[HN Gopher] Music industry is suing youtube-dl hosters
___________________________________________________________________
Music industry is suing youtube-dl hosters
Author : 2pEXgD0fZ5cF
Score : 259 points
Date : 2022-01-13 18:12 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.i-n24.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.i-n24.com)
| samtheprogram wrote:
| I'm confused by their obsession with youtube-dl. I don't really
| know anyone that pirates music, seems like streaming has really
| solved that with ad-supported listening. The common cases for
| using youtube-dl, as I understand, is for archival (mostly non-
| music), watching videos content out of the browser (also mostly
| non-music), and derivative works purposes.
| davidgerard wrote:
| Streaming has largely defeated torrents, but anti-piracy people
| in the record companies want to preserve their jobs. So they've
| invented a bogeyman of massive stream-ripping going on amongst
| young people.
| lfmunoz4 wrote:
| dheera wrote:
| Can it just be hosted on some blockchain so that there is
| nobody to sue except the likes of Satoshi?
| chaos_a wrote:
| youtube-dl is what makes most youtube music ripping sites
| function. Which are widely used by people who aren't paying for
| music streaming subscriptions.
|
| ex: https://github.com/Rudloff/alltube
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| It's not generally that great a quality right? Why even
| bother when you there are so many different ways to get
| music?
| dylan604 wrote:
| >It's not generally that great a quality right?
|
| You just described youtube in general. As the old saying
| goes, "content is king". Look at VHS (if you're old enough
| to remember). As bad of a quality as it was, everyone used
| it. Pros would complain about how bad it looked, but the
| mass populace was just fine with it. Youtube is the same
| way. In the beginning, the quality was soooo bad, but users
| didn't care because it gave them endless content.
| plussed_reader wrote:
| See: cell phone speakers.
| PopeUrbanX wrote:
| ugjka wrote:
| 1) Quality is acceptable
|
| 2) Large part of world's population can't afford
| subscription services
|
| 3) There's a lot of music that is not on music streaming
| services but is on YouTube
|
| 4) Sometimes you need the mp3 file (for ringtone, for
| editing, for remixing etc)
|
| 5) There are still some people who rather want everything
| on their HDD
| yobert wrote:
| It's as good of quality as listening directly on YouTube,
| which is fine enough for most people.
| sib301 wrote:
| No. Alltube isn't a music ripping site. It's a site that
| allows users to download any YouTube video. Some users use
| this tool to download music.
| sib301 wrote:
| This is like suing VCR manufacturers because some people
| used them to record music videos off of MTV.
| ok_dad wrote:
| > suing VCR manufacturers
|
| Might I direct you to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony
| _Corp._of_America_v._Unive....
| lottin wrote:
| People are downloading music clips so that they don't have to
| listen to ads? Why don't they just install an ad-blocker?
| iKlsR wrote:
| If the avg man knew the concept of an adblocker we would
| live in a different online world. I've seen people sit and
| watch 2 minute ads and or complain about how cramped pages
| are, they know they don't want ads and it's annoying but
| only a small percentage of that google "block youtube ads"
| and can click their way to install an extension etc.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Maybe they want the music clips for offline viewing?
| Shared404 wrote:
| Indeed. If the industry won't give me a simple way to
| purchase a file, I'll make my own.
| zepearl wrote:
| That's my case - as I know that some music videos/clips
| will disappear soon or later for any reason (happened in
| the past), and as I cannot buy+download them then the
| only option I'm currently aware of is to download them
| with youtube-dl. It works reliably and it's simple to
| use.
|
| In my case this often happens "in addition" to
| buying+downloading the song's mp3 (usually on Amazon).
| bushbaba wrote:
| I believe that to maintain copyright control you need to
| enforce it. By not enforcing it they are effectively granting
| permission to the behavior.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| No, that's a trademark thing. Copyrights do not need to be
| consistently enforced to maintain.
| jasode wrote:
| _> The common cases for using youtube-dl, as I understand, is
| for archival (mostly non-music), watching videos content_
|
| Even though videos are the main content, Youtube is also the #1
| website in the world for _streaming music_ :
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-did-youtu...
|
| https://musically.com/2021/03/22/surprise-youtube-is-the-mos...
| habeebtc wrote:
| I was also surprised at this. Despite all the copyright claim
| controls, I was under the impression that YT was still the
| biggest source unauthorized music distribution.
|
| This seems to me to be akin to bullying a mouse because
| bullying the elephant in the room isn't going to pan out.
| abakker wrote:
| And, even as a YouTube red subscriber, I like YouTube DL
| because it lets me create local Copies of music from great
| concerts. Many artists release a lot more great live stuff
| than there are albums for.
| bduerst wrote:
| Doesn't that include YouTube Music which gives you the same
| live music videos and let you store them offline?
|
| e.g. https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=YQfkm4Vp-1o&list=PLZ
| Gh95p3...
| grujicd wrote:
| What I learned is if you a find concert or something else
| you'd like to rewatch in the future - download it. Even if
| it's legit video on legit yt channel, it could dissapear
| for number of reasona. And it's not like - we're taking it
| down from yt but you can watch it here for $5 or
| subscription or whatever. You typically can't find it
| anywhere anymore.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| They do things like this and then turn around and say "X will
| destroy the recording industry" and are surprised when voters
| start wondering why it's taking so long and asking if there are
| any legislative changes or tax incentives that could be used to
| assist X in its meritorious endeavor.
| jrockway wrote:
| If X will destroy the recording industry, please give me lots
| more of X!
