youtube-dl DMCA'd by the RIAA - RIAA and MPAA are on a mass takedown spree

[AnOminous]

With piracy I really believe that the low-end have risen, small bands can tour with less risk than before, while the top mega-superstars might have lost some money and who gives a shit about that.

It's mainly the labels that lose money. They're taking almost all of the profits while throwing the artist a nickel and then selling the artist on "look they're stealing YOUR money" bullshit. That doesn't justify pirating by itself of course but the idea it's literally taking food off their table is nonsense. I figure if you're pirating shit though to fuck the RIAA and labels, I think you can morally make up for that by buying some merch at a concert or some other shit like that where the artist is actually getting that money, not some fat boomer in Beverly Hills.

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Glad the GitHub CEO is upset and getting involved!

uhhhhhh

GitHub’s CEO suggested that YouTube-DL won’t be reinstated in its original form. But, the software may be able to return without the rolling cipher circumvention code

lol so basically Mr. Nat Friedman is saying that all sites have to do to disable youtube-dl from functioning is add some trivial 'copy protection'. I am shocked, shocked to see that he is dishonest.

 

[Temporal Refugee]

> Trying to take down an open source project

Can't wait to see this project on any one of a number of other Git repositories, or hell even a self-hosted one alongside the website there.

Git is fucking everywhere, and anybody can spin up a new repo if one goes down over stupid shit like this. Even if they do cave and upload a crippled version to GitHub to regain repo access, youtube-dl is under the hood of a shit ton of projects. Anybody who has run anything open source that plays or downloads videos from Youtube is going to have an older pre-DMCA copy of ytdl somewhere on their file system, and any tech-inclined individual can set up a repo on a VPS or even their own computer in no time.

The genie's out of the bottle already, fuckers. You can't litigate FOSS out of existence unless shit goes down to cause contributors and users turn their back on the project, like proof coming to light you ripped off code from a closed-source solution, and even then you've only succeeded in driving the original author to neglect it, at which point (if it's a widely used project like ytdl) someone else will come along with a fork or other form of derivative project as soon as it's deprecated to the point of no longer functioning.

We really need to string these RIAA assholes and their ilk up by their silk neckties and push for copyright reform that's actually sane, with special consideration for community maintained project and how liability is distributed when they are the subject of litigation.

 

[ScatmansWorld]

But, the software may be able to return without the rolling cipher circumvention code

So basically "We'll rehost this as long as it's literally nonfunctioning"?

Fuck that. I hope the yt-dl team doesn't give in to those demands.

 

[AnOminous]

So basically "We'll rehost this as long as it's literally nonfunctioning"?

Fuck that. I hope the yt-dl team doesn't give in to those demands.

Unfortunately the anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA are completely unintelligible and written by paid hacks. They are not used terribly often, unlike the takedown provisions, but it is absolutely unclear whether they prohibit circumvention that enables fair use and substantial noninfringing use, or whether they also prohibit circumvention in a way that essentially cripples fair use, i.e. put even the most bogus copy protection on something and fair use no longer exists.

If so, they're unconstitutional, because fair use is a compromise in copyright law that allows for free speech use of copyrighted material, including computer code. If you can just do away with fair use that easily it essentially doesn't exist, i.e. copyright law is unconstitutional. So a court would probably interpret it as not prohibiting circumvention necessary for fair use, reserving circumvention that only allows for infringement and outright piracy for liability.

Eventually.

A few million dollars in litigation later.

 

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So basically "We'll rehost this as long as it's literally nonfunctioning"?

Fuck that. I hope the yt-dl team doesn't give in to those demands.

Well no, you see, it'll still work for YouTube videos that don't have the extra protection (which, as we can see, is easily worked around by the current code).

Until YouTube adds some similar trivial protection to everything. Which, according to Mr. Nat Friedman, youtube-dl would then not be allowed to support.

 

[Sage In All Fields]

So basically "We'll rehost this as long as it's literally nonfunctioning"?

