SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Major Record Labels Sue Youtube-dl's Hosting Provider:
"We don't think the suit is justified," says Uberspace chief Jonas Pasche in comments to TorrentFreak.
"YouTube has measures to prevent users from downloading specific content, which they make use of for YouTube Movies and Music: DRM. They don't use that technology here, enabling a download rather trivially. One may view youtube-dl as just a specialized browser, and you wouldn't ban Firefox just because you can use it to access music videos on YouTube."
According to an Uberspace lawyer, the aim of the lawsuit is to achieve some kind of precedent or "fundamental judgment". Success could mean that other companies could be obliged to take action in similarly controversial legal situations.
And the alleged illegality of youtube-dl is indeed controversial. While YouTube's terms of service generally disallow downloading, in Germany there is the right to make a private copy, with local rights group GEMA collecting fees to compensate for just that. Equally, when users upload content to YouTube under a Creative Commons license, for example, they agree to others in the community making use of that content.
[...] "Not only does YouTube pay license fees for music, we all pay fees for the right to private copying in the form of the device fee, which is levied with every purchase of smartphones or storage media," says Reda.
"Despite this double payment, Sony, Universal and Warner Music want to prevent us from exercising our right to private copying by saving YouTube videos locally on the hard drive."
The question of whether YouTube's "rolling cipher" is (or is not) a technical protection measure is currently the hot and recurring topic in a lawsuit filed by YouTube-ripping site Yout.com against the RIAA in the United States. After more than a year, the warring factions are no closer to an agreement.
This comes just as (2021-12-17) the main developer changed his status to, "inactive."[1]
Gee, I wonder why?
In my opinion, "the powers that be" won't be satisfied until they get the youtube-dl program completely chased into the underground. Is the successor yt-dlp) next?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 17 2022, @12:35PM
Would you bite the hand that's feeding you? There's never going to be "meaningful" fining, only bits which don't hurt the capital owner but give some kind of satisfaction to the (largely dumb) masses so people don't get on the streets with pitchforks.