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Comment by bo1024 | Hacker News Reader

I think this is an important ideological gray zone for copyright. The RIAA wants to have their cake and eat it too -- use Youtube to publicly and 'freely' distribute music to your computer (along with ads), but also completely control what your computer is allowed to do with the music. I don't see what kind of case they'd have against youtube-dl, which runs on your own computer, but I guess they can argue a site like this is "copyright infringement" even if it does the same thing as youtube-dl, just because it's a middleman website in between the user and youtube rather than code on the user's own machine. The reasoning is not too far from suing a CDN for copyright infringement because it doesn't have explicit license to copy and distribute the music.

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Corporations and their industry organizations operate by a different set of rules. The important ideological concept in my opinion is not just the idea of copyright, but the idea of net neutrality itself when it comes to accessing content. The web is not a TV nor a newspaper or magazine. A web browser is not a set-top box, it's a user agent for HTTP. Net neutrality, in my opinion, is not just a fight to keep content transmission neutral but the content access neutral as well. My set-top box (aka web browser) should not limit the content I have access to, regardless of whether I'm using Chrome, Firefox, curl, wget, or youtube-dl.

This type of net neutrality was co-opted by content platforms who used it to lower their rates in a fight with the ISPs. The voice of individual internet subscribers was lost in this.

They, YouTube, RIAA, et al, do want to have their cake and eat it too. They took advantage of the internet and rushed to put their content on open networks, without fully understanding how that network operates fundamentally. Now they want to change how we communicate to suit their business models, and in the case of YouTube, do whatever they can to shut the door behind them so no one else can go through.

> They, YouTube, RIAA, et al, do want to have their cake and eat it too. They took advantage of the internet and rushed to put their content on open networks, without fully understanding how that network operates fundamentally.

If there is one thing you can't accuse of RIAA of it's rushing to embrace the internet. Think about how long it's taken for digital downloads to become a first class citizen for music purchases! About how many streaming services have shut down under because they couldn't get enough labels to licence their music. etc

I'm sure the only reason many labels have official YouTube channels is because people were uploading music videos already so they figured they might as well get that ad revenue themselves. Otherwise they'd just be licensing their content the old way to radio networks, TV stations and, more recently, the limited number of streaming services who can afford their expensive contracts.

I agree in the sense that they weren't rushing to the internet in terms of early adoption. The rush was reactionary, by embracing YouTube (eventually), but I do think the nuance of the web still escaped their grasp. Maybe they finally realized it was easier/unavoidable to broadcast and litigate than it was to control distribution in fine-grained fashion.

In any case, (incoming analogy) the church is better off with the printing press and allowing the bible to be translated from Latin. Its distribution and reach has expanded greatly. And it can still burn heretics.

I don't think "rush" is the right term - reactionary or not. Lots of artists still don't have an official YouTube presence and those that do often find their content blocked in some countries due to regional distribution licences. Plus they only started adopting YouTube several years after people had already been uploading videos independently.

Their adoption couldn't have been slower if they tried - which I honestly believe they did try because YouTube doesn't fit their traditional licensing models.

What possibly helped their their adoption of YouTube - and I'm just speculating on this last point so please take this with a pinch of salt - was how software has become good enough to run automated scans across YouTube and raise DMCA reports on any infringing content. This means record labels / distributors can not only block unwanted content but also ensure their own YouTube content gets all the ad revenue. I'm not saying this was a major contributing factor but it probably doesn't hurt their opinions of the platform.

In many countries it is not a gray zone. It is explicitly legal.

It is difficult to see how it would be explicitly legal in any country that is a signatory to the Berne Convention and the three step test. Which is almost every functioning country in the world.

Have a look at Germany then.

Could you please expand on the matter?

Sure. Dating back from the days of radio and cassettes, it is (to my knowledge) absolutely legal to make copies of streams for private use. Since artists are payed for copies via the GEMA, a organization distributing the german hidden taxes for it, people have the right to make such copies.