Fuck that. I hope the yt-dl team doesn't give in to those demands.

Well not exactly, it'll probably be something like "oh well you can have almost all the circumvention code there but you can't have it be functional so the user needs to input some additional data that 'only an authorized person' would have"

 

[The Fool]

New article up at torrentfreak on the current state of the situation:

RIAA’s YouTube-DL Takedown Ticks Off Developers and GitHub’s CEO​

View attachment 1689854
Irc Chatlog of CEO attempt contact of youtube-dl devs

Glad the GitHub CEO is upset and getting involved!
I love youtube-dl and have gotten a couple bugfix commits into the codebase(nothing to do with the RIAA notice spots). The RIAA can burn.

This isn't charity, this is PR control.

Fuck this slimebag and fuck GitHub, I stopped using it after they went full BLM.

 

[kiwifarmsfan1]

uhhhhhh

lol so basically Mr. Nat Friedman is saying that all sites have to do to disable youtube-dl from functioning is add some trivial 'copy protection'. I am shocked, shocked to see that he is dishonest.

There are ways around the cipher issue, they could include a full javascript engine like google's v8 or use chrome in headless mode. The latter would dramatically increase the size of the distribution, but no cipher breaking would be needed in youtube-dl code itself, as that would be in the bundled webbrowser, unless RIAA wants to DMCA google for having software that can access webpage.

 

[GaryGrey]

Youtube-dl is filing a counter claim against the RIAA for misrepresenting the facts used to get the DMCA. Since the claim that the readme containing links on how to download copywritten material was false. The links were actually inside of a unit test in the youtube-dl source code. The claim is for business disparagement and defamation per se according to 17 USC 512(f) and 17 USC 1701 (might be a typo and should be 1201). Will post the filing when I find it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCrJM-MrKyI Lenard French talking about the counter suit starts at 9min.

EDIT: Having trouble finding the document itself

 

[Least Concern]

]]

So basically "We'll rehost this as long as it's literally nonfunctioning"?

Fuck that. I hope the yt-dl team doesn't give in to those demands.

I think they might be able to do some clever workaround. Like the nerfed version ships from GitHub, but the first time you try to download a video which requires the verboten components you get a prompt like "in order to download this video, youtube-dl must download and install additional components. Continue? [y / n]" after which it downloads the parts it needs from a more DMCA-resistant server. Or maybe those parts are implemented in a Git submodule which points to a non-GitHub server, though maybe package managers might have issues with that.

 

[awoo]

> Trying to take down an open source project

Can't wait to see this project on any one of a number of other Git repositories, or hell even a self-hosted one alongside the website there.

that's the genius of linus torvalds. he understood the importance of decentralization, whereas github is basically a centralized form of git.
fun fact: after thinking over the problems with other version control systems, linus wrote the core code of git in one weekend. https://www.linux.com/news/10-years-git-interview-git-creator-linus-torvalds/

 

[Herbert West Reanimator]

it is absolutely unclear whether they prohibit circumvention that enables fair use and substantial noninfringing use, or whether they also prohibit circumvention in a way that essentially cripples fair use, i.e. put even the most bogus copy protection on something and fair use no longer exists.

Given that, by the DMCA, it is illegal for you to transmit information that describes how to bypass copy protection, yes, the prohibition of circumvention is fucked beyond belief. You can't legally break it unless you learn how to do it for yourself (because teaching someone else how to do it is a criminal act), which puts even the most basic shit like "it's 100% legal for you to make a backup of your legally purchased media" (which it is, in the US, at least for now!) entirely outside the realm of possibility for most people. What good is my legal right to make backups if the backups stop working at exactly the same time the original stops working -- i.e., whenever the hell the rightsholder decides to turn off the authentication server?

