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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24872911
https://old.reddit.com/r/youtubedl/comments/jgttnc/youtubedl_github_repository_disabled_due_to_a/
https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/10/2020-10-23-RIAA.md
Now when you go to their site, it reads:
Repository unavailable due to DMCA takedown.
This repository is currently disabled due to a DMCA takedown notice. We have disabled public access to the repository. The notice has been publicly posted.
If you are the repository owner, and you believe that your repository was disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification, you have the right to file a counter notice and have the repository reinstated. Our help articles provide more details on our DMCA takedown policy and how to file a counter notice. If you have any questions about the process or the risks in filing a counter notice, we suggest that you consult with a lawyer.
Also at 9to5Google
[2020-10-25 01:01:09 UTC: Updated title to more accurately reflect notice was given to GitHub, not to youtube-dl. --martyb]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2020, @04:13AM (15 children)
https://gitea.eponym.info/Mirrors/youtube-dl [eponym.info]
The developers were careless and made the unforced error of including test cases that downloaded copyrighted music. It may not be a good idea to file a DMCA counterclaim because the RIAA may use the test case to argue that the primary purpose of youtube-dl is copyright infringement. I agree that the DMCA is a horrible law, but complaining about it on internet forums won't convince Congress to pass repeal or replace it.
The code is easy to obtain. The issue is that sites like Youtube have a tendency to make modifications, which can break functionality. Unless youtube-dl is updated, it is a matter of time before its functionality is broken. In the case of Youtube, the supposed infringement is referred to as the "rolling cypher" in the DMCA notice. This is simply code that converts the video ID string from the URL into another URL with the actual location of the video data. I would say this is a similar situation to DeCSS except that the code to "decrypt" the string is Javascript that is served by Youtube and executed in a Javascript interpreter, whether in a browser or youtube-dl.
It's not an issue with the RIAA claiming they own youtube-dl code. They didn't claim that. Instead, they claimed that youtube-dl violated the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. The notice is legally valid, though the underlying basis is dubious. It still might be enough to convince a court to side with the RIAA, despite that the "rolling cypher" is trivial if it's considered DRM.
This has drawn a lot of outrage on /. and HN. I predict this will actually backfire for the RIAA. People who weren't likely to contribute code to youtube-dl are particularly irked by this action. It may well motivate some of those people to help keep youtube-dl updated or to build solutions that are more resilient to the RIAA's continued game of whack-a-mole. I expect that youtube-dl or a replacement tool will continue to be updated, perhaps by many more people than who would have contributed in the past, and will be stored in a location that is beyond the reach of the RIAA lawyers. The RIAA probably won this battle but hurt their cause in the long term.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2020, @05:19AM (6 children)
The problem here is less about RIAA and more about relying on GitHub. Get the code off there and get it onto some clone that ignores DMCA. I'm surprised at some of the stuff that's still on there, but it won't last forever.
(Score: 5, Informative) by fakefuck39 on Saturday October 24 2020, @07:25AM (5 children)
They don't rely on github. Their own site is up, completely unaffected, and that's where people should get their shit anywise - from the developer, not from some 3rd party facebook for devs. it's not youtube-dl who got the takedown notice - it's github, a party they chose to have secondary hosting on. forget riia - it's a 3rd party, they can rightfully take down your shit for any reason. need version control? run your own server. youtube-dl.org does.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2020, @11:28AM (4 children)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Saturday October 24 2020, @01:19PM
Currently our dev repository is taken down due to DMCA takedown notice by RIAA.
The RIAA used a lot of weasel words. Microsoft's GitHub read too much into the warning. Observe that the wording of the DMCA takedown notice supplied only has the RIAA attesting that, under penalty of perjury, they are representing some copyright owners. Their notice does not attest to either the accuracy or the truthfulness the rest of their statement about why the source code should be taken down. There needs to be 1) a processing fee for each such takedown notice and 2) a large deposit to be forfeit should the request turn out to be invalid in any way, shape, or form or flat out rejected. With zero cost to produce and zero repercussions for false reports, the RIAA has no disincentives to keep it from spamming sites with shake downs.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by fakefuck39 on Saturday October 24 2020, @07:47PM (2 children)
youtube-dl.org which has source and binaries is not down, and is their own server. it's amazing someone could be dumb enough to not understand that simple thing. github is not their only repository, nor is it the primary repository. what exactly is it you're not getting here?
