objection would be that rotating URLs are
           | not copy protection. This _may_ work, but keep in mind: 17
           | USC 1201 has no bounds on the scope of copy protection beyond
           | "it has to somehow stop you from copying a thing protected by
           | copyright". Encryption and scrambling systems are explicitly
           | named, but the way the law is currently drafted, _anything_
           | can be a copy protection measure. There 's a lot of language
           | defining existing copy protection systems they wanted to
           | grandfather in (e.g. Macrovision) but nothing limiting the
           | scope of _future_ systems.
           | 
           | [0] If accepted, this would be the widest reading of DMCA
           | 1201 that I've seen accepted by a court of law (as a non-
           | lawyer). Yes I am counting the printer cartridge and garage
           | door opener shenanigans of yesterdecade. Those were bog-
           | standard "designing the product to commit three felonies a
           | day" kinds of copyright abuse and the courts smacked them
           | both down.
           | 
           | [1] https://xkcd.com/1172/
        
           | stcg wrote:
           | Reading this I wonder if a computer program falls under "any
           | technology, product, service, device, component, or part
           | thereof". Has it been established that a computer program can
           | be a protection circumvention tool?
        
         | yieldcrv wrote:
         | time to upload the source and compilation instructions on ipfs
        
       | deltree7 wrote:
       | The hypocrisy of download defenders is exposed when re-
       | distribution is the concern. Most content producers and
       | publishers are fine with downloading as long as you don't re-
       | distribute (which is theft), but we have no way of preventing
       | that, so they are forced to close the download gate
        
         | kstrauser wrote:
         | That's historically wrong. The story of DRM is littered with
         | claims that reasonable things like format shifting are immoral
         | and theft.
         | 
         | Also, unauthorized distribution is unauthorized distribution,
         | not theft. Theft has a special legal meaning, and that isn't
         | it.
        
         | Dylan16807 wrote:
         | > so they are forced to close the download gate
         | 
         | They don't get to do that.
         | 
         | Also what's the hypocrisy?
        
         | ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
         | You neglected to state what the "hypocrisy" is here. Cite the
         | passage that promotes downloading and redistributing.
        
         | giantrobot wrote:
         | It's not fucking theft. That is a literally insane and
         | irrational position to take.
        
         | stcg wrote:
         | That is not theft. It's communication. You can't "steal" ideas,
         | information or facts [footnote]. To "steal" means to physically
         | take someone's property without their consent.
         | 
         | Instead, you seem to mean a violation of copyright. Copyright
         | exists "to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public
         | good." "The main purpose of the Copyright Act is the public
         | good of use and access to works of art, even if such a public
         | good comes at the expense of the author of the work." (https://
         | en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentieth_Century_Music_Corp._...).
         | 
         | And then my opinion: In this age, copyright fails at that. It
         | even has the opposite effect of resulting in _less use_ and
         | _less access_ to works of art. I think it would benefit the
         | public if copyright were abolished (or at least shortened to 20
         | years, similar to the amount of years that a person gets from a
         | patent to exclusively produce and sell their invention before
         | anyone may do that). I do think however that it should be a
         | duty to mention the source or original author when sharing a
         | work.
         | 
         | [footnote]: but you can neglect to mention the source, or
         | uncover and share information someone wants to keep private
        
       | Ekaros wrote:
       | My understanding is that people purely downloading are very
       | rarely if never prosecuted or even part of civil suite. So it is
       | not very big issue and likely is "fair use".
       | 
       | Entirely different question is does offering a tool for this
       | process constitute as fair use as well. Specially if there is DRM
       | involved. Or does tool need to work in specific way to qualify?
       | For example you could record video on your own machine while
       | watching it, but could not directly download a copy?
        
       | hrdwdmrbl wrote:
       | Singing in the style of another singing should be as legal as
       | training an AI to do it.
        
       | jwilk wrote:
       | The TorrentFreak article discussed on HN:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37089545 (> 220 comments)
        
       | mkl95 wrote:
       | A ton of history and literature has been basically wiped out over
       | the centuries. That fact alone should make downloading media and
       | storing it privately a natural right, just like monks copied
       | writings in the middle ages to preserve them. Distribution is an
       | entirely different topic.
        
       | ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
       | For anyone with self-respect, it is. Come get me, media-
       | conglomerate scumbags.
       | 
       | Remember how they whined against DAT and basically had it killed
       | (abetted by Congress), claiming that "perfect digital copies"
       | would destroy their business? Meanwhile, everybody on the planet
       | knew that essentially all "piracy" took place on double-cassette
       | boom boxes in dorm rooms.
       | 
       | And sure enough, even when "piracy" went digital, it was in the
       | form of lossy MP3s... far from perfect. So their story was a lie
       | from top to bottom... but we've seen our "representatives" abet
       | ever-greater crimes against consumers at their behest. The absurd
       | tax on blank media, and the DMCA (and even more-egregious
       | proposals since) stand as disgraceful examples.
       | 
       | Do you remember when Circuit City or Best Buy offered "every CD
       | $10.99 or less?" The idea was to bring people into their stores,
       | where they'd buy other stuff. But all of a sudden that deal
       | disappeared. It turns out that the record companies threatened
       | those retailers with financial sanctions (by withholding
       | cooperative advertising funds) if they continued to offer those
       | prices.
       | 
       | The record companies were sued for this behavior, which
       | prosecutors said ripped off consumers for $400 million. Gee, this
       | is the same figure that the record companies whined that Napster
       | cost them. Karma is a bitch.
       | 
       | I still have the stub of my $13 settlement check from these
       | assholes.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | archo wrote:
       | https://archive.is/BzXVx
        
       | hackernewds wrote:
       | Downloading video = Downloading a song Recording a video =
       | Recording a song
       | 
       | Either case distribution should be protected.
        
       | doublepg23 wrote:
       | It feels very human that we have a nearly post-scarcity delivery
       | mechanism that we still optimize for rent seeking.
        
         | lucubratory wrote:
         | We'd been around for two million years without anything like
         | this. Rent seeking is a very modern invention in the lifetime
         | of the human species, let alone establishing it over non-scarce
         | ideas. It's very bourgeois, not very human.
        
           | blowski wrote:
           | I'm not sure it's so modern. Every tollgate in the ancient
           | world was effectively rent-seeking. Even in prehistoric
           | societies, it seems there were protection rackets and shamans
           | with "monopoly access" to the gods.
        
         | charcircuit wrote:
         | Creating the content is much harder than delivering it. The
         | rent seeking is to encourage creation.
        
         | MostlyStable wrote:
         | Yes. By design. Copyright law, and basically all other IP law,
         | is explicitly and purposefully about allowing rent seeking. The
         | idea is that in a completely unregulated market, it is
         | impossible to make money from ideas after they are made public.
         | Since making ideas public is good for society, we want to
         | encourage people to continue to do this. Paying people is how
         | we encourage people to do things. So we allow rent seeking,
         | with limits, as a way to pay people even though they make their
         | ideas public. The issue is with how far this rent seeking goes,
         | and where the balance between social good and private good
         | falls. I'm very firmly in the camp that most IP law has, in the
         | modern day, gone too far. But I do think that conceptually it
         | is beneficial to have and maintain some level of rent seeking.
        
           | redwall_hp wrote:
           | Of course, we now have a torrential supply of available
           | media, which markets strongly say is worth little to nothing.
           | Apparently, given mass distribution tools and sufficient
           | level of education, the public creates things on such a large
           | scale that it can hardly be argued protectionist policies are
           | necessary for them to exist.
           | 
           | We also see that even with these protectionist policies, only
           | a select few are ever even able to be economically viable,
           | let alone successful. Art's opportunity cost is so front-
           | loaded that it's difficult to produce things while working
           | full time, so the majority of potential successes are
           | prevented from even starting. And then the artistic process
           | is impeded by these laws, as rentiers cry "similarity" over
           | the most absurd things, which creates a chilling effect. It's
           | particularly bad in music.
           | 
           | The best way to support the arts is UBI and the abolition of
           | copyright.
        
             | WWLink wrote:
             | lol imagine if someone had copyright over 2-5-1 chord
             | progressions lmao.
        
           | surgical_fire wrote:
           | > So we allow rent seeking, with limits
           | 
           | Funny joke. Everybody laughs.
        