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's about control. As a user agent, youtube-dl acts in our
| behalf in order to do what we want and protect our interests.
| That's why they hate it. It's the antithesis of everything they
| want: something that acts on _their_ behalf, does what _they_
| want and protects _their_ interests.
|
| If something gives us any power at all, they'll sue it into
| oblivion.
| nomel wrote:
| > in order to do what we want and protect our interests
|
| Letting everyone do things in their own self interest,
| unchecked, is rarely found in stable societies. For example,
| one persons interest (getting music for free) may not align
| with another's (the starving artist's).
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Then stop making music for free. Find a way to get paid
| before you put the work in. Because _after_ it 's been made
| and published, it's already over.
|
| Computers exist and are networked. Data is trivially and
| infinitely copyable. The clock will not be rewound back to
| the dark ages where data was a finite product that people
| could buy and sell. No matter how much the music industry
| rages and sues, it won't change the fact that YouTube is
| just sending me data via HTTP and there's absolutely
| nothing they can do if I decide to redirect that data to my
| hard disk instead. It's up to them to adapt to their new
| reality. If they can't, that's their problem.
| glenda wrote:
| Except the RIAA isn't a starving artist and the actual
| artists make practically nothing from streaming services -
| the starving artist's needs are already compromised by
| large corporate interests.
| sebow wrote:
| Good, let the Streisand effect flow through them.I encourage
| people to host youtube-dl(& it's forks) on GH, Gitlab and things
| like IPFS.
|
| A tool is not piracy.This is not even an argument, let alone a
| stupid one ,alongside the idiocy of one who believes it.The web
| already becomes cancerous enough with DRM [Ex: Try installing a
| FOSS-only system, let's say fedora + librewolf and try playing
| anything w/o installing flash or drm plugins].
| crmd wrote:
| The penalties for wrongful copyright assertion should be much
| more severe than they are today.
| asteroidp wrote:
| The perjury part needs to be enforced heavily. Literally arrest
| them for fraud
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Copyright should not exist to begin with. There should be
| nothing to infringe on, much less a crime for them to "assert".
| [deleted]
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Youtube could make the penalty much higher. They don't want to
| because they know that working with content creation
| corporations is good for business, and over deletion doesn't
| hurt their bottom line at all.
| munk-a wrote:
| Youtube isn't the party that should be punishing these take-
| downs. They might be able to apply some pressure to them but
| only through threatening to remove the DMCA sidestepping
| process which, honestly, benefits everyone. This is a case of
| folks with a lot of money persecuting folks with very little
| money - and that scenario breaks our current legal system. I
| think we need better support (and a restoration of the
| removed rights that were sidelined into forced arbitration)
| for class actions or other styles of group lawsuits. Amicus
| briefs from prestigious institutions and advocacy groups are
| surprising effective in this space already - but you can
| still get really boned when you have a winning case but not
| enough money to actually win it.
| jMyles wrote:
| Or, it can simply not exist while we remove the concept of
| rightful copyright assertion.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| What is your proposed alternative to copyright?
| TillE wrote:
| The palatable answer in this community would basically be:
| robust UBI.
|
| If people don't have to sell their creative work for profit
| to live, you don't need copyright.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| The alternative is people figure out a way to get paid
| _before_ or _while_ they 're creating. Because after the
| work is done and published, it's over. Artificial scarcity
| isn't gonna save creators anymore.
| [deleted]
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Not parent, but if you ask me[0]: nothing. The world is not
| starved for creative content, there is little reason to
| continue incentivizing its creation so massively. People
| have shown quite willing to continue creating even while
| receiving nothing at all for their trouble, and we can
| always donate money to the people who's work we want to
| support.
|
| Yes, it means no more Disney movies or AAA games. I'm
| personally quite ok with that.
|
| [0] This is largely for the sake of argument, although I do
| definitely lean this direction.
| stormbrew wrote:
| I mean, the obvious alternative is simply "no copyright".
| The world existed before it, and people created things
| without it.
|
| Anyways, less extreme would be that we could go back to
| reasonable copyright terms as existed a hundred years ago.
| It seems likely at this point that our current 'experiment'
| with extreme copyright enforcement is going to produce an
| entire 100+ year range where the only works that will
| survive will be those owned by massive corporations who
| hold perpetual ownership of the work instead of their
| actual creators.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| These "industries" forget that public domain is the
| default. It's natural, it's just how things are. Copying
| is not just trivial, it is _natural_. People infringe
| copyright every single day without even realizing what
| they are doing.