tell me, when you upload a video from your laptop to youtube, and youtube takes it down, do you think you lost your video? boy does geek squad at best buy have some things to teach you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2020, @09:50PM (1 child)
The download source link redirected to Github which returned a 451 error, today it works. The page looks different, only 3 rectangles on the right side and a note about the takedown. See by yourself how it looked days ago http://web.archive.org/web/20201019094729/http://youtube-dl.org/ [archive.org]
Anyway, the git repo has multiple clones all over the world. Just a matter of youtube-dl coders to continue in a place that is not affected by DMCA or similar laws. Currently the tar.gz seems to be served from Germany, and I read somewhere that could be tricky too. They better checke soon, and change if needed.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday October 25 2020, @06:03AM
ok, maybe I'm just confused, and if you logically correct me, I can admit I'm wrong.
yes, their github link on the front page is down. The tarball - the primary copy of the program, is served from their server, not from github, and downloads just fine.
I'm not sure wtf you mean by "download source." It's written in python. the program is the source. it's a script.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by shortscreen on Saturday October 24 2020, @06:27AM
youtube-dl works on hundreds of sites other than just Youtube. If someone posts a new project called eg. webmedia-dl and removes all references to Youtube in the code/docs, does RIAA have any grounds to complain then?
Would the rolling cypher have to serve a specific purpose to count as DRM? Because I don't really see the copyright distinction between using youtube-dl or using a browser. The content gets transferred to my computer either way. Whatever the copyright holder's opinion about what happens to that data while it's on my computer may be, I'm not party to any agreement with them, Youtube is. And Youtube presumably has consent to distribute these files, so it makes no sense to say that a user of youtube-dl is somehow infringing.
It's funny that the RIAA would be the ones to make a stink about this though, considering that anyone who wants a local copy of music can easily get it via the analog hole and doesn't even need youtube-dl.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2020, @11:50AM
n/t
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Zinnia Zirconium on Sunday October 25 2020, @01:43AM (4 children)
Running the JavaScript like a browser is one reason youtube-dl is ten times slower than youtubedown.
JWZ has been preprocessing the JavaScript and publishing a full history of the YouTube signature cipher algorithm since 2013.
Is JWZ going to get sued next? Is JWZ going to get sued because I'm talking about youtubedown? Am I going to have to abandon my fork of youtubedown after youtubedown ceases to exist? Don't care.
Irony is JWZ is enamoured with denying access to his website based on user agent and referer. As JWZ himself says in his comments, "Total dick move." So I circumvent his anti-circumvention every time I download his circumvention tool using curl.
I hope I get banned from the DNA Lounge because San Fran can suck it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2020, @03:42PM (3 children)
Are you sure it does that? If you are, you should report that to the FSF directory.
https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Youtube-dl [fsf.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Zinnia Zirconium on Sunday October 25 2020, @07:21PM (2 children)
youtube-dl parses JavaScript code and uses a JavaScript interpreter to translate it into Python code and executes the Python code.
youtubedown parses JavaScript code and translates it into a cipher language and interprets the cipher language.
JWZ documents the cipher language.
I think for this simple cipher I prefer not using a JavaScript interpreter and not executing Python code.
But let's do what you want and make this political by getting the FSF involved.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2020, @02:01AM (1 child)
Best to learn from the earlier mistakes of others instead.
You can ignore the politices,
but the politics won't ignore you.
(Score: 2) by Zinnia Zirconium on Monday October 26 2020, @02:54AM
https://jango-index.ml/?artist=Weird+Al+Yankovic&song=Dont+Download+This+Song [jango-index.ml]
https://mp3-128.jango.com/music/01/26/67/0126672295.mp3 [jango.com]
https://www.songlyrics.com/weird-al-yankovic/don-t-download-this-song-lyrics/ [songlyrics.com]
(Score: 1) by jman on Sunday October 25 2020, @12:47PM
Youtube's TOS says: "Content is the responsibility of the person or entity that provides it to the Service."
It then states: "You may view or listen to Content for your personal, non-commercial use."
Then (sic): "You are not allowed to access, reproduce, download, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, alter, modify or otherwise use any part of the Service or any Content except as expressly authorized by the Service."
Would seem the second statement covers the third, and the first says RIAA is complaining to the wrong entity.