           | colordrops wrote:
           | > The idea is that in a completely unregulated market, it is
           | impossible to make money from ideas after they are made
           | public. Since making ideas public is good for society, we
           | want to encourage people to continue to do this.
           | 
           | This reasoning is taken at face value in most discussion but
           | should be challenged. A lot of assumptions and potentially
           | specious logic is embedded here, and it's not clear and
           | obvious that any of the following are true:
           | 
           | * it is impossible to make money from ideas after they are
           | made public
           | 
           | * Paying people to encourage making ideas public increases
           | the amount of value
           | 
           | * most ideas are worth anything at all
           | 
           | * that the most valuable ideas will be made public even with
           | these protection regimes in place
           | 
           | It's arguable that even though there was less information out
           | there before copyrights and patents became a thing, that
           | people were still driven to create art and science, and the
           | quality per unit might have even been higher. And even with
           | patent and copyright in place, truly valuable ideas are still
           | kept secret.
           | 
           | The core value proposition of copyrights and patents is to
           | make middlemen money.
        
           | Ekaros wrote:
           | I think IP laws make lot of sense and so does allowing
           | protection of such. It is only effective way to stop
           | corporations from exploiting creators they do not have direct
           | relationship with.
           | 
           | Not that the current term we have isn't extremely too long.
           | And whole concept of lifetime being involved isn't just
           | weird.
        
         | userbinator wrote:
         | Corporate greed knows no bounds. If they could erase your brain
         | of "their" IP, they advocates would.
        
         | jrm4 wrote:
         | I love the precision with which you've said this - but I also I
         | really need to feel like we need a better "general public" way
         | to say it? I haven't figured this out yet.
        
       | slowhadoken wrote:
       | Does it matter if it's fair use if the copyright law can't be
       | enforced on a person by person basis?
        
       | fortran77 wrote:
       | I didn't think recording a song from the radio was "fair use"
       | either.
        
         | ShadowBanThis01 wrote:
         | It doesn't fall under fair use. It's otherwise protected,
         | though, most likely by the Audio Home Recording Act:
         | https://www.songtrust.com/music-publishing-
         | glossary/glossary....
        
         | Ekaros wrote:
         | Learn the new "meta". Just collect the songs and then run your
         | own commentary on top of them. Thus instantly turning them
         | something legal. Even if you just post them to place no one
         | listen to.
        
       | eye-robot wrote:
       | "should be"....
        
       | throw99ii wrote:
       | streamable.com just removed a random video of mine for "community
       | guidelines"
       | 
       | I use the site to save random Twitter and Youtube videos. They
       | aren't publicly shared. Kind of disheartening to see a random
       | video removed without knowing which one. And all for paying
       | $108/year for a simple convenience.
       | 
       | Definitely downloading all of them and canceling.
        
         | WirelessGigabit wrote:
         | I selfhost https://github.com/alexta69/metube
         | 
         | I have it sitting on a URL and I have an iOS share shortcut to
         | throw any URL at it and it downloads the video.
         | 
         | Copy-paste from my ansible setup if you're interested,
         | shouldn't be that hard to convert to docker-compose.
         | - name: Build metube options separately, avoids inline JSON in
         | metube setup           ansible.builtin.set_fact:
         | metube_ytdl_options:               postprocessors:
         | - key: FFmpegEmbedSubtitle                 - key: SponsorBlock
         | categories:                     - sponsor                 -
         | key: ModifyChapters                   remove_sponsor_segments:
         | - sponsor               subtitleslangs:                 - en
         | - "-live_chat"               verbose: true
         | writeautomaticsub: true               writesubtitles: true
         | - name: Create metube container
         | community.general.docker_container:
         | container_default_behavior: "no_defaults"             name:
         | metube             image: alexta69/metube:latest
         | restart_policy: always             env:               UID: "{{
         | plex_userid }}"               GID: "{{ docker_users_groupid }}"
         | DELETE_FILE_ON_TRASHCAN: "false"
         | DOWNLOAD_DIRS_INDEXABLE: "true"               DOWNLOAD_DIR:
         | /downloads               TEMP_DIR: /metube-tmp
         | STATE_DIR: /config               TZ: "{{ timezone }}"
         | YTDL_OPTIONS: "{{ metube_ytdl_options | to_json }}"
         | mounts:               - type: bind                 source:
         | /stacks/metube/config                 target: /config
         | read_only: false               - type: volume
         | source: metube_tmp_location_volume                 target:
         | /metube-tmp               - type: volume
         | source: plex_metube_volume                 target: /downloads
         | labels:               "traefik.enable": "true"
         | "traefik.http.routers.metube.middlewares": "authelia@docker"
         | "traefik.http.routers.metube.service": "metube"
         | "traefik.http.routers.metube-no-auth.rule":
         | "Host(`metube.home.domain.com`) && (PathPrefix(`/favicon`) ||
         | PathPrefix(`/add`))"
         | "traefik.http.routers.metube-no-auth.service": "metube"
         | "traefik.http.services.metube.loadbalancer.server.port": "8081"
         | ports: []             dns_servers:               - "{{
         | docker_network_ipv4_bridge_dns }}" # adguard
         | networks:               - name: bridge_ipv4
        
