YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA | Hacker News Reader

YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA

github.com

4,240 pointsphantop1,443 comments

All: don't miss that there are multiple pages of comments in this thread. That's what the More link at the bottom points to. Or click here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24872911&p=2

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24872911&p=3

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24872911&p=4

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24872911&p=5

Note that RIAA is making this takedown because the software CAN be used to download copyrighted music and videos, and it uses examples in the ~~README~~(unit tests, see correction[1]) as an example of that:

> We also note that the source code prominently includes as sample uses of the source code the downloading of copies of our members’ copyrighted sound recordings and music videos, as noted in Exhibit A hereto. For example, as shown on Exhibit A, the source code expressly suggests its use to copy and/or distribute the following copyrighted works owned by our member companies:

They could, of course, have asked for the code to have been changed. Instead, they attacked the project itself. IANAL, but this seems outrageous the same way DMCA'ing a Bittorrent client would be. This doesn't circumvent DRM like Widevine. I don't understand what leg they have to stand on here.

This feels like DeCSS all over again.

P.S.: They also took down youtube-dlc, even though it's not listed.

[1]: It turns out I am wrong. It wasn't in the readme, but in the test cases. See extractor/youtube.py. To me this seems even more tenuous, but IANAL.

The fact that copyrighted works were included in the readme shows it was intended for that use, and the RIAA complaint will likely stand up to any legal scrutiny. Just because it can be used for legit purposes too won't matter in the slightest. I mean, Napster could have been used for legal means as well, and it got destroyed in court.

The only chance tools like this have legally is when infringement is an "unintended side effect."

I think you are misunderstanding the legal argument. The DMCA Section 1201 specifically prohibits (among other things) technology that "is marketed ... for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." The example in the README is evidence of this.

The argument is that youtube-dl is primarily used for breaking DRM not just that it could be used for doing so.

I was thinking the same thing: The next step following this line of thinking would be trying to ban all torrent clients, because they CAN be used to download copyrighted material.

This is crazy.

Does it really matter what they said?

This is like the reverse of those common disclaimers on hacking tools and tutorials which claim:

  This is for educational use only.

I've always wondered, are courts fooled by such disclaimers? Are their authors untouchable just because they put in some boilerplate disclaimer like that?

As for what was written in some code somewhere in the repo, it could have been written by anyone, even an RIAA plant who contributed that trojan horse to the project.

What makes anyone think what was said there is endorsed by or even representative of the views of the rest of the authors of youtube-dl or is what youtube-dl is for?

God, it pisses me off to no end to think that I'm going to be forced to use youtube's piece of shit, slow, ad-infested, tacker-infested, feature-poor, non-automatable browser interface.

But, after taking a few deep breaths, I think within a year there'll be multiple alternatives to youtube-dl which will all bear disclaimers that they are "for educational purposes only" and that they in no way endorse copyright infringement.

The use youtubeDL for music would probably fit the fair use in Finland. The fair use allows personal copies of legally licensed material but not redistribution of said copies to third parties. It has been used to defend a service where ISP records the specific shows from TV like a VCR and streams them to customers at different time. The ISP:s and representation of copyright holders made a compromise to avoid legal battle, where ISP:s limited the storage duration of said recordings to two years. ISP:s still had service they could sell, and avoid unnecessary legal battle. I'm not a lawyer. So not expert on matter, but just educated local.

Seems like putting that in the readme was pretty stupid. Intent matters in legal things, making the example infringing undermines the argument that the tool is good and some people are just bad.

> This feels like DeCSS all over again.

I think napster would be the better comparision (and especially napster compared to vcrs)

> it uses examples in the README as an example of that:

>> We also note that the source code prominently includes as sample uses

as far as I can tell these videos are not referenced in the README, but instead in the youtube.py extractor file, which would go against the accusation that they were featured 'prominently'

> this seems outrageous the same way DMCA'ing a Bittorrent client would be

popcorn time?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23075484

I wonder what commit added those three listed examples (from three different music companies) to the README, and when. They're the worrying component as they show intent.

In a dark universe timeline somewhere, the pull request for adding them to the README came from an RIAA employee.

Without the existence of youtube-dl, youtube itself is necessarily commuting copyright infringement over the a good portion of the CC-By-SA works uploaded to youtube.

(not all of them, since the uploader grants youtube a license... but if the work has copyright holders who aren't the uploader, it applies)

That's some prime rate bullshit. Like saying since I could use Linux to download copyrighted materials, and there are guides around which tell how to do so, Linux should be removed from the Internet.

Also a good reminder - never trust a third party to host your files, always have a backup. And hosting your infrastructure on Github means anybody who wants it can take it down with a single letter.

Conversely, the RIAA is making its media available on a known, at-risk platform to attain distribution. They're not protecting their copyright sufficiently, and the copyrights should be revoked.

I can't wait for ML to lower the barrier to entry for music to near nil. Make anyone a vocalist or instrumentalist and hose these assholes.

It seems to me that they are making the claim that this tool is expressly for doing something that is forbidden by the YouTube TOS and breaking the music licenses provided.

Of course YouTube has other videos that are under different licenses so it isn't clear that this is the only use case of the software.

I'm also NAL, but familiar with IP law.

My analysis is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24874277 and I'm broadly skeptical of the legal viability under US law.

What I haven’t seen pointed out is that this is really Githubs problem. They shouldn’t automatically respond to DCMA. The process should really be passed on to the owner of the repo and make them liable. Basically, defaulting to rolling over to DMCA requests had led to an environment where there’s no way to fight them. Even if I hosted something like YouTube-dl myself, my internet provider could cut me off.

It’s the same issue with deplatforming people, do we want a world where literally you lose the ability to share knowledge others don’t agree with Or in this case, a tool that could be used maliciously

actually that it is in the test cases instead of the readme makes it seem worse to me, after all the readme is not addressed to anyone in particular, they needed examples of things someone might do and they used popular videos (that happened to be copyrighted) as those examples.

But anyone running the test cases that does not have rights to those videos will have infringed, and then of course youtube-dl must also run their own test cases and we know they don't have rights to the videos.

IANAL, but regardless, according to RIAA, youtube-dl is circumventing the "DRM" built into YouTube, and therefore they're violating anti-circumvention parts of the DMCA. Therefore a DMCA claim can suffice to take it down.

Perhaps if youtube-dl used different examples (i.e. videos not protected by anti-circumvention) perhaps they could have avoided this.