This is super-weak on the part of the RIAA, but par for their kind of strong-arm, "let's start a frivolous lawsuit and see what happens" game.
All youtube-dl's authors need to do is update the example links in youtube.py (Icona's is around line 588) to those of folks that would be happy to have the increased traffic, rather than bitch about stuff they can't control.
Alternatively, RIAA could post a DCMA takedown notice to Google regarding Youtube ID # UxxajLWwzqY (the Icona song), and try to have her whole channel deleted on the grounds she's hosting copyrighted material. Who cares if the material in question is actually hers?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2020, @04:51AM
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24872911 [ycombinator.com]
https://www.zdnet.com/article/riaa-blitz-takes-down-18-github-projects-used-for-downloading-youtube-videos/ [zdnet.com]
https://old.reddit.com/r/youtubedl/comments/jgttnc/youtubedl_github_repository_disabled_due_to_a/ [reddit.com]
https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/10/2020-10-23-RIAA.md [github.com]
https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/jgtzum/youtubedl_repo_had_been_dmcad/ [reddit.com]
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/jgubfx/youtubedl_github_repo_taken_down_due_to_dmca/ [reddit.com]
https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/jgub36/youtubedl_just_received_a_dmca_takedown_from_riaa/?limit=500 [reddit.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Subsentient on Saturday October 24 2020, @05:23AM (8 children)
Well that figures. I've used it for downloading my own videos on YouTube from time to time to back them up, since I often stream my Warzone 2100 games directly to YouTube rather than pre-record them. Now that tool is gone, lovely. Right now, youtube-dl is in the Fedora repos, you know, a distro that insists on no legal dubiousness for code in their repos. I imagine it will be pulled soon. Wtf were they thinking, putting copyrighted videos as examples in the readme? How did they not see this coming back to rape them in the asshole? Whoever did that has singlehandedly destroyed this project.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Saturday October 24 2020, @06:23AM (1 child)
Just to nitpick, it's not illegal to download copyrighted material if the copyrighted material's owner grants permission. That's the whole premise behind Free and Open Source Software, Creative Commons, and Open Access. However, those are also intentional collateral damage in these actions. Furthermore, in some countries it is determined to be legal to download copyrighted material even if the owner objects as long as their is no redistribution and it is for personal use.
The real risk is that the data stream is encoded in triple-ROT13 or some similarly strong DRM. Then "breaking" that DRM will be considered a felony circumvention. Not too long ago corporations were pushing to have EULAs considered as legally binding. That failed, but now they can put in farsical technical countermeasures and then when kids walk around the flimsy barriers, pile on enough felony charges to bankrupt them into accepting a plea "deal" and thus reinforcing the situation with the precedent of a confession + conviction. It's a way of making corporate policy law without needing either further bribes to legislators, additional time, or fighting pushback from the one or two enlighted people following the politicians' activities.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Tuesday October 27 2020, @03:36AM
Nah it's encoded in double ROT13.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 3, Insightful) by loonycyborg on Saturday October 24 2020, @06:35AM (3 children)
That's what RPMFusion is for. This situation won't be an end to this tool, far from it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Subsentient on Saturday October 24 2020, @08:39AM (2 children)
It will be an end to the tool's legitimacy, and it will not only taint any forks, but almost as severely taint any project that attempts to directly replicate this functionality
. Before, youtube-dl had a certain legal credibility, and that has now evaporated, making it a liability for anyone who deals with it.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Saturday October 24 2020, @09:45AM
It will not affect its legitimacy in the slightest since all people who use it already know that copyright law as understood by RIAA and their workflows are in irreconcilable clash already. And I don't think that this takedown will actually legally hold in case if a counter-notice will be sent.
(Score: 2) by Deeo Kain on Saturday October 24 2020, @09:06PM
It would only evaporate if a judge ruled in favour of RIAA.
(Score: 4, Informative) by fakefuck39 on Saturday October 24 2020, @07:33AM (1 child)
nothing's gone. the git repository hosted by the 3rd party is gone. youtube-dl is still around, still downloadable from their website (which is youtube-dl.org, not fuckhub). who gives a crab what's on github. having a popular project removed from github is a loss for github, not youtube-dl or anyone else. there are a thousand other code management suites.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2020, @12:54PM
Oh jeez, you're in every subtree of the comments repeating this drivel :(
ytdl's home page offers two links: 1 - their full development tree, with source control metadata and everything (a link to their github project, now censored), and 2. a snapshot thereof, in the form of a "release tarball", directly from their site.
If all you have is the snapshot, you're dead but just don't know it yet -- that snapshot will bitrot, and will be made useless by google screwing around with their site. Unless a reputable clone of their git repo will pop up somewhere soon, having their latest snapshot won't do anyone much good.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2020, @06:14AM (2 children)
This is all Runz-a-wayz fault! Bastard.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2020, @08:09AM (1 child)
What did Runaway do this time? Dogwhistle racist shit? Pass on Pamela Geller anti-semitic propaganda? Or try downloading all the porn off of youtube? Runaway! We told you that if you kept it up, we would all go blind!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2020, @11:29AM
Last I heard, he'd copyright violating aristarchus, in the IRC! Cold, stupid, heartless bastard! Enemy of free software, he is.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Saturday October 24 2020, @12:11PM (3 children)
I didn't know about this handy tool. I even had it on my system already, I just needed to install the GUI. Great tool, now I don't have to use browser extensions for video downloads, thanks.
Let's hope they find an easy way around the takedown, like renaming the project and removing the bits that this RIAA is upset about.
(Score: 3, Informative) by canopic jug on Saturday October 24 2020, @01:24PM (2 children)
At least for Youtube, that utility seems to either scrape or use an unstable API for fetching the videos. I haven't looked at the source, but it is one or the other. So while the current code works now, it will only continue to work for some days or weeks or maybe months until Google breaks the brittle scraper or changes the API, again. At which point the source will have to be tweaked and the changes propagated out to the various distros and other packagers.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Zinnia Zirconium on Saturday October 24 2020, @09:51PM
I have read the source and it's both scraping and undocumented API. Seems to break monthly in my experience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2020, @11:04PM
They use a JavaScript interpreter for YouTube and other websites. 'from ..jsinterp import JSInterpreter' being the key import. They parse the JavaScript code downloaded from the site, extract the variables and json data, evaluate it using a mapping of operators, and then return that as Python objects. One thing different websites do is constantly push out changes to the code. Most of them don't change the result but every so often the element name changes, or the new URL misses a regex, or algorithm changes enough that they get caught.
And that is where the real power of this DMCA notice comes in. If you read it, they also characterize the tool as an anti-circumvention tool in addition for one to enable piracy. The reason is the interpreters. The tool isn't accessing the videos in the intended manner. Instead, it is circumventing it using the interpretation engines and arguable circumventing the protections put in place to protect the videos. True, it is different from the precedents of DeCSS and similar that use stolen keys and libdvdcss and similar that brutes keys, in that it is evaluating JS provided to it using key data provided to it in a way analogous but not identical to the intended user agent. The real question is whether that is legally close enough. And I expect the EFF to chime in eventually on that question with a better analysis.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Saturday October 24 2020, @06:13PM (4 children)
A link to the still open for business youtube-dl homepage
https://youtube-dl.org/ [youtube-dl.org]
Your welcome.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2020, @07:18PM
no it's not the same, now when you click on links it wants to go to a regular HTTP connection/domain which points to openmandriva.
Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
That is not the same.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2020, @08:41PM
NT
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2020, @09:44PM (1 child)
"Your welcome."
My what???
(Score: 2) by Zinnia Zirconium on Saturday October 24 2020, @09:47PM
Your welcome: your claim of entitlement to hospitality.
(Score: 2) by Zinnia Zirconium on Saturday October 24 2020, @09:03PM (2 children)
youtubedown is still up
youtubedown is faster than youtube-dl
https://www.jwz.org/hacks/youtubedown [jwz.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2020, @09:01PM (1 child)
Thanks. Additional merit is that it's in Perl and not Python.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 26 2020, @05:30PM
Ah, and since no-one can read PERL code the RIAA can't issue any takedowns against it. Brilliant!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 24 2020, @10:10PM
Both curl and youtube-dl accept --proxy as an argument.
Create a VPN with a local port that connects to a Tor server. The download will occur over the Tor network. On your system, run:
youtube-dl --proxy vert_ip:port -o vidname youtube_url
Update youtube-dl using curl with the same vert_ip:port
Helps avoid RIAA dragging you into their fight.