Hacker News Reader

Comment by fimdomeio | Hacker News Reader

This is getting very weird. Using youtube-dl: Probably ilegal, but no one cares because you need basic technical skills and it's very dificult to chase people who use it. Using an add blocker during streaming: Very likely ok until people also start getting arrested for going to pee during tv comercials. Using youtube or spotify in a public place: This one makes peoples brains hurt, let's not even consider it.

In the middle of all this how much are the artists getting for the streamings? how popular must one be for getting more than a cup of coffee worth of royalties each month?

If authors are not making that much money do the copyright laws make any objective sense? Since after all they were created first and foremost to protect them. If they are not protected than music be free/libre because of the cultural value it has for humanity.

View on HN

Before we had the technological ability to record music, musicians made their money by performing live. Then, when the radio came around, artists would perform live on the radio. I think that ultimately, this is what we may be going back to, at least in part. The record industry used to say that mp3 and downloading would be the end of music. What I think they don't realize is that music is as old as humanity.

> music is as old as humanity.

but only recently has music been a huge money maker. It changes things when an art becomes a business with profit motives.

Are there any other examples of a medium making this transition?

Storytelling, and narratives.

Though, I suppose either music or storytelling may have been relatively more important, and larger percentage of the total activity of pre-historic human groups, than those 'industries' are for us today.

Theatre companies made their money by performing live too, and people would go to the rehearsals, copy the script, and rip them off by premiering the act before them. Hence the introduction of copyright law, which predates automatic recording by a couple centuries.

Ah, what? I don't know what you've been reading, but the Statute of Anne is commonly held to be the first "copyright" law, and it covers the monopoly rights of printing press operators. Copyright in the US today still does not cover performances, only fixed works.

That doesn't contradict the previous statement, if copyright is understood to apply to the script rather than the performance.

It contradicts that it was done to protect the authors of these plays. The motivation behind the Statute of Anne had nothing to due with playwrights.

One of the over-the-air TV channels in Los Angeles seems to be run off a YouTube playlist, which I know because it was stuck displaying the video unavailable message for most of last Saturday.

Over-the-air TV channels fascinate me as their operation is very different across the US. Do you remember which one it was? Genuinely curious as I have been working on some programs to showcase the unique over-the-air broadcasts across the US.

I'm going to guess it was one of the many foreign language channels. In that area of the country, the vast vast majority of over-the-air broadcasts are not in English (think Korean soap operas). When grapeshot described it, I was thinking one of the Vietnamese or Turkish soap operas being piped from Youtube directly into a transmitter and broadcast across southern California. I'm interested to know which station, too!

That was my guess too, but I have seen some local syndicates for NBC/ABC/CBS/FOX etc. that have some low quality productions. It wouldn't even surprise me if some of those use a similar technique.

It was the second channel on a multiplex owned by a church, normally it's showing educational programs for kids.

> Using youtube or spotify in a public place: This one makes peoples brains hurt, let's not even consider it.

I thought this one was the easiest to answer but that might just be because it's a problem I've faced.

Essentially it's a public performance. Just like bars, restaurants, hotel lobbies, etc that play music from a CD or iTunes; or even businesses with hold music on their phone lines; if you want to play copyrighted music publicly then you need a licence eg PRS (UK).

I think there was one argument about whether mobile phone ringtones were legal or not because of this rule. I'm not sure if that was just a thought experiment or if it was a case that one party tried to take to court but I'm sure someone else on here will recall the story.

I finding it funny that this is the case for music but not for images.

Unless it is?

ASCAP sued Verizon, claiming that ringtones are equivalent to public performances. They lost.

http://ipjournal.law.wfu.edu/2009/12/are-cellphone-ringtones...

It may be my ignorance, but how would using youtube-dl be illegal?

I can definitely see it being against ToS or some EULA, but IIRC those aren't legally enforceable and would be a civil case, anyway (i.e. not an actual crime).

I think it's unauthorized copying, which is copyright infringement. Infringement is usually a civil matter, but if it's done for profit or on "commercial scale" it can become criminal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Crimina... So I think individuals using youtube-dl wouldn't have to worry about it as much as the operators of the youtube-mp3 site would, just because of the difference in scale.

I don't know anything about law, but here is my simple thought on the matter:

If your server responds to my request and gives a copy to me, how can I be doing anything illegal?

There probably isn't a law which says that I have to use Chrome to access YouTube. IMO, youtube-dl is just another browser (albeit a very specialized one).

Also, I wonder what would eventually happen if we started making specialized browsers that first send a "EULA"? It would say something like "By responding to this request, you agree that I am authorized to receive a copy of whatever you send to me..." I guess it would work for a while before big sites started blocking your requests, but there's nothing to say that each EULA has to be standardized or easy to recognize (kinda like how big sites bury the EULA/TOS in fine print).

The law isn't analogous to code and doesn't work that way. "But your honor, their server sent me the data! Clearly I was authorized!" won't fly in the real world.

There's a pretty clear difference in intent from hitting the video page with a browser and hitting with a tool whose only purpose is to make a local copy.

There's also the TOS:

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

    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).

    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.

Thanks for your response.

> "But your honor, their server sent me the data! Clearly I was authorized!" won't fly in the real world.

I don't see why not. There is such a thing as an implied contract. What do you think would be the reason that it wouldn't fly? I mean if the TOS that nobody ever reads is good enough, why wouldn't authorization be implied when the server responds, regardless even of what the TOS says?

Also the TOS seems a bit ambiguous, but my main defense against that would be to send my own TOS to the server on every request.

>What do you think would be the reason that it wouldn't fly?