This is so annoying... this means they can go after the OS we are using because some kids use their OS to download pirated stuff

It's pretty ridiculous. They might argue that a browser is a technological measure to protect a copyrighted work which youtube-dl circumvents since the DMCA is written so vaguely. Cases like this demonstrate why anti-circumvention litigation really has to go.

Test cases using copyrighted works probably not a good idea... Since one could argue that part of the code is run frequently.

so should we take down web browsers as well? because they CAN be used to download copyrighted music and videos.

From the RIAA perspective it seems clear this tool was created to download copywritten material. You can disagree with the law or think the tool has other valid uses but the intent of the tool author seems clear here.

The author of the tool should have chosen a better example in the tests to at least maintain plausible deniability.

It’s probably a case of fair use but it’ll have to go to court to decide that

Why in the world did they include copyright works in the README? That's contributory infringement!

Using a copyrighted music track as the example in the README is really stupid or just shows a total lack of respect for copyright.

Worth noting the MPA already tried doing this to Popcorn Time, a BitTorrent client designed to provide a Netflix-like UX.[1] The Popcorn Time devs put in a counter-notice and the repository was back up a few weeks later when the period for the MPA to respond expired.

The same thing will probably happen here because this is not one of the purposes of DMCA takedown letters, period. Even if there are inappropriate test cases or something in the repo, or if they’re correct that youtube-dl bypasses DRM in violation of a different part of the DMCA, it’s still not a valid takedown because GitHub isn’t hosting anything the RIAA/those it represents own the copyright to. The correct way to do this is to go after the lead youtube-dl developer(s) and/or GitHub for facilitating infringement or whatever, but I don’t think RIAA wants to do that because they probably don’t have much/any legitimate grounds for legal claims against them, so they abuse the DMCA to look like they’re doing something.

Edit: for a more concrete picture of what happens next, read GitHub’s DMCA policy.[2] Basically youtube-dl can file a counter notice assuming they disagree with the claims, after that the RIAA has 10-14 days to get a court order or the repo goes back up.

[1] https://torrentfreak.com/github-reinstates-popcorn-time-code...

[2] https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/site-...

It's interesting how many Github counternotices (e.g., [1] [2]) seem completely justified yet link to repositories that are no longer on GitHub. I wonder what happened.

[1] in https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/05/2020-05-0... someone forked a permissively-licensed project; the original author made the project-closed source, then issued a DMCA takedown against the fork. That's clearly bogus: you can't revoke an open source license.

[2] in https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2019/11/2019-11-2... Microsoft DMCAd a project that did something with Windows local licensing keys. I can see how Microsoft would prefer that this project not exist, but I see no infringement. Not everything that a big company dislikes is an infringement of copyright.

I just used windows-g to record upside down music video. Seems to work fine. mp4 file is in my captures video. Sound is great. How is that acceptable and this isn't?

btw, Popcorn time is a bit different situation. I would say bit torrent is more the problem, or at least the people who upload pirated content.

What is odd though is that it's the RIAA filing suit here and not google. Google has a real complaint, RIAA certainly does not.

It would be like if NYT went after a web client for saving news articles for offline reading.

Bizarre.

Well I for one hope you are correct. The fact that popcorn time is still up gives me hope that ytdl will also return soon.

Is there any chance that someone could sue them for filing illegitimate claims?

They probably can't go after Github because part of the purpose of DMCA takedowns is that companies which honor takedowns avoid liability for copyright infringement.

Curious if anyone with legal expertise knows if this has legs? They say:

> The clear purpose of this source code is to (i) circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube, and (ii) reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings owned by our member companies without authorization for such use.

But the "circumventing" is still accessing a stream the user can view anyways, and the "reproduce and distribute" feels like a stretch -- there's no inherent distribution. This isn't anything like a pirating or a torrenting tool.

It feels more akin to when movie studios sued VCR manufacturers for being able to record TV back in 1984 -- and lost [1].

(Also, side note but I have never in my life seen a story upvoted so quickly on HN. 130 points in just 7 minutes so far.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Unive....

Also, does the fact that YouTube doesn't supply a download feature constitute a "technical protection measure"?

From the RIAA's point of view, it works to their benefit that a download link doesn't exist, and it may be something they like, but that doesn't mean that's why.

It could just as easily be that a download feature doesn't exist because YouTube wants you to keep returning to their site if you want to rewatch a video.

It would be one thing if some YouTube videos had a download button and others didn't. That would suggest that, on the ones where it's missing, it is missing for a reason, and that reason might be DRM. But as far as I know, YouTube doesn't have download for any videos.

Software doesn't always have all the features that end users might want, and the mere absence of a feature doesn't necessarily tell you why it's missing. Also, it's not some weird, suspicious thing to write software which fills in a feature gap in some other software. (Google encourages add-on software on other products, too. For example, Chrome extensions and Gmail add-ons.)

But, maybe there is some legal reason why this could make sense. Maybe some terms of service or licensing (for video uploaders or for regular end users) says not to download something, which would make it clear that the download feature is missing on purpose.

The entire IP concept is really hard to make sense of with the web: a browser works by making a local copy of a remote resource and then making that local copy available to the user. I don’t see why, from the server’s perspective, the precise client matters: if I use curl + pandoc to read your webpage, is that really meaningfully different from using Firefox or Chrome?

I'm NAL, but familiar with IP law.

My analysis is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24874277 and I'm broadly skeptical of the legal viability under US law.

I feel like if they'd been more patient, they might have addressed the similarity to the "analog hole."

> a stream the user can view anyways

The true purpose of the DCMA is to control the distributors via the use of tools like DRM.

The fact that you can view music on YouTube at all is something of an anomaly. The recording industry would love to dispense with YouTube entirely if they could.

Lesson learned: always use Creative Commons licensed data to demo your multimedia tools. Else people get the wrong idea.

Some examples for youtube-dl might be:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqz-KE-bpKQ Big buck bunny

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ Sintel

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhWc3b3KhnY Spring

In fact, youtube actually allows you to filter by CC, so there's never a reason not to!

Oh the irony of cloning a banned repo from a Chinese git mirror...

    c:\Users\david\dev\git
    λ git clone https://gitee.com/mirrors/youtube-downloader.git
    Cloning into 'youtube-downloader'...
    remote: Enumerating objects: 98560, done.
    remote: Counting objects: 100% (98560/98560), done.
    remote: Compressing objects: 100% (30542/30542), done.
    remote: Total 98560 (delta 73037), reused 90045 (delta 66441), pack-reused 0
    Receiving objects: 100% (98560/98560), 49.86 MiB | 9.58 MiB/s, done.
    Resolving deltas: 100% (73037/73037), done.