|
| The fact is society is doing them a _huge favor_ by
| pretending their works are scarce. In return they abuse
| our good will and erode our public domain rights. All we
| have to do is stop pretending. Start treating everything
| as public domain. That ought to be enough of a reality
| check to an industry that thinks it can monopolize
| numbers for hundreds of years.
|
| Nobody cares how much money they spent to make stuff
| either. They don't get to deny reality just because they
| spent money.
| pphysch wrote:
| A society that provides for its people without restricting
| freedom of information.
|
| There's nothing wrong with protecting trade secrets, etc.
| but that is the onus of the secret holder to employ proper
| security measures. If someone assaults those measures, you
| prosecute them for those specific assaults (physical,
| cyber, etc).
|
| But you don't prosecute people merely for being in
| possession or distributing "intellectual property" i.e.
| ideas and symbols. Only a backwards society would allow
| that.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Yes, but more generally someone bringing suit and losing should
| be responsible for defendants legal expense.
|
| This is the system in other places (eg. Germany) and greatly
| prevents legal bullying
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| It's still far from optimal though, with that system it is
| still way too easy to do legal bullying. If you draw out a
| legal case long enough the coverage of legal expenses for the
| defendant does matter less and less (still better than not
| having it, of course!), because the financial pressure can
| still do permament damage that might not be easily reverted,
| add to that the intimidation and potential crippling of
| work/career/brand/profession of the defendant if any of those
| are part of the legal battle.
|
| Companies can still calculate the costs of losing the case
| and come to the conclusion that the benefit of the
| intimidation alone is worth it.
| munk-a wrote:
| This _can_ have a chilling effect - if you are a legitimately
| wronged party you still might be hesitant to engage in a
| legal battle if some technicalities failing to be
| technicalities could result on you losing everything you 've
| ever earned in life when you get hit with a suit to recover
| legal fees.
|
| I think we sorta want more proactive and aggressive state
| attorneys that will prosecute seen injustices for the public
| good. I've pondered this a lot and I can't really see any
| obvious other path that doesn't have even worse potential
| consequences.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| > if some technicalities failing to be technicalities could
| result on you losing everything
|
| Could this be solved if we moved towards more % based
| monetary penalties?
| jjk166 wrote:
| If anything it would make it worse. For those who are
| making a little over ends meet, a small percentage loss
| could put them under the threshold, whereas those with
| far more than they need can afford to lose a larger
| portion of their wealth.
|
| More fundamentally, the purpose of such measures is
| explicitly to discourage the bringing of suits - anything
| big enough to be a viable deterrent to bad faith actors
| will inevitably also be big enough to deter good faith
| actors.
| munk-a wrote:
| It might make sense if potential legal liability was
| limited to your own expenditure (though that might get
| complicated with self-representation). For instance if
| you've spent 30k on a defense vs. a company that put in
| 20M - you'd be on the hook for 30k or some
| multiplier/proportion of that. It'd essentially be a one-
| way filter: little guys get protection and bigger
| companies receive almost none - but it might also be
| exploitable by legal trolls filing bogus suits with
| essentially no liability exposure.
|
| The law of the law be a complicated and harsh mistress.
| echelon wrote:
| > This can have a chilling effect
|
| Make both parties start in non-binding arbitration, where
| the plaintiff pays.
|
| If either party chooses to escalate, they'll be on the hook
| for all the fees, including the original arbitration, if
| they loose.
|
| Plaintiffs could purchase insurance or some other vehicle
| to de-risk their claims if they believe, but aren't
| certain, that they'll win. This will help smaller parties
| that get infringed upon.
| Spartan-S63 wrote:
| I agree. In addition, multiple occurrences of wrongful
| copyright assertion should result in losing existing
| copyrights. If you abuse the system, you should lose the
| ability to protect future work.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| How is this not just a legal use of web scraping? Google could
| fix this today by forcing everybody to log into YouTube.
| yeetaccount4 wrote:
| Entertainment industry legal shit is beyond stupid. I've heard of
| one person's pirated music and movie collection that exceeded the
| GDP of most first world countries, going by the numbers the
| industry gets awarded in civil suits. They literally just tell
| the courts how much money they'd like and it gets rubber stamped.
|
| If you have money and an army of good attorneys, you usually get
| what you want.
| habeebtc wrote:
| There was a meme a while back (which was completely accurate),
| about how the minimum sentence for uploading a Michael Jackson
| album was less than the sentence the doctor got for _literally
| killing_ Michael Jackson.
| omoikane wrote:
| > pirated music and movie collection that exceeded the GDP of
| most first world countries
|
| On a similar premise, there is a novel where aliens have been
| pirating music from Earth and are contemplating their options
| with respect to their legal liabilities.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(Reid_novel)
| jacquesm wrote:
| What do you mean, you've never heard of the Rigel Convention?