 

[Null]

I've made a thread for the suit.

https://kiwifarms.st/threads/yout-llc-vs-the-riaa-inc-2020.78361/

 

[Sage In All Fields]

I've made a thread for the suit.

https://kiwifarms.st/threads/yout-llc-vs-the-riaa-inc-2020.78361/

Didn't even realise we had a subforum for that sort of stuff

 

[AnOminous]

Given that, by the DMCA, it is illegal for you to transmit information that describes how to bypass copy protection, yes, the prohibition of circumvention is fucked beyond belief. You can't legally break it unless you learn how to do it for yourself (because teaching someone else how to do it is a criminal act), which puts even the most basic shit like "it's 100% legal for you to make a backup of your legally purchased media" (which it is, in the US, at least for now!) entirely outside the realm of possibility for most people. What good is my legal right to make backups if the backups stop working at exactly the same time the original stops working -- i.e., whenever the hell the rightsholder decides to turn off the authentication server?

Yes, the language is so bad it can be interpreted that way, and no doubt, the people who bribed the politicians to pass it this way literally directly gave them the text and told them "here is what you're passing." Some of the other stuff like the originally much worse takedown provisions got improved after lobbying by actual humans, but the anticircumvention shit remained awful. If it's interpreted the way the RIAA is interpreting it, it's flat out unconstitutional. If it's possible to interpret it in a way that isn't, a court will do that, but it generally takes a federal appeals court to make it stick, and then others to follow that before it becomes established law, barring an immediate ruling by SCOTUS on direct appeal (don't hold your breath).

On one hand it's admirable to take the offensive immediately but this is almost certainly going to ensure a countersuit by the RIAA. This could easily end up killing youtube-dl just by having to fight this bullshit for years. I doubt an IP lawyer with decades of experience who literally is Vice-Chair of the Illinois State Bar Association's Intellectual Property Section Council is just tarding out and failing to consider that, though.

Still these fucking cunts should have stuck to bullying people who were clearly infringing. While I'd rather see them all dangling from ropes, I'd settle for them having to eat shit in court for a change.

 

[Condicional]

lol so basically Mr. Nat Friedman is saying that all sites have to do to disable youtube-dl from functioning is add some trivial 'copy protection'. I am shocked, shocked to see that he is dishonest.

Maybe you can share that part of the code "elsewere" just to dodge that bullet.
Like; you host the code in another site that is keep up to date.
You can just grab that code, paste it into the project, and boom, the puzzle is complete. It may be a solution maybe.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Given that, by the DMCA, it is illegal for you to transmit information that describes how to bypass copy protection, yes, the prohibition of circumvention is fucked beyond belief. You can't legally break it unless you learn how to do it for yourself (because teaching someone else how to do it is a criminal act), which puts even the most basic shit like "it's 100% legal for you to make a backup of your legally purchased media" (which it is, in the US, at least for now!) entirely outside the realm of possibility for most people. What good is my legal right to make backups if the backups stop working at exactly the same time the original stops working -- i.e., whenever the hell the rightsholder decides to turn off the authentication server?

MPAA managed to remove("remove") DeCSS from the internet, DeCSS removed the copy protection bullshit for DVDs, and people came up with interesting twists on challenging that. A gzip archive containing DeCSS expressed as a known prime number was one idea someone implemented. Put the prime into a text file, change the file type, unpack it and now the code is there.

Many other clever ideas were created and I don't know if anything came from it but people were talking about illegal immigrants getting one of the short ones tattooed on themselves to see if they could still get deported from the US.

 

[AnOminous]

MPAA managed to remove("remove") DeCSS from the internet, DeCSS removed the copy protection bullshit for DVDs, and people came up with interesting twists on challenging that.

No they didn't. It wasn't removed for a single minute, and its presence on the Internet exploded instantly when they tried. Here's a gallery of them.

 

[The Fool]

Did the DeCSS thing even involve the RIAA or was it purely a Sony thing? I'd understand if the RIAA just strongarmed Sony. But also Sony is kind of a prick in itself.