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Comment by kaffeemitsahne | Hacker News Reader

And all that for a youtube to mp3 converter. Didn't even realize those sites got prosecuted nowadays.

If I write in a comment the command "youtube-dl --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 <video URL>", does Hacker News risk to be prosecuted ?

Thanks I was using ffmpeg for the conversion up til now = TIL

I'm pretty sure youtube-dl just invokes ffmpeg in the background to extract the audio for you; all it means is that you don't need to remember the exact ffmpeg commands.

Wouldn’t that result in transcoding from one lossy audio format to another? I’ve always been advised against that.

Generally, that would result in a lossy-to-lossy conversion (at least on youtube, which primarily serves aac and opus audio).

But even ignoring that, most youtube videos go through a lossy-to-lossy conversion/re-encode when it's uploaded in the first place. Authors typically encode their videos into a lossy format before uploading them, and at least the video stream is always re-encoded by youtube itself once the video has been uploaded.

In addition, the source material (like screen captures etc.) is often encoded in a lossy format as well, which would result in the following chain:

lossless video capture -> saved to disk (lossy encoding) -> video editor, then save result (lossy encoding) -> upload to youtube -> youtube encodes to formats to be delivered to viewers (lossy encoding)

If you specify a non-lossless format to youtube-dl, then append -> youtube-dl re-encode to chosen format (lossy encoding).

A corporation filing a statement of claim in a civil lawsuit is not a criminal prosecution.

In defense of parent comment, I think this is actually a correct usage. As a verb, 'prosecute', doesn't necessarily imply criminal action, just pressing a claim. The first definition per Google is "institute legal proceedings against."

All of the specific legal definitions indicate alleged violation of criminal law, and the example text for that Google search (obstruction of a highway) is also criminal, not civil.

I'm not aware of any common usage of "prosecute" that refers to civil complaints.

To name a couple in the legal context specifically:

* under the US Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, a civil plaintiff who doesn't show up to trial has their case dismissed for failure to prosecute [0][1]

* a claim of malicious prosecution can be brought based on an unjustified criminal or civil claim (though some jurisdictions do call the tort "abuse of process" if it's based on a civil claim)[2]

[0] https://definitions.uslegal.com/f/failure-to-prosecute/ [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_41 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_prosecution

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