| Silly earthlings, if you can't be interested in your local
| affairs...
|
| (Thanks, Douglas...)
| [deleted]
| rcpt wrote:
| Man imagine how great the world of music would be today if
| Napster won in court 20 years ago.
| autoexec wrote:
| I can't help but imagine how amazing things would be if we
| didn't have such an insane copyright system. With the internet
| and today's tech there's no reason why the full contents of
| every book ever written shouldn't be available instantly. Same
| with media. Instead, art, culture, and knowledge are being lost
| all because a small number of people want to control access and
| play gatekeeper.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| I would've preferred submitting the article by netzpolitik.org
| [1] where I first encountered these news but as far as I am aware
| HN submission are required to be in english.
|
| [1]: https://netzpolitik.org/2022/urheberrecht-musikindustrie-
| ver...
| ILMostro7 wrote:
| Just another example of "Netzpolitik" ;D
|
| Sorry, couldn't resist.
| yokoprime wrote:
| Joke is on them as everyone is switching over to yt-dlp and other
| forks.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| The lawsuit may still create a chilling effect against hosting
| the forks, so it's not entirely irrelevant.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| > chilling effect
|
| I understood that reference.
| WheatM wrote:
| nyjah wrote:
| Why is that streamers and videos on youtube can't play music but
| xxx web cam models are allowed to? I really don't understand it.
| Every cam model plays whatever their heart desires.
|
| Might not be the best place to ask this, but its something I
| wonder about a lot.
| kadoban wrote:
| Because enforcement hasn't come for them (yet). No real other
| reason.
| quux wrote:
| This might be the answer. Peloton in their early years also
| just streamed whatever music they liked as part of their
| workout streams, at some point they got big enough to get on
| the radar of the music industry and now they have to pay
| royalties.
| habeebtc wrote:
| Indeed. I don't think most xxx streamers (or streaming
| platforms) are "stones" with enough "blood" for them to be
| worth squeezing.
| azeirah wrote:
| Streamers as well as web cam models _aren't_ allowed to play
| random music, they just do.
|
| The only time it's allowed is when they have the appropriate
| licenses. (sync license under DMCA for music synchronized to
| live streams)
|
| Streamers were doing this without repercussion 5 years ago
| because the streaming industry wasn't large enough for the
| music industry to care about. That changed about two years ago.
|
| The same holds for cam models, it's just that they're not
| getting claims for whatever reason. Maybe the music industry
| just isn't that focused on live pornography?
| yuliyp wrote:
| Streamers and other popular YT channels rely on ad revenue from
| their YT channels. If they play content-id-ed music, the
| revenue from those videos might go to the music rightsholders
| instead. For channels which aren't going to be able to get ad
| revenue due to their content not being "advertiser-friendly"
| this is not a concern, since they make their money elsewhere.
| champagnois wrote:
| Youtube-DL has been an incredible tool for a very long time. I
| have never used it for music, but I have used it for countless
| educational videos that I intended to use while on a subway or a
| transcontinental flight.
|
| The experience of consuming media via an offline software is just
| infinitely better for my focus.
|
| I would rather see Youtube die than Youtube-DL. Youtube-DL has a
| lot of use cases.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I use it for music all of the time. I've downloaded hundreds of
| songs using it.
| howdydoo wrote:
| I use youtube-dl to download Cracking the Cryptic videos. The
| RIAA does not own those videos. In fact there are quite a few
| videos on youtube the RIAA doesn't own.
| cheeze wrote:
| You can use thepiratebay to download legal videos too, but the
| RIAA still cares.
|
| Not saying that I agree with them, but "I use it for a legit
| purpose" doesn't mean they are going to act sensibly.
| zeeZ wrote:
| They own all videos until you can prove otherwise, and win the
| appeal.
| Longhanks wrote:
| Ah, I didn't know other countries too have Germany's GEMA-
| Vermutung (per default assumption of media requiring payment
| to the GEMA for legal use).
| kzrdude wrote:
| Sweden has, and it's stupid.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The US doesn't have that same law. YouTube decided to do
| something similar of their own volition.
| Accujack wrote:
| Yep. Youtube's de facto monopoly on video hosting has rules
| heavily tilted in favor of corporations and organizations
| like the RIAA and MPAA.
| hiptobecubic wrote:
| They want the revenue from hosting the content.
| ILMostro7 wrote:
| Just to clarify, do you mean a few videos or many videos?
| Thanks
| skrebbel wrote:
| Not the GP but they mean very many videos, ie the vast, vast
| majority.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quite_a_few
|
| The opposite of "quite a few" would be "quite few".
| pmg102 wrote:
| This is not correct. "Quite few" is not correct English.
|
| EDIT: on reading some of the linked sources I realise I was
| wrong about this.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > "Quite few" is not correct English.
|
| I take it you don't speak English yourself? You can apply
| "quite" to any adjective, including "few".