While its good to get a backup of the source code, youtube-dl is one of those projects that quickly becomes useless as Google mixes stuff around within YouTube, which they like to do. Without an active developer base, the project will quickly become less and less effective, which is one of the big concerns IMO about this lawsuit.

I'm very scared by this. youtube-dl needs somewhat frequent updates as Google moves the youtube codebase around. I'm worried that the RIAA's next move, now that it's starting to get inconvenient to get youtube-dl, will be to make Youtube change in some way to make existing copies of youtube-dl no longer work.

youtube-dl has been my primary way of getting videos since I learned about it. If the RIAA manages to kill it, my ability to partake in culture will be severely limited.

The removal of youtube-dl is a loss to the open source community. I hope this does not set a precedence going forward and that authors re-establish themselves (and the bug tracker, which had immense amount of information).

At the same time, this lead me to browse the Github's DMCA repo, which has some real gems. For example, this DMCA takedown of repo with copied course assignment of a different student and did not comply with the Apache 2.0 Licence [1].

[1] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/10/2020-10-2...

Seems like a fresh mirror here https://gitea.eponym.info/Mirrors/youtube-dl to fork and start it over somewhere else. Gitea is a great project. Now we need someone to fork and publish it over Tor or something. Decentralized solution would be a next step.

Diff between that mirror and the one from the web.archive.com looks good. I.e. no hidden/evil things inside. Looks safe to start over.

```

$ git log --oneline -3 48c5663c5 (HEAD -> master, origin/master, origin/HEAD) [afreecatv] Fix typo (#26970) <=== https://gitea.eponym.info/Mirrors/youtube-dl

7d740e7dc [23video] Relax _VALID_URL (#26870) <=== https://gitea.eponym.info/Mirrors/youtube-dl

4eda10499 [utils] Don't attempt to coerce JS strings to numbers in js_to_json (#26851) <=== https://web.archive.org/web/20201018144703if_/https://github...

```

https://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/4855/is-it-possible-...

Considering youtube-dl isn't doing anything a web browser accessing these sites can't do, essentially serving as a headless web browser with a convenient CLI, I don't see how this could possibly have a leg to stand on.

It's like serving Mozilla a DMCA takedown for FireFox.

I however welcome the highly visible reminder that github should only be used as a mirror at most.

IMHO this wasn't the best move, I mean... the use of copyrighted music as an example DIRECTLY stated in the repo, as an example to show what you can download with the tool

Your weekly reminder that

1. You should not have your development process on a centralized platform, at least not if you're doing anything that smells of copyright issues

2. If you do host on a centralized platform, have regular, decentralized backups of code and issue tracking.

3. Also, avoid US-centric hosting for this kind of thing. But really, refer to 1.

ZDNet reports this is part of a larger action:

"RIAA blitz takes down 18 GitHub projects used for downloading YouTube videos"

aand isn't a DMCA 512 takedown:

Although GitHub classified the RIAA letter as a DMCA takedown request, it is not one. As Public Knowledge Legal Director John Bergmayer pointed out today on Twitter, RIAA isn't alleging the library infringed on its rights, but that the library is illegal in itself.

This isn’t really a DMCA request. I don’t see an assertion that youtube-dl is an infringing work. Rather the claim is that it’s illegal per se https://t.co/vQ16nVleCf

— John Bergmayer (@bergmayer) October 23, 2020

https://www.zdnet.com/article/riaa-blitz-takes-down-18-githu...

Even Google Research themselves use youtube-dl when assembling computer vision datasets. The only way to work on their data and reproduce the results is through youtube-dl, as video datasets are often only distributed as URLs and timestamps, and even the example codes use youtube-dl.

I wonder how this will impact the AI research community if there's some FUD around this tool.

Generally scraping is a gray area. I know researchers who scraped Google street view for large areas to train AI models without Googles approval and got hired by Google for their impressive AI skills instead of threatened.

I know researchers are a tiny group compared to consumers, but it's still interesting I think.

Is there any legislative or regulatory work that is trying to address the gigantic mess that is music (or media in general) copyright and licensing in the US?

The DMCA is over 2 decades old, and seemingly nothing useful has come up since. The current system seems to do not much other than provide a big stick for the RIAA and MPAA to wield whenever they get bored and try to extract rent using law that still seems stuck in some mire of player piano era logic. The last sane system I encountered was when I was doing college radio, where you had a license to play music, were required to log what music you played, and were assured that some clearinghouse would sort out the royalties that needed paying out of the aggregate license fees.

There seems to be mass confusion over what's legal on modern services like Twitch, where music is used in the same spirit as radio (background music chosen at the whim of the DJ/streamer), but isn't legal because it runs up against licensing schemes designed for including music in TV and film productions with massive budgets.

There doesn't seem to be any clear way to handle shit as any sort of small content creator, as the rightsholders seem to want to preserve some weird fantasy land where they're both entitled to complex negotiated rights deals (which make sense if you're say, some massive entity a la NBC, and want to include music in a new big budget show) while also not providing anything for the rest of society (if you're not NBC- or CBS-sized, the people who negotiate rights contracts won't give you the time of day). If you're not one of the mammoth-class media conglomerates, your options appear to be "do not use music ever" or "use music casually, and then be on the receiving end of a massive legal bludgeon". You can't get the time (or music) of day, but if you do somehow manage to get it, then you _do_ get the time of day, but in the form of massive retroactive fees or whatever that you "should" have paid had the licensing cthulu been willing to engage with you before you determined that the rightsholders weren't interested in dealing with you.

Right ol' kafkaesque nightmare, it is.

Because of how github works these moves are much more damaging than you might expect: In addition to revoking your access to the supposed "infringing" work, you also lose access to all your pull request comment traffic and issues -- which, unlike the source code, aren't continually replicated to the systems of all developers.

This isn't a DMCA takedown. It's a cease and desist letter citing the DMCA.

The difference matters. GitHub is required to honor DMCA takedowns. Other legal requests are granted on a case by case basis.

-- /u/telionn @ reddit

https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/jgub36/youtube...

As I understand, takedown is a 17 USC 512 (copyright infringement) safe-harbour, but not a required or indemnifying protection under 17 USC 1201, anti-circumvention:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201

Lumen (Chilling Effects) is silent on this point in their FAQ: https://lumendatabase.org/topics/14

You can download the most recent version of the YouTube-DL code from Wayback Machine here: https://web.archive.org/web/20201018144703/https://github.co...