Copies for private use are as such not a gray area, but explicitly legal. I fail to see how a site that helps making those copies could be illegal in any way. There was a court fight in Germany over the backups the site was doing, but it is telling that it was only about that, not the core functionality, and that this current attack on peoples right was launched from an US court.

Over here in The Netherlands it's not explicitly legal to download things, but if you downloaded copyrighted content you're only required to pay back the missed income to the publisher. In case of a youtube video download for personal use, this would equal to the value of a single ad view.

Switzerland is totaly legal if you don't sell it.

Personal use is allowed and nothing should be pay.

Only commercial use, need to pay for reuse, broadcast song.

This is a fair-use, blaming end-user people is so stupid.

Now Youtube, and all BIG one make a lot of money but are muscian more rich? NO, it's even more hard.

Are people still foled by major and music stolen by these compagny? Yes, welcome slavery 2.0

People that don't have money to fight now can just shut up against these big compagny even with small youtube channel you can see people stole video for each other, like the last one you get a kid stole another kid video after 2 days. He have stolen 40 videos, same content, same title, etc.

Do we agree to live in a such world, when you can't do something with value added? Sure we need to protect the right but in a same for every musician. Every musician should have the same right to protect their music but that's not the case.

Also I don't think we need to pay to give service. Example. I have a bar, people listen to some music ok, but why I need to pay? I make a free adversting of that music? It's not that enough? I don't earn money with that music, I earn it with the bar.

The same can apply with movie. We need movie that can come from another place that hollywood and there big industry of movie, they are all crap but sell because like pop music it's what generate revenue.

That's probably by Article 9 paragraph 2 of the convention: It shall be a matter for legislation in the countries of the Union to permit the reproduction of such works in certain special cases, provided that such reproduction does not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work and does not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author.

The European Union Copyright Directive explicitly allows member states to have legislation allowing copies for private uses. Germany for example makes use of that exception. It is allowed to make copies of copyrighted works for personal use (with some restrictions). In exchange we pay a special tax on storage media which goes to right holders (for example 36€ on a smartphone).

That topic is far away from my area of expertise but we had some high-profile court cases regarding private copies and if there had been any way to shut that down via the Berne Convention it would surely have been tried.

I'm sorry, there is probably a misunderstanding. What do you mean by "it"?

Do you mean "a third-party website, accessing a copyrighted work on e.g. Youtube, making a copy of it, and distributing that copy to a user who requests it?" Because I'd be curious to see why/where this is "explicitly" legal.

But note the distinction from "a user accessing a copyrighted work on e.g. Youtube, then making a copy of it on her own computer for personal use."

I and others explained a bit more in other comments in this thread.

While writing, I meant making a copy of streamed content. However, I do indeed completely fail to see how a website doing what you describe could be illegal.

> "a third-party website, accessing a copyrighted work on e.g. Youtube, making a copy of it, and distributing that copy to a user who requests it?"

That describes exactly what a browser does. Accessing Youtube and downloading the video for private use is legal, so is converting that video to audio only. There is no copyright violated, because users (in Germany) have the right to make copies. Why should it matter with which tool the copy is made?

Now, there was a recent criminalization of pirate video streaming sites. But there the argument of the court was that it is visible to the user that the content is illegal/unlicensed. That's not the case with Youtube.

I don't see any legal argument for the illegality of sites like youtube-mp3.

I think there's a big distinction because a browser is running on the user's own computer and under control of the user.

> Why should it matter with which tool the copy is made?

I don't know for sure, but I would think it matters if the tool is a third party's website (again, not on the user's computer).

To me, it seems like the difference between setting a TiVo to record a TV show for you (like using your browser or youtube-dl to access Youtube), versus asking a neighbor who has the same cable package to record the show for you and hand you a copy. Now if that neighbor is a for-profit business, that sounds more similar to the YouTube-mp3 site. And that doesn't sound like it would be legal (for the site to operate. Nothing illegal about what the user is doing).

Also, to be clear: I'm not happy that the YouTube-mp3 site is shutting down, I don't think there's anything immoral about what it does, and if I were making the rules then it would be perfectly legal. I'm just trying to understand the issues at play.

Hm, not sure the neighbor is the best example. A neighbor giving a copy to a neighbor would still fall under private use.

Being a for-profit business is more likely to change the equation. On the other hand, that's not that much different than selling a VHS recorder.

Actually, discussions like this are a good example why we need a copyright reform. But the issue there is that every time that was tried in the last years, it was used to add more uncertainty and less rights (in the proposals). We would need the contrary.

Does it even make a difference if using YouTube-mp3 and youtube-dl are explicitly against YouTube's terms of service?

YouTube's terms of service, in part, read:

  4.  General Use of the Service—Permissions and Restrictions

  YouTube hereby grants you permission to access and use the Service as set forth in these Terms of Service, provided that:

    A. You agree not to distribute in any medium any part of the Service or the Content without YouTube's prior written authorization, unless YouTube makes available the means for such distribution through functionality offered by the Service (such as the Embeddable Player).

    B. You agree not to alter or modify any part of the Service.

    C. You agree not to access Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Service itself, the Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate.

There are also browser extensions, like "Download YouTube Videos as MP4" that simply displays mp3 link embedded in YTs web page. No third party servers, no external programs, you use Chrome to download mp3 straight from YT server.

Then of course ToS/Eula is toilet paper in EU.

And its 100% legal to download whatever I like (audio/video, not software) in my country thanks to CD tax RIA fought so hard for.

You can access YouTube or retrieve a URL through youtube-dl without reading and agreeing to these Terms.

Youtude-dl complies with all of these. It doesn't red-distribute anything, it doesn't alter anything and it accesses the content through the video playback page.

> use Youtube to publicly and 'freely' distribute music to your computer (along with ads), but also completely control what your computer is allowed to do with the music

And how is it radically different from a restrictive open source license? You can say the same about software engineers, how post their code publicly and 'freely', but also control what you do with that code.

Fundamentally it's very similar. That's why there is a proliferation of licenses. The MIT vs BSD vs Apache vs GPLv2 vs GPLv3 vs AGPLv3 debate is fundamentally a debate which restrictions are reasonable and which go too far

We can have a debate about what is reasonable in terms of music too. But once the copyright owner, be it a musician or a software engineer, decides on a license, we can't just violate his decision, even if we decide that it's unreasonable.

Speaking as a musician, I have posted my tracks on Youtube and supplied a link to download them for free on Bandcamp. But when I released a music with a label, I delegated all the distribution rights to that label, and they made a decision not to offer free downloads. I may disagree with their decision, but it's theirs to make since I signed the contract.

Copyright can't control what you do with code, on your own computer. Disassemble Windows if you want to. Nor, in theory, can it control what you do with music in the privacy of your own home. Block YouTube ads if you want to.

It can control your right to redistribute. Hence youtube-dl is legal, but a website that runs youtube-dl and gives you the result isn't.

This comment exactly expresses my understanding of the issue.

The fundamental difference here is that MAFIAA engages in developing technical means to limit how you can consume media. No open source license cares about what you do with the source code on your own machines (plural); restrictions only kick in if you want to distribute code to other people.

Interesting comparison. It does seem similar in some ways.

One way to view it is whether the license grants additional rights beyond default copyright law, or attempts to restrict rights. By default under copyright law, if a webpage serves you a video, you can do whatever you want for personal use, e.g. strip the ads out using software, save a copy for later backup, etc. The same is true for software, of course. The terms of use for these webpages try to get you to agree to waive some of these rights.

Now by default, under copyright law, you don't have permission to re-sell or redistribute copies of the work, and there are limits on derivative works you can make. Most open-source licenses grant you additional rights which normally would be restricted by default. The licenses say, you have permission to do some of these things under some circumstances. But they usually don't try to to take away rights you already have, e.g. "you may not store this code on any solid state drives or modify it in any way for personal use to include the letter Q".

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