| autoexec wrote:
| It works, but it's awkward. Same with "quite many" which
| doesn't get as much use
| gknoy wrote:
| While one could, it's not an idiom I (native speaker)
| have ever heard. I've heard "very few", but never "quite
| few", and I can see why hearing the latter might cause
| the listener/reader to mistakenly auto-correct it as
| "quite _a_ few".
| weaksauce wrote:
| I am a native English speaker and yes quite few is a
| thing that I have heard and said.
| evilduck wrote:
| But we don't only speak in idioms. "Quite" and "few" are
| some the least ambiguous words you can come across in
| English, "quite few" should be clear so long as you don't
| add words and substitute in your own meaning as the
| reader.
|
| I think the idiom "quite a few" is arguably worse to use
| in a diverse audience since it means the opposite of "a
| few" and is one of the only times "quite a" is used to
| negate the meaning of what follows.
| pmg102 wrote:
| Perhaps so. But it certainly sounds distinctly odd to me.
| Fairly confident I have never used or heard the
| construction myself. (Native speaker, 43, southern UK.)
| dylan604 wrote:
| Cederfjard wrote:
| Non-idiomatic is not the same as incorrect. There's no
| semantic or syntactic issue with the phrase.
| tomrod wrote:
| Hi! English speaker here. It's not common, but it is
| perfectly acceptable. Here is some data to back this up:
| https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=quite+few%2
| C+q...
|
| Thanks!
| sdoering wrote:
| Damn. I probably need to up my monthly fee for my different
| projects I host with them.
|
| For more than 12 years now I host my web projects (nearly)
| exclusively with them. I really enjoy the way they are setup and
| structured.
|
| You pay what 10GB of hosting is worth to you (min 1 Euro). Shared
| hosting without sudo. Great user support. Really helpful and real
| knowledgeable people actually trying to help.
|
| I can't recommend them enough.
|
| When I started I couldn't afford to pay more than a few bucks a
| month. Now using them professionally and hosting client projects
| there I can support them by paying more per month.
|
| Sadly having to fight in the Hamburg doesn't help. In Germany the
| Hamburg court is known for their pro music industry stance.
| smm11 wrote:
| Will the music industry sue the 1978 me, with the tape recorder
| right next to the radio, and me holding the "record" button to
| catch my favorite songs (along with the banter leading right up
| to the first lyrics)?
| agumonkey wrote:
| Soon we'll have self rotting audio files to emulate analog
| longevity.
| autoexec wrote:
| Trusted computing and DRM could make it happen
| hbn wrote:
| They don't even really need to do that since most people
| don't touch raw music files any more.
| belter wrote:
| They already did: "...A royalty on blank audio tape and tape
| recorders..."
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/21/arts/issue-and-debate-roy...
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| cronix wrote:
| Didn't they also do that with recordable CD's (CD-R) early
| on?
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I don't know about CD-R media, but DAT media was that way.
| pomian wrote:
| Yes. To this day. You pay extra tax on cdc-r. (Interesting
| not on DVD -r)
| howdydoo wrote:
| They should also get a royalty on cameras, because someone
| might take a photo of copyrighted cover art. Oh, and also a
| royalty on pens and paper, because someone might use them to
| write down copyrighted lyrics
| iqanq wrote:
| In Spain they get a royalty from everything you can store
| data on, from hard disks to mobile phones.
| smegsicle wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
| [deleted]
| spicybright wrote:
| Does it scale with storage size lol
| pacbard wrote:
| It does in Italy: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equo_comp
| enso_in_Italia#Tariff...
| iqanq wrote:
| It scales with price :)
| onli wrote:
| They also do in Germany, where they are suing. It's
| mentioned in the article I think - they try to get the
| money twice.
| rasz wrote:
| They did https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
| belter wrote:
| That is called the Microsoft tax. As you pay extra for your
| OEM hardware even if dont plan to use Windows.
| steelframe wrote:
| Isn't it the case that you can order from some of the
| more popular OEMs with Linux pre-installed, and they
| won't charge you the Microsoft licensing fee? I think
| Dell and Lenovo do this?
|
| Maybe they do charge the Microsoft fee anyway, but I'd be
| a bit surprised if they didn't fix that issue.
| belter wrote:
| Its still the case that if you are an OEM vendor, you
| need to make sure your hardware plays nice with the new
| versions of Windows. You better "cooperate".
|
| Its difficult to describe all the behaviors they were
| engaged in.
|
| "...The Complaint alleges that Microsoft has used its
| monopoly power to induce PC manufacturers to enter into
| anticompetitive, long-term licenses under which they must
| pay Microsoft not only when they sell PCs containing
| Microsoft's operating systems, but also when they sell
| PCs containing non-Microsoft operating systems..."
| https://www.justice.gov/atr/competitive-impact-statement-
| us-...
|
| As a reminder...They lost their case "United States v.
| Microsoft Corp." and June 7, 2000, the court ordered a
| breakup of Microsoft. They would have to be broken into
| two separate units, one to produce the operating system,
| and one to produce other software components. This was
| overturned on appeal on what can be only described as
| technicalities...