Fuck the RIAA

Assuming youtube-dl is dead and the web APIs become hopelessly obfuscated, how hard would it be to talk to youtube as if I were a samsung smart tv?

Perhaps the next iteration of this project can leverage google's own insatiable greed against them. Embedding youtube into every "smart" device on the face of the planet probably requires that google maintain a fairly consistent private API which all of these devices can communicate with. If someone were to reverse engineer one of these devices or just throw wireshark on the WLAN, it probably wouldn't take long to emulate the same approach...

What is stopping someone from using these types of internal interfaces instead of the public ones?

This should be about impossible to enforce? Every developer and everyone who has ever cloned the repo has the complete source tree with commits. I can think of a list of countries where United States laws are not a concern, I imagine that shortly this will be one of the most distributed repositories ever.

It also shows again that while free services like Github are convenient, and truthfully their interface is the one to beat, it is better to use them as a mirror of something you self host then the primary.

Some options: (I prefer gitea - easiest to install and maintain, very active development community, single binary, written in Go)

https://gitea.com/

https://gogs.io/

https://about.gitlab.com/install/

https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-GitWeb

The more I look at the RIAA's complaint, the stranger it seems.

I'm not even sure that the RIAA has standing to sue or could demonstrate injury:

- The claimed anti-circ method is not the RIAA's, it is Google's (via YouTube). - As a user agent, youtube-dl is simple an alternate Web access method which runs code from the YouTube website as a necessary part of the process of accessing and playing content ... meant to be accessed and downloaded. - Youtube-dl has substantial non-infringing use. 17 USC 1201(a)(2)(B) https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201

See 17 USC 1203: Civil remedies: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1203

This is the first time I've read a DMCA notice that also references EU Directives and German law too (admittedly it's a thin note saying it's materially equivalent to U.S.C.). Is that even meaningful in a DMCA takedown notice?

YouTube-dl is a great tool that I've found use for a dozen times, and not once to download music or music videos. (Note that it works on sites beyond YouTube.) This takedown interferes with a number of legitimate uses that are completely independent of the RIAA's objectives.

Things like this make no sense from the notice:

> The clear purpose of this source code is to (i) circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube

Using this logic then OBS or any desktop recording tool is also violating the same measures because you could press record while a Youtube video is playing and wind up with your own locally recorded copy of the video.

Since we're here, let's also say any smart phone is also in violation since they could technically record a Youtube video playing on another device.

https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl

> Repository unavailable due to DMCA takedown.

(a) Are there mirrors?

(b) Are there Github equivalents in e.g. Russia where the RIAA doesn't have jurisdiction or extradition power?

It is a bit of a tough question. How would I feel about someone borrowing a book from a library and then photocopying it to keep a local copy? If the intent was to re-distribute then I would not feel comfortable allowing it. However, if the proposed remedy was to ban personal ownership of photocopiers I would not even consider that a valid approach. But would I expect I could keep my own photocopied version instead of paying retail price for the book? And what if a purpose built photocopier was designed and marketed for the express purpose of photocopying books from the library?

My personal feeling, and obviously not a legal opinion or even morally infallible in any sense, is that storing a local copy of digital content that has been consumed should be allowed. Where it becomes grey (or my feeling tends towards disallowing) is if I share or re-broadcast that content in any form.

That is, I feel the DMCA is in the wrong here. Unless they can prove intent to re-distribute it feels wrong that they can ban my ability to maintain a copy for myself. I believe it ought to be a right to store such content locally.

How can a program be in violation of DMCA? Is a knife in violation of the criminal justice system because some people use it to kill and therefore no one can use it anywhere, ever? How ridiculous.

It's outrageous indeed that GH/MS is complying.

It's not that far from targeting wget or curl, were it not for the widespread use of them in industry.

Made a torrent of the latest version from pypi. Hope it works. magnet:?xt=urn:btih:da76788b4d05583f8a3a7ed60f136c5647daa113&dn=youtube%5Fdl-2020.9.20.tar.gz&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.bittorrent.am%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fopen.acgtracker.com%3A1096%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fretracker.krs-ix.ru%2Fannounce&tr=udp%3A%2F%2F9.rarbg.com%3A2710%2Fannounce

Edit: NVM. Getting nowhere with setting that up.

Who needs Peertube when there's Youtube, some people asked yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24855183

But it can also be sued for downloading uncopyrighted material. It's like submitting DCMA for Office Word because people can use it for creating pirate copies of Harry Potter.

Git mirror: https://code.hackerspace.pl/q3k/youtube-dl

This is master on 4eda10499e8db831167062b0e0dbc7d10d34c1f9, retrieved from gitee.com, and is the last known hash from Google Webcache [1].

Clone, verify and rehost.

[1] - https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:o7ilf8...

This is not a new thing, DMCA was also used to take down specific plugins on Streamlink (tool to download livestreams)

https://github.com/streamlink/streamlink/issues/1493

So why does the Recording Industry Association of America get to decide whether a tool for downloading content on a service that is produced by people around the world and released under many different licenses exists or not?

The RIAA and America in general has no right to police the rest of the world.

Stuff like this is why I consider it unethical to pay for recorded music, unless distributed directly by the artist. Haven't bought music from a major distributor since I was a teenager.

I don't want my money funding this sort of overreaching censorship.

Most of the comments so far are ignoring the bigger picture: this isnt something new, its just the RIAA playing whack-a-mole with the DMCA hammer. Theyve been doing it for 20 years, and in those 20 years the most they have managed to accomplish is building a better, more resilient mole.

Napster was followed by bittorrent, bittorrent by popcorntime, and youtube-dl. in the past 20 years the industry has quietly capitulated and delivered some content users really want like streaming audio services, but in the grande cosmos of the DMCA-related war on piracy the industry itself continues to do more to smite its own face than it does to offer a more reasonable and accessible product to their audience.

There is nothing to keep me from writing something now that scrapes puseaudio for content triggered by mpv. the only real factor thats of concern is that this new backflip would be even harder for the RIAA to prosecute.

Everybody, go to PyPi: https://pypi.org/project/youtube_dl/#files Download the whl. Download the tar.gz. ???? Profit.

Also, a recommendation for the youtube_dl crew is to use a self-hosted solution (if GitHub/GitLab/SourceForge wont do). Find a cheap Linux hosting provider and run Gitea on it: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea

It's the best tips I can give for now.