As I said: intent, which would definitely be scrutinized in a case where you're up in front of a judge. There's some interestingness in determining whether the ToS is actionable or not (and in some countries it isn't), but I find it really hard to argue legally or morally that Youtube can't mandate that you don't hit their service with a tool whose only purpose it is to copy videos.

It's a bit more murky when dealing with a tool like youtube-dl which is a program you run on your own machine, but pretty cut and dry for a web service you're providing to others.

>why wouldn't authorization be implied when the server responds, regardless even of what the TOS says? Also the TOS seems a bit ambiguous, but my main defense against that would be to send my own TOS to the server on every request.

They're providing the service, you are not. If you don't like their service's requirements, you are free to not use it. The logical conclusion of this hypothetical world is that anyone sending the X-User-TOS header would simply be met with a 403. Most other companies would follow suit, since it's absurd for a service that serves millions of users daily to comply with the legal demands of all of them.

Worse, nothing has been gained in this world. Just as YouTube is free to demand you use the website or not at all, they are free to reject clients who demand extra obligations. Their back yard, their rules at the end of the day.

> I don't see why not. There is such a thing as an implied contract. What do you think would be the reason that it wouldn't fly?

IANAL. You cite a concept from contract law, but forget another: frustration of purpose. Saying there is an implied contract that you get access would frustrate the purpose of the original access contract.

I think it's really the time to bring out the classic - "What Colour are your bits?"[0].

This, IMO, should be a required reading for anyone participating in the discussion on copyright. The crux of the issue is that law does not operate in the same reality computers (or, for that matter, physical reality) do. Unlike bits, it recognizes the cause-and-effect history of things, so e.g. one file can be illegal while other is perfectly fine, even if those files are bit-for-bit identical.

[0] - http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23.

> If your server responds to my request and gives a copy to me, how can I be doing anything illegal?

The snarky answer is that a sovereign state can make anything illegal that it chooses to.

But we shouldn't allow anything a server responds to to be legal. After all, just because your server responds to my SQL injection attack doesn't mean it should be legal for me to steal your database.

I definitely see how youtube-mp3 would be infringement since they are the ones actually sending you the bits over a wire.

I have a hard time seeing how youtube-dl would even count as unauthorized copying. Not just in an "it's virtually unenforceable" sort of way, either.

If it's unauthorized copying to use software on my computer to download and store copyrighted bits that I obtained directly from the authorized source (in this case YouTube), then Google would need to help go after themselves, since Chrome is doing the same thing (as youtube-dl).

If I can create/use a CLI tool that (presumably) acts like a browser (youtube-dl) and you can't implement a way to prevent that, then that's your issue -- not mine.

Legally, I'm probably wrong, though, since intent is usually way more important than what you actually do (e.g. porn vs nude art).

EDIT: looks like others pretty much confirmed this thought process in the time it took me to write it.

In Europe at least, temporary web caches aren't infringing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#Non-inf... I think the US has similar law, but all I can find quickly is this ruling: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/27/google_cache_copyri...

I agree. I can see how it is possible to for a tool like youtube-dl could violate a website's TOS, but not how it could violate copyright law.

> I think it's unauthorized copying, which is copyright infringement.

I don't see how this argument would actually hold up for youtube-dl (whereas I do see how it would hold up for a third-party website like youtube-mp3).

In youtube-dl, the process goes like this:

1. User connects to website, requests copy of video. 2. Website agrees and serves copy of video. 3. User makes private use of copy of video, e.g. saves it to disk.

In this circumstance the user isn't doing any copying or distributing of copies, they're just making use of the copy they're given. It's exactly like recording a TV show playing over the air.

(Note the difference to a website like youtube-mp3, in which there is a step where youtube-mp3 makes a copy of the data they received and distributes it to the user.)

I used to make mixtapes by recording music from the radio onto a cassette tape.

I guess that would've been illegal, too?

There was a specific exception made for this exact scenario (which does not apply to digital signals).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act#Exemp...

Is this a case of that act needing to be updated to be more relevant to modern technology?

In Sweden I'm pretty sure that exception is regardless of the source.

Problem became when CDs etc. started shipping with easily cirumventable DRM. Because you are allowed to rip the CD to disk for backup purposes and for playing on your mp3-player and even share with your close family. We even pay a special tax on storage media to compensate artists for the right to do this.

But as soon as the media contains DRM it becomes illegal, because circumventing DRM is illegal. Nevermind that the action you are trying to do is legal and with the tax you are even paying for it - but you can't legally do it. Same would apply to youtube. All they would have to do is encrypt the stream with a ROT13 equivalent with a static key, call it DRM and bam - now it is illegal to use youtube-dl.

No, because that's for limited personal use. Selling the tape or playing it in public would be illegal, I suppose.

But using youtube-dl or (in this case) youtube-mp3 would be for precisely the same purpose.

Unless the assumption with this shut down is that any results of using the service would always be used for selling or playing in public.

youtube-dl = fightclub

Rule #1 ---- No one talks about youtube-dl!!!!!!

Okay make youtube-dl more visible I am sure that will be a big benefit for the project.

> Very likely ok until people also start getting arrested for going to pee during tv comercials

Ambient light sensors can probably detect a person walking past.

Forget light sensors, think facial recognition on the camera that is in your smart TV for... I don't know, videoconferencing, I guess? ;).

Microsoft already has a patent on using in-home censors to set fees based on how many people are watching a TV. I'm excited to see us reinvent TV taxes as a shady, privacy-destroying rent we pay to tech companies...

http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...

Plus now they get to spy on us using tiny little cameras !

I think they even had this as a production ready feature in the Xbox One at one time (before launch, but at a very late stage), but were surprised that users were a bit miffed about it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com