|
| The Judge said: "...Microsoft proved, time and time
| again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive, and
| transparently false. ... Microsoft is a company with an
| institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of
| law that lesser entities must respect. It is also a
| company whose senior management is not averse to offering
| specious testimony to support spurious defenses to claims
| of its wrongdoing."
|
| Politics changes in the US and the power of lobbying made
| everything to end up in a settlement that for most
| Microsoft has been ignoring or forgetting about.That is
| how much it took to make them open "some" API's
|
| This one from the EU is one of the best overviews:
|
| "Microsoft: A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and
| Consumer Harm" http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_
| Consumerchoicepape...
|
| I heard their ex-CEO is into vaccines now ;-)
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Maybe impose a tax on our brains as well since it stores
| copyrighted data in our memories. Complete with mandatory
| brain chips that detect when you remember their data and
| charge your bank account automatically.
|
| How much more absurd can this become?
| habeebtc wrote:
| They come after bars sometimes for hosting cover bands.
| True story.
| fimdomeio wrote:
| I believe than in Portugal one pays a tax with every hdd or
| any device that might be used to ilegally store copyrighted
| content. So I pay a tax for the eventuality of doing the
| thing I cannot legally do but at the same time if I already
| paid for it how can it still be ilegal?
| bonzini wrote:
| Pretty much all over Europe but it's not for illegal
| copies: it's for legal copies as in "copy an LP you own
| to a cassette for use in a car" (that's the original use
| case).
|
| Of course everybody knows that it's _practically_
| covering missed royalties from illegally copied content,
| but according to the letter of the law it isn 't.
| [deleted]
| mrweasel wrote:
| No because that is not a loss-less copy. The quality is
| severely affect and that amount of damage you can potentially
| do to sales is minimal. EDIT: Completely forgot about the "tax"
| on blank media and tape records.
|
| Anyway, if they didn't want people to be able to copy their
| stuff, then they shouldn't have put it on YouTube. The music
| industry is being as dumb as they ever where, it's fascinating
| that they've learned NOTHING in the past twenty years. How much
| money can they possibly lose on youtube-dl vs. how much money
| they continue the scam out of artists.
|
| At this point who doesn't have a subscription to a streaming
| service? Those who don't where never going to pay anyway. They
| aren't losing money.
| zamadatix wrote:
| YouTube is just another streaming service, they make money by
| delivering their copyrighted material on it just like every
| other delivery method and people pirate via it just like
| every other delivery method. Choosing to put their content on
| YouTube isn't a dumb choice at all, it's one of the few sane
| things about the situation.
| tremon wrote:
| Everything available on Youtube is not a lossless copy.
| Especially music is lossy-compressed and loudness-optimized,
| so lossless vs lossy isn't a valid argument here.
| mrweasel wrote:
| My point was that it won't degree further as you make
| copies of the file you got with YouTube-dl
| jacquesm wrote:
| The funny thing is they did this to themselves. Consumers
| were perfectly happy with their regular HiFi stuff and
| records. But the recording companies and the big hardware
| manufacturers (notably: Philips, Sony, both owners of
| enormous music catalogs) would love to sell everybody an
| upgraded HiFi system _and_ get them to buy all their music
| again. In a format so dense that no computer would _ever_ be
| able to store that much information on a writable medium so
| pushing large numbers of lossless copies of music into the
| world was a no brainer. We all know how that ended.
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| The music industry (in collusion with Congress) killed DAT
| with this same specious argument, when everyone knew that
| "perfect digital copies" were the LEAST-likely vector of
| attack on their industry.
|
| The obvious and dominant form of music copying was with
| double-cassette boom boxes in dorm rooms and bedrooms around
| the world.
|
| And in the end, the media publishers' lies about "perfect
| digital copies" were proven to be just that, as profoundly
| IMperfect MP3s became the real threat.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You don't remember the 'home taping is killing music' campaign?
| standardUser wrote:
| Honestly I'm surprised there still _is_ a music industry,
| considering how many albums I downloaded on Napster in my teens
| and early twenties.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Short answer: yes, the music industry (and similar media
| industries) has historically fought tooth and nail against any
| technology that allows anyone to consume content in any way not
| directly controlled and monetized by the music industry.
| There's a well-documented history of media industries fighting
| against "time shifting."
| can16358p wrote:
| How much more cases like this do we need to switch to a
| decentralized (either via blockchain, torrent, IPFS or something
| else) so that no one can stop freedom to shre code anymore?
| PrimeDirective wrote:
| Good idea. Every time I commit and push my commits, I pay
| ledger fees and wait for the settlement for unknown amount of
| time
| nulld3v wrote:
| Decentralized doesn't always mean blockchain.
| npteljes wrote:
| Decentralized services need to be much faster and responsive
| than they are now, and if they would really work for this
| purpose, then they'll be shut down by some law - like how
| encrypted transmission is banned on ham radio frequencies[0].