Many (thousands, if not tens of thousands) YouTube videos are being deleted right now, crazy censorship taking place. If tools like those get banned then it gets harder to keep copies of videos before they will be banned from YouTube.

I find this amazing, essentially Google has been scraping every piece of content they can get their hands on, when a few individuals decide to get data, that wasn’t even created by YouTube, they get take down notices. The more I think about it hypocrisy should be a defence against these things.

Perhaps it's time to take a closer look at projects like Fossil that combine distributed version control with wiki and issues tracker built in. If the devs behind youtube-dl were using Fossil then picking up right where the DMCA leaves them is no sweat.

https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki

I'm not saying anything but there's a gitlab source clone of this on debian's repo :) https://salsa.debian.org/debian/youtube-dl

Ok, so who's building a distributed, cryptographic, uncensorable version of GitHub?

This should serve as an example to people who want (for example) the GNU project to relax their contributor copyright assignment practices. It only takes a single moment of complacency and the vultures will swoop in. In this case it was because of sloppiness around which urls were used in a demo. Yeah, all urls are the same to the guy who is building a url slurping service (which is why the take down will likely be defeated), but there is an entire profession dedicated to nothing but nit picking, loophole hunting, and general levels of pedantry that we have just come to call it lawyering. Layers are like cliffs or handguns. Stay as far away from them as possible, they are facts of life, but you really don't want to have anything to do with them unless you have no other option.

Delenda RIAA

The whole copyright industry is based on toxic premises that do not hold true anymore in the internet age.

By now, different models have been proven to work. Make them the norm. Abolish copyright. Or turn them back into what they were supposed to be: a TEMPORARY protection of a work since first publication (originally 21 years IIRC).

Old Disney characters, superheroes invented in the 40s and 50s, even the "more recent" Starwars are part of culture now just like Othello or Moby Dick are. Allow to use them as such.

I tried cloning the various forks mentioned in these threads. Summarized, I did this:

  $ git clone https://salsa.debian.org/debian/youtube-dl
  $ cd youtube-dl
  $ git remote rename origin salsa-debian-org
  $ git remote add -f code-hackerspace-pl https://code.hackerspace.pl/q3k/youtube-dl
  $ git remote add -f git-technik-io https://git.teknik.io/ytdl-org/youtube-dl
  $ git remote add -f ytld-org https://gitlab.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl
  $ git remote add -f gitea-eponym-info https://gitea.eponym.info/Mirrors/youtube-dl.git
  $ git remote add -f gitee-com https://gitee.com/mirrors/youtube-downloader.git

Basically, it looks like https://gitee.com/mirrors/youtube-downloader.git is the most up to date.

The start of the log looks like this:

  $ git log --all --decorate --graph -n2
  * commit 416da574ec0df3388f652e44f7fe71b1e3a4701f (gitee-com/master)
  | Author: Sergey M․ <dstftw@gmail.com>
  | Date:   Fri Oct 23 21:31:37 2020 +0700
  | 
  |     [ytsearch] Fix extraction (closes #26920)
  | 
  * commit 48c5663c5f7dd9ecc4720f7c1522627665197939 (ytld-org/master, gitea-eponym-info/master, git-technik-io/master, code-hackerspace-pl/master)
  | Author: Toan Nguyen <davidnguyen1501@gmail.com>
  | Date:   Thu Oct 22 19:15:05 2020 +0700
  | 
  |     [afreecatv] Fix typo (#26970)

The salsa.debian.org repo seems to have diverged a long time ago (commit db29af6d36b3d16614355dac70f22c4f2d8410d2 in 2016??).

Github has received a takedown request for the youtube-dl repo and forks, not youtube-dl itself, correct?

That's pretty stupid. You don't takedown technologies that could be used maliciously or we wouldn't have anything.

I'm worried about Newpipe now, it's been a life changer.

Wow even release downloads were taken down

  $ brew install youtube-dl
  ...
  ==> Downloading https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/releases/download/2020.09.20/youtube-dl-2020.09.20.tar.gz
  ...
  curl: (22) The requested URL returned error: 451 Unavailable for Legal Reasons
  Error: Failed to download resource "youtube-dl"
  Download failed: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/releases/download/2020.09.20/youtube-dl-2020.09.20.tar.gz

Youtube-dl (2020) would be an easier case to present to the public than DeCSS (2000).

Everyone knows what Youtube is. It's easy to understand the utility of being able to download a video from Youtube to save it on your computer. If they didn't already know this was possible to do, they'd immediately want to start using it as soon as you explained it was possible.

DeCSS was exploiting a weak encryption scheme's weak key distribution scheme. Where the only final explanation for why this matters is that it can be used to rip off DVDs.

Here’s the source code encoded as two images: https://twitter.com/galacticfurball/status/13197659867911577...

So the RIAA has tech folks just like any other organization. Some of those tech folks likely read HN. Question for you folks (use throwaways if you feel it could jeopardize your job): how do you ethically justify working for such an organization?

Time to upload youtube-dl-legal a computer program created for the express purpose of downloading only videos with permissible licenses. The readme shall note that any use of youtube-dl-legal to download illegal videos is expressly forbidden and even thinking about using it in this way is thoughtcrime of the most serious degree.

Maybe a stupid question but can the repository just be hosted in a server outside US jurisdiction and everyone carries on as before?

Why do I need to be denied access to a repo if I'm outside the US?

>Note that RIAA is making this takedown because the software CAN be used to download copyrighted music and videos

Well, then please also Block all Browsers, SSH, Tunnel, etc. too, because you can use those too to easily download copyrighted material.

This is lousy! I depend on youtube-dl to archive videos for later use. Nothing MAFIAA would be interested in; just stuff from topical channels that I want to have around for personal use in case they get deleted.

I really hope this doesn't stand, because what it's basically saying is that you can't even tell someone how to download something that might be copyrighted. Not only that, but this was brought forth by a murky technicality.

Pray to god this never happens to NewPipe.

I frequently use YouTube-dl, and have never once used it to download music videos and sound recordings owned by member companies of the RIAA.

I would like to add to the discussion that there are many perfectly legal uses of YoutubeDL:

* Downloading a video you uploaded and no longer have stored locally.

* Downloading a video to create a fair-use response video.

* Downloading video/music that is free commons (or some other non-restrictive license).

* (Gray) Downloading content to archive it.

* Downloading content you have already purchased and have in your possession.