           | ec109685 wrote:
           | With YouTube premium being so convenient, it seems like the
           | need to rip YouTube videos would have gone down.
           | 
           | This does look pretty slick though.
        
             | porkbeer wrote:
             | How does that protect agains videos being taken down?
        
       | Tao3300 wrote:
       | Flashbacks to me waiting for 2Pac - _Changes_ to come on so I
       | could hit the record button on the tape deck.
        
         | rzzzt wrote:
         | Plot twist, it was "The way it is" by Bruce Hornsby.
        
       | _Algernon_ wrote:
       | Considering that many countries take a copying fee -- which is
       | intended to cover lost revenue from exactly this use case -- for
       | cassettes, harddrives and other storage media, yes yes it should.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
        
         | jeroenhd wrote:
         | It certainly solves the ethical debate, but sadly the data
         | storage extortion is nothing more than a means to make you pay
         | for your content multiple times.
         | 
         | I would support a political party that intends to change this,
         | but I don't think any party I vote for actually cares about it.
        
         | hiccuphippo wrote:
         | I'll gladly pay a % of what I pay to download yt-dl
        
           | btown wrote:
           | Bandwidth isn't free, folks! Imagine all the carrier pigeons
           | whose valiant effort we call upon every time we git clone!
           | Must they toil in obscurity?
        
           | GhostWhisperer wrote:
           | brew install yt-dlp              alias vget=yt-dlp
           | alias aget='vget --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 --audio-
           | quality 4'              # https://opencollective.com/homebrew
           | # https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-
           | dlp/blob/master/Collaborators.md#collaborators
        
             | jamilton wrote:
             | They're just making a joke that they don't pay for yt-dlp,
             | so of course they'd be willing to pay a tax of some percent
             | of 0.
        
               | GhostWhisperer wrote:
               | thank you
        
               | lib-dev wrote:
               | Thank you for the script. Very helpful.
        
             | mdaniel wrote:
             | > --audio-format mp3
             | 
             | Of course, up to you, but most youtube videos are actually
             | an AAC (m4a) codec and thus by asking for mp3 you're going
             | to get a transcoding ffmpeg subprocess in between the bytes
             | and the file in your directory. I would be stunned if
             | whatever your ultimate consuming player is doesn't support
             | aac/m4a/mp4 playback                   $ yt-dlp -F
             | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k...         139 m4a
             | audio only      2 |     1.47MiB   49k https | audio only
             | mp4a.40.5   49k 22k low, IOS, m4a_dash         140 m4a
             | audio only      2 |     3.90MiB  129k https | audio only
             | mp4a.40.2  129k 44k medium, IOS, m4a_dash         249 webm
             | audio only      2 |     1.54MiB   51k https | audio only
             | opus        51k 48k low, ANDR, webm_dash         250 webm
             | audio only      2 |     2.02MiB   67k https | audio only
             | opus        67k 48k low, ANDR, webm_dash         251 webm
             | audio only      2 |     3.95MiB  131k https | audio only
             | opus       131k 48k medium, ANDR, webm_dash         599 m4a
             | audio only      2 |   950.46KiB   31k https | audio only
             | mp4a.40.5   31k 22k ultralow, ANDR, m4a_dash         600
             | webm  audio only      2 |     1.06MiB   35k https | audio
             | only          opus        35k 48k ultralow, ANDR, webm_dash
        
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