| So the most we can enjoy is the small times the mouse is
| winning in the cat and mouse game. No "anymore" or anything
| like that.
|
| [0] https://ham.stackexchange.com/questions/72/encrypted-
| traffic...
| jakeogh wrote:
| Anyone looking for a interesting fork, checkout
| https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
| YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote:
| I bet that YouTube-dl is a tool used in some form or way in their
| own workflows.
| julienpalard wrote:
| Next target of music industry: Firefox & Chrome, because they
| also allow for listening their music on Youtube.
| crtasm wrote:
| How accurate does the reporting from this site tend to be? The
| sidebar is mostly months old articles about celebrities.
| racuna wrote:
| I use youtube-dl to convert to audio some videos and listen them
| as a podcast in antennapod.
| jug wrote:
| The music industry and the Streisand effect is a match made in
| heaven. <3
| lanewinfield wrote:
| I used youtube-dl to make my freeze frame twitter bot.
|
| https://twitter.com/freezeframebot
|
| YouTube themselves have blocked my IP too many times so it sadly
| remains inoperative.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Interesting, I recommended somebody to take a look at Uberspace
| just yesterday. I can't personally vouch for them because I
| haven't had a project fitting the profile, but they seem
| extremely nice mostly partly due to their pricing structure.
|
| https://uberspace.de/en/
| labrador wrote:
| I hope they do take the website down as long youtube-dl stay on
| github. I want a high technical barrier of entry so the common
| folk can't conveniently rip off Billy Eilish videos. If only
| techies and journalists use it responsibly, then the music biz
| doesn't care, much like archive.is stays up because Mom and Pop
| don't know they can read the Wall Street Journal for free with
| it.
| somat wrote:
| "With the software, which is available on the code sharing
| platform Github, YouTube videos and music files can be downloaded
| without a web browser."
|
| I could argue that the software is a web browser, admittedly one
| tailored around a specific use case.
|
| I feel the music industry has to do a better job explaining how
| downloading a youtude video via the youtube-dl user agent is
| different than downloading the same video via the firefox user
| agent.
| andai wrote:
| I used youtube-dl as my primary way to consume YouTube content
| (mostly lectures and podcasts) for a year when I had very
| limited internet access.
|
| youtube-dl -f bestaudio [url]
|
| then convert to 12kbps Opus with
|
| ffmpeg -i [file] -b:a 12K [file].opus
|
| I could even do this from my phone over SSH but eventually made
| a simple web frontend for it. I haven't opened it to the public
| though, because of, well, news stories like this one.
| Narishma wrote:
| I still do because Firefox doesn't support hardware video
| decoding on Linux in any of my machines. Though I use mpv,
| which then uses youtube-dl in the background.
| dylan604 wrote:
| is it still considered downloading if you sent the output of
| youtube-dl to stdout rather than to a file, then have ffmpeg
| read from stdin?
| autoexec wrote:
| I still do this. I never watch youtube videos on youtube
| anymore. It's a better experience. VLC is a better player,
| there are no ads, there are no comments, there are no
| recommended videos trying to bait me, and I don't even have
| to enable javascript for google's domains.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Isn't YouTube bestaudio already Opus?
| jerf wrote:
| Often yes, but it'll be much higher quality than 12Kb/s.
| But 12Kb/s is plenty for human speech to be comprehensible,
| though you'll generally notice the quality loss.
|
| Plus, I haven't studied this but I don't think they
| reencode all old content. New videos seems consistent but
| older videos can have varying things available. Using
| bestaudio & ffmpeg will definitely get you a consistent
| result. I can't promise hard-coded -f options for specific
| formats will be reliable.
| pvg wrote:
| _I could argue that the software is a web browser, admittedly
| one tailored around a specific use case._
|
| Most people, including the court, would easily see through this
| as trivial sophistry. It's not much of a legal strategy.
| contravariant wrote:
| I wouldn't be the first time a web browser has been confused
| with a server agent.
|
| And as long as DRM software is in browsers it's a somewhat
| understandable confusion.
| spicybright wrote:
| On a technical level you're right, of course. But the industry
| is more concerned with how content is delivered to non software
| savvy people (the vast majority). So controlling the tools
| leads to less overall downloads (in theory anyways.)
|
| They'd probably have the same issue if youtube added a
| "download as audio" button to every video without paying
| studios.
| [deleted]
| CJefferson wrote:
| I don't think they would have any trouble explaining that in a
| court of law, to a jury.
|
| While I like youtube-dl, it's clearly not an intended way to
| interact with YouTube.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Neither is an adblocker, or the youtube-classic extension I
| use. There's no reason to care about google's intentions.
| akersten wrote:
| > it's clearly not an intended way to interact with YouTube
|
| I'm curious how you reached that conclusion. The maintainers
| of YouTube-DL would certainly disagree!