* (Dark gray) Downloading content you have a paid subscription to view, but don't have reliable internet.

All of these anti-piracy measures need to answer one simple question - what stops somebody from just screen recording your material? At the point in which somebody can view your material on another device, you've lost a lot of control.

P.S. This clone seems legit:

`git clone https://gitea.eponym.info/Mirrors/youtube-dl.git`

So... what is going to happen to youtube-dl? Will it get renamed considering it supports ~1155 websites (based on docs/supportedsites.md)? If it does get renamed, how are we going to know its name? Where do the developers going to push their changes, where is the development being continued?! Fuck everyone who complies with such retarded laws. Corruption is sometimes good, in cases such as these. :)

Hope this motivates a few more free software devs to move away to a free host, at least apart from GH mirrors for exposure.

IUUC importing this to GitLab would have taken ~½dozen clicks and saved the open issues, etc.?

I found few forks with full history and tags from yesterday (10/23/2020)

https://github.com/marzzzello/youtube-dl

https://github.com/koalp/youtube-dl

https://github.com/r4rdsn/youtube-dl

https://git.osuv.de/star/youtube-dl

https://gitee.com/mirrors/youtube-downloader

It was clear that youtube-dl has always been used for its utility. And the deeper problem here is why aren’t we allowed to do whatever want to whatever is streamed onto our screens? TV shows could be vhs taped without issue as long as not redistributed. For sure we cannot take this fight against google with the American laws, but I think the software was morally correct and should be legally permitted.

I'm surprised they haven't gone after browsers. They would surely have asked Google to display certain messages when a user visits known piracy sites

This website is currently disabled due to a DMCA takedown notice. The website you are trying to access hosts copyrighted content. Please contact support, or seek the copyright holder's permission to access the content.

You can use Chrome to download from Youtube - you just need to know the temporary URL. One way to get this is to play the Youtube video in VLC - the media information window will tell you the temporary URL, and then you can use Chrome to download the content. So maybe the RIAA should issue a takedown request against the company that makes Chrome?

Some time in the last few hours the devs have updated their site (https://youtube-dl.org/) with a notice about the takedown and removed the broken github links. You can now download the latest executables again. I'm looking forward to seeing their new home.

https://archive.org/details/github.com-ytdl-org-youtube-dl_-...

if nothing else, today i finally actually used a bundle file:

  git clone ytdl-org-youtube-dl_-_2020-09-28_19-41-32.bundle youtube-dl

I'd think the RIAA and Google are well acquainted with the Streisand effect by now... I'm just hoping the takedown will prompt a whole bunch of people to contribute to youtube-dl out of spite, as I know it had been lagging behind due to simply not having enough contributors. I'd even go ahead and throw down the glove.

Is there an alternative to github that is resistant to denial of service attacks^1 like this?

1: At this time this is just a baseless accusation and there are no repercussions to the RIAA for blatant abuse. Why wouldn't they simply send a takedown for anything they don't like no matter whether it is legal or not?

Who is the defendant here? Do they have resources to take this to court? If not, is there any movement on raising a legal defense fund and finding competent counsel? Anyone from the ACLU team here, and interested in weighing in or at least bringing this to your leadership for consideration?

Here's what you can do:

1. Clone the repository. Make an insignificant change to the initial commit in order to change all commit hashes. Push to github as a new repository.

2. Create a password "protected" zip file (or smaller volumes) containing the repository. Use a password that's easily found in common wordlists. Commit it to another project and push to github.

Microsoft GitHub may be centralized, but it's not omniscient. RIAA may be a control freak, but it's not omnipotent. Let information be free for all.

There are some mirrors here FYI :: https://resynth1943.net/articles/youtube-dl-takedown/

Self-plug, I know. But I'll update it if anything new comes in.

The only way to fight DMCA abuse is through a lawsuit. Hopefully they setup a legal fund, because I would certainly donate.

The extractors directory had 765 extractors in it, only one of which is YouTube. The facts seem cherry-picked to support their case (well duh). Hopefully that will matter. Given that youtube is a tenth of a percent of the extractors maybe there's hope.

FWIW, it's easy to find the code on Google. The release tarballs have the format youtube-dl-YYYY.MM.DD.tar.gz and one can look in the Homebrew Cellar, for example and see there was a release on 2020.09.20. ;)

Is there a decentralized version control system solution out there to host projects like this?

I couldn't find a copy for a binary on gitea, so I tried Wayback machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://github.com/ytdl-org/yo...

E.g. the first snapshot redirects you to https://web.archive.org/web/20200923163719/https://github-pr... and it works.

Do you think GitHub automatically enforces these against forks? I wonder how long this will stay up. https://github.com/iameli/youtube-dl

If you still have youtube-dl on your system (at least the version distributed on homebrew) your youtube-dl file is compressed. You can get the full source code by chopping the shebang line off the top and unzipping the file.

FWIW, I'm forking youtube-dl right now.

This is a really sad moment for open source, especially for content creators and devs in media/content spaces. I've shipped youtube-dl for a user-facing (production) experience before. This sucks.

The "under penalty of perjury" part of DMCA has always been fascinating to me. Has there ever been a single case of this being enforced against inappropriate DMCA takedowns? What's next? DMCA against Intel for making a chip that can facilitate copyright infringement? Maybe a power company for providing power to the machine that could do it?

What I think is hilarious is how many takedown notices they've received!

https://github.com/github/dmca

They can just move the project to IPFS[1] then, it has support for Git repositories [2].

[1] https://ipfs.io/

[2] https://docs.ipfs.io/how-to/host-git-style-repo/

download it here before its gone from there too https://web.archive.org/web/20201015213331if_/https://github...

So, according to the RIAA's claim, it's

> (i) circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube,

> and

> (ii) reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings owned by our member companies without authorization for such use.

https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/10/2020-10-2...

(i) is strange claim as youtube-dl simply implements various streaming protocols public to anyone, most commonly used protocol is HLS which is just a simple list of URIs of small portion of video files in text file over HTTP/HTTPS. No technological protection whatsoever. (ii) can be easily avoided by simply removing or changing the example usage.

RealPlayer next?

"Download Web Videos" "Keep your favorite web videos safe on your PC by downloading them. You can save videos from popular sites in one click – including YouTube."

* https://www.real.com/uk/realplayer

This will do nothing. The tool will instantly be hosted outside the US. Even if the developer is American it's just going to get instantly scooped by someone else.

I'm sure someone's already said it, but if you want the source tree with no history, it's still available on PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/youtube_dl/#files

Saw this coming. We are working on https://dgit.sh for the last couple of months. Dgit is a decentralized code collaboration platform where we harness the power of git for versioning and arweave blockchain for permanent data storage. We also have a Dgit community on https://community.xyz where the stakeholders take all decisions transparently via a vote. Dgit will be available for use after its launch on 2nd November. If you are interested in what we are doing feel free to join our discord and chat with us https://bit.ly/dgitchat

Setting aside the evils of the DMCA itself:

Seems clearly that if youtube authorizes downloads, then people shouldn't put things on youtube they don't want downloaded?

The takedown notices should be going to youtube. But of course they want to use youtube to promote themselves.

I warned everyone The Fight Club Rule needed to be in effect. There is no Youtube-dl

Considering YouTube allows Creative-Commons licensed videos[0], how exactly do they suggest we "reuse and edit" videos, as per their own documentation? I'm not seeing any "Download video" button on a CC-licensed video's page, so... am I missing something here, or is one not forced to use a 3rd-party video download utility like youtube-dl to actually "reuse and edit" a CC-licensed video?

[0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797468?hl=en

Strategically / tactically, the most interesting aspect of the RIAA attack on youtube-dl to me is that it puts Microsoft on the spot to show its true colours. Is it Friend of Free Software, or Copyright Maximalist?

What does it matter if I watch a song on YouTube or just dl the video. Mp4 and watch it, The riaa might say the reasons the videos are on YouTube is they promote the artist like old videos on MTV and someone gets paid ad revenue , In theory someone could just use a pc dl 1000s of videos put em on a pc and avoid watching ads Also video streams count to get a song in the charts and the riaa employs lawyers so they have to do something to justify their wages even if it will have no effect on the music marketplace or the behavior of the average music fan

So it looks like the takedown notice has nothing to do with the actual developer of youtube-dl. I.e., the developer could distribute their code somewhere else and the RIAA would be left playing whack-a-mole.

Ahh, centralized version control. Such a good idea.

I sometimes imagine how wonderful it'd be if there were a viable alternative to the Web that is decentralized and infeasible to censor, only to realize that how great it is for the freedom, is the exact reason why it doesn't exist. It's just too inconvenient for those in power. That might be why Tor was funded by the government. Its primary functionality is to strengthen the existing Web, rather than to be some competing force to the Web.

I'm not sure with the RIAA hopes to accomplish here.

I suspect this will be fixed in a day, and just be hosted elsewhere.

And also, isn't this like when the studios sued the makers of VCRs?

There are multiple extensions in Google's own Android Chrome stores for downloading videos from YouTube and everyone else. I just used a few to download and HLS stream that was having severe buffering issues.

It would seem hard to argue that Google is completely against it when they could be considered a contributor to the "problem". Providing apps that violate their own TOS. Not just source code, but actual apps/extensions.

Not a lawyer, software guy working in licensing & copyright for 20+ years. Was paid for a few years to talk about this stuff with tech and publishing people.

They're requesting the takedown under 17 U.S. Code § 1201 - Circumvention of copyright protection systems. [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201] It's a few paragraphs of the actual law at stake here. There's no much to it.

Essentially, they're arguing that Youtube's normal stream distribution technology is "effectively control[ling] access to a work." Given 3A & B from the link above, that will take a fair amount of arguing - there's no encryption, there's nothing that requires information under the authority of the copyright holder (like a key) to descramble the information.

Unless the repo has code that's breaking browser-based DRM, in which all bets are off - breaking DRM is by definition circumventing a technical protection. Doesn't matter if it was easy to break-- you break encryption, there's no more argument over whether you're circumventing. Decryption is right there in the text of the law.

Github agreed to the takedown because they don't want to be distributing a circumvention tool, and they don't feel like going to court over whether this is a circumvention tool or not. There are a lot of repos out there, you can't go to court over every single one. I'd be surprised if it stayed up on GitLab for much more than a New York minute, either.

The EFF might fight this, because there's a pretty good argument around the noninfringing uses; however, they also might not, because there's not much of an argument around whether it violates the Google Terms.

Some us are mentioning that there are use cases for this software that don't infringe copyright. That goes back to Sony v Universal, the VCR/Betamax case, which permitted the production and sale of technologies with "substantial noninfringing uses." In the case of the VCR, the particular noninfringing use was time-shifting of broadcast television, taping shows to watch later. The noninfringing uses here are around downloading works that are in the public domain or Creative Commons, and definitely around offline use. Easily a colorable argument.

The file sharing cases of the early 2000's have drawn some lines around the noninfringing use defense, though. Napster and Grokster both claimed, in court, to support noninfringing uses. However, both products promoted their products as offering free access to copyright-protected works, and the courts took notice of that in both cases-- I believe that the Grokster opinion may have noted that Grokster had never mentioned a noninfringing use outside the trial.

IOW, if you're providing a dual-use technology for noninfringing use that is also capable of infringing use, you absolutely cannot promote the infringing uses to the exclusion of others. Not only do you draw unwanted attention to yourself, you may actually (as in Napster and Grokster) invalidate the most important defense that you have for your activities.

> 1 See https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/README.md....

> Repository unavailable due to DMCA takedown.

How, exactly? This is why I dislike GitHub's "Fork" button, since a takedown of the original takes yours too.

Courts have ruled betamax Vcrs were legal, its legal to record tv shows and movies to watch them at a later date. Even though in theory Vcrs could be used for the purposes of piracy. Just because a device might be used to pirate content does not mean its can be banned. Like bittorrent is used by many non profits to distribute Open source software like Linux distro iso, s

I don't understand exactly how this works.

Github receives a letter from a private organisation RIAA and then takes down the repository.

How does Github know that this request is proper and youtube-dl is illegal? Just because it comes from RIAA?

Did Github give the repository owners a chance to migrate to another service willing to host their content?

Seems to me this is leading to contested cases that can be routed to a more corporatist friendly Supreme Court.

This is really dumb. By the logic of the letter all that needs to be done is change the README file.

Great. Alternatives to github please.

Add github/dmca to the list of mirrors: https://github.com/github/dmca/archive/416da574ec0df3388f652...

;)

Isn't there a 1st-amendment exception for code? The code isn't violating any copyright.

This is just the next terrifying development on Planet China. YouTube-dl went unmolested for years. About week ago, I was party to an online conversation a week ago about how youtube-dl is an important tool for archiving videos of public officials before they can be disappeared.