| nmilo wrote:
| They would certainly agree. Most of their work involves
| playing the cat-and-mouse game of youtube-dl vs. YouTube,
| all coming from the fact that YouTube never intended people
| to view their content using youtube-dl.
| akersten wrote:
| You're missing my point, which is that you're assuming
| what YouTube wants is somehow more correct than what
| users want.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| The music industry has no explanation for anything. Its entire
| existence is based on made up concepts that are irrelevant in
| the 21st century, ideas such as copyright. To actually explain
| things is to prove their own irrelevance.
|
| They're not like us, they don't know or care what user agents
| are. The only thing that matters to them is control. To them,
| the idea that someone might do something they didn't approve of
| is an atrocity that must be combated at all costs. They
| actually think that browsers are glorified passive content
| consumption platforms where they get to set the rules and it's
| take it or leave it. Even something as basic as user scripts is
| an affront to them because it means the user is not a passive
| consumer anymore.
| nmilo wrote:
| The law isn't based around technical gotcha's but instead on
| how human judges judge things. It doesn't matter that, if in
| some very techincally-correct viewpoint, youtube-dl is in
| theory performing the same actions as a browser. youtube-dl is
| not a browser, you and I both know that.
| pessimizer wrote:
| No, we don't know that. You're using "technically-correct"
| here as FUD code for completely correct.
| onli wrote:
| No. The law is very clear that you are allowed to make
| copies. For some time now you are not allowed anymore to
| circumvent copy protection for that, which is an illegal law
| but still standing, but even this is not happening here. The
| industry has no leg to stand on, this is just terror-by-
| suing, trying desperately to stiffle fundamental rights of
| german people.
| nmilo wrote:
| I'm not defending the industry or the case at all. I'm just
| saying that saying "youtube-dl is technically a browser",
| and letting the defense rest its case, is the kind of
| technically-correct nonsense that often gets written on HN
| but would never work in the real world.
| onli wrote:
| That's not nonsense, it's very relevant to this case and
| just the facts. That the judges in Hamburg are not
| suspectible to facts or reality is on them, not on HN.
|
| And actually, it is what an expert courts should and do
| commission in such cases would explain.
| zaroth wrote:
| IANAL, but it seems to me that there would be a strong
| ADA/accessibility defense for youtube-dl as a user agent.
|
| The other major defense is that it's a tool with
| significant lawful use.
|
| Many digital tools can be used to infringe. It's only a
| problem for the tool maker if the tool's primary purpose
| is circumventing copyright.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| User agents aren't "technical gotchas", they're a fundamental
| concept of the internet we enjoy today. Browsers are merely
| one type of user agent.
|
| If you make content available via HTTP, then obviously any
| HTTP client will be able to access it. It doesn't matter that
| they "meant" for the content to be accessed through browsers.
|
| If they had a proprietary client that wasn't a browser, they
| wouldn't be complaining at all. So why does it matter? It's
| about _control_. It 's the fact that user agents act in _our_
| behalf in order to do what _we_ want and protect _our_
| interests. They want to force us to use something that acts
| on _their_ behalf, does what _they_ want and protects _their_
| interests.
|
| This isn't about "human judges". Those are all paid for.
| Industry lobbyists literally create the laws that they
| blindly enforce.
|
| No, this is about a stealthy war that's being fought for the
| control of our computers. There will never be peace between
| us. Either the entire copyright industry will be destroyed or
| we will lose the computing freedom we all currently enjoy and
| the entire concept of "hacking" will be a footnote of
| history.
| Hamuko wrote:
| As far as I can tell, the copyright mafia's legal action plan
| is "throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks".
|
| MPA tried to get the source code repository for Nyaa.si removed
| from GitHub by saying "the Project, which, when downloaded,
| provides the downloader everything necessary to launch and host
| a "clone" infringing website identical to Nyaa.si (and, thus,
| engage in massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures
| and television shows)."
|
| It was completely bullshit since they forgot to mention that
| the project provides everything necessary to engage in massive
| infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and television
| shows EXCEPT the actual copyrighted motion pictures and
| television shows. The repo is back up after a reversal:
| https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/
| wldcordeiro wrote:
| It's sort of like saying the ownership of a gun makes you a
| murderer.
| bonzini wrote:
| More like a gun made of soap, as in "Take the money and
| run".
| daniel-s wrote:
| Ban Debian. Their distro supplies all the tools necessary to
| create a website with precisely the same functionality as
| Nyaa.si.
| sattoshi wrote:
| The only legal platform should be iOS, anything else should
| require a federal license.
|
| Only once regular people can no longer write dangerous code
| will the music industry finally be safe.
| contravariant wrote:
| Don't tempt me to break this rolling cipher with pen and
| paper.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| RMS beat you to that joke.
|
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
| Shared404 wrote:
| Anyone who's never read this, please do.
|
| It's both a good short story, and a chilling reminder -
| especially to anyone who's dealt with textbook companies
| recently.
|
| RMS was right. Not about everything, but about a _lot_.
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