Coincidence?

After the RIAA won a case against Limewire in 2010, the next significant legal action I can find in a bit of looking is that the US Supreme Court ruled against the RIAA in Allen v. Cooper (March 23, 2020).

Here are the opinions: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/18-877#writing...

I have a lot to look into...

I think that they should update the readme and rebase the history and eliminate any references to the original copyrighted material of the readme file. possibly even making a request of GitHub to help them clean the repo or evidence of any logging information with regard to the copyrighted content. I think it would be relatively easy to argue that a web browser would be guilty of every single little thing that can be done through YouTube DL binary in the right hands. The only copyrightable information that YouTube - DL offers is an instruction set or a direct correlation to the fact that they can use this tool to do some things that are implicitly prohibited.

Someone uploaded the source to Twitter inside an image:

https://twitter.com/GalacticFurball/status/13197659867911577...

Radicle[1] can't come soon enough. Git already works over I2P[2] (TOR alternative) btw ;)

The more often this happens, the more we'll learn about reproducible builds, decentralized (and/or anonymous) code hosting, and setup tools and software that uses this more. I'm sure the distributed tar.gz is next on the list for this DMCA and we can't rely on things hosted on the clear web anymore.

[1]: https://radicle.xyz/

[2]: https://geti2p.net/en/docs/applications/git

They've learned absolutely nothing from two decades of failed wars vs torrenting.

This was bound to happen with proprietary services like GitHub. It's better to use self-hostable services like GitLab & Gitea, where we can have regular backups of everything - code, issues and any other metadata. So, the service can be up shortly.

Sure, GitHub like features offer more than just a space to host our code. It has become a goto site for example, finding new and interesting repos to contribute to.

It's important that the devs or community that develop a software think about the potential censorship it might have to encounter from thugs like DMCA, based on what is it that they develop and evaluate the choice of hosting.

BTW, I just installed it using `choco install youtube-downloader`. Nice to have while they don't find a new location.

It also showcases a marvelous advantage of using git as a VCS, they automatically have multiple backups and can easily transport the project. And it showcases that all the other project info, like issues and comments should also be under version control and downloaded in developers machines. You can't depend on an external service for your project.

BTW, is it possible to use GitHub features in a distribute way? E.g.: create issues in my machine and pushing it to the server?

We're going to need another flag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Flag

I have created the youtube-dl repo at Darktea, feel free to create your anonymous accounts and join the project, until we find a better/decentralized place.

For now this should be sufficient:

http://it7otdanqu7ktntxzm427cba6i53w6wlanlh23v5i3siqmos47pzh...

I will give the main contributors the neccessary access for reviewing/merging/etc.. or will entirely hand over the project if you can prove you are the maintainer.

https://www.cryptocats.me is now uploading the source code of youtube-dl to the gpg keyservers.

Its quite irrelevant - seems like "forbidding knifes because they can be used as a weapon" or "banning port scanners because of security reasons".

I just installed it from archive.org using the url homebrew uses. It's a simple matter to run brew install -d youtube-dl plug the url that into archive.org, download the archive, cp it to the dl location (minus the .incomplete) that brew expects, and then run it again without the -d so it thinks it is already downloaded.

I wouldn't have installed if they hadn't done this, and I'll probably never use it, but this rubbed me the wrong way.

Can't I just FORK it and change the Readme and/or tests to not include references to what could be constituted as infringing acts, and purposely state that the purpose of MY FORK is to download YouTube videos that are in the public domain?

If it's been taken down I am sure it will pop up on some torrent. The authors and all those who have contributed to it have copies.

How can a court tell me not to publish generally useful software with a legitimate intent?

Also note that forking a repository on github is not enough to make it your code.

All the connected forks have also been disabled. Better to clone and re-push if you ask me.

Have we heard anything from the youtube-dl developers yet? Have they made some sort of statement? Are they really going to get sued? Is it possible to support them (other than through the EFF: https://eff.org/donate/)?

Has github made a statement yet?

(Oh and don't think for one moment that the RIAA's actions have anything to do with supporting the struggling artist.)

So, are they going to also issue a takedown for YouTube Premium next? Premium allows you to watch/listen without ads and also allows you to download videos for offline use. If I pay for YouTube Premium, there should be no problem with me using youtube-dl to timeshift the content I've already paid for. It's no different than using a DVR to record a show off a cable channel I pay to subscribe to.

It would be interesting to see who added the testcase that has the copyrighted video. Maybe honest mistake, maybe it was intentional to kill the project.

I guess this means Brew formula for youtube-dl stops working - mines already installed and I'm not uninstalling to check but it's interesting.

As we can see again having github as a sole distribution mechanism was a bad idea. I hope they have backups and will be back online soon.

How about we serve the DMCA to the original media source. Attacking the tools does not make any sense. Which tool is going to be next?

I've been hoarding significant YouTube channels for years, at a cost of many terabytes of HDD space. Even though they were always available for free, I was always betting on the fact that YouTube's status as being incredibly easy to archive would not last forever.

I feel vindicated, but also sad that the end of this particular era has finally arrived :(

As long as the source code in the repo itself does not infringe on their copyrights, this seems like a plainly frivolous lawsuit.

Even if the examples in the source code point to the code as deliberately enabling copyright infringement, I thought the DMCA takedown process was for actual copywritten content. Even if they are found, in a napster-like way, to be "illegal", it doesn't seem like a DMCA takedown notice is a valid mechanism to enforce the law here.

This fight against software is growing into bizarre forms. What's next? cURL?

I really wish there was some kind of retribution in the typical OSS licenses. You censor free software, free software censors you. I think these organization would think twice to take down a project if they would immediately lose access to Linux, Apache, Python, et. al.

As a good internet citizen I have only one question: Where can I find a mirror to fork to preserve this piece of software?

I’m so glad that Github is owned by Microsoft and that they don’t immediately comply with the takedown... /sarcasm

I had a youtube-dl repository to fix a bug in Twitter video downloads, but I just checked and it's been removed.

Can someone PM me the location of a repo that still has this up somewhere? I might be able to clone it and host it.

I’ll admit that I’m ignorant of US law specifics here, and I’m not sure about YouTube’s DRM and/or policy regarding downloading videos is.

So I’ll ask: is this DMCA request justified? Why would the RIAA be going after YouTube-dl, rather than Google? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the RIAA to go after YouTube instead?

I guess it was only a matter of time, the more popular it became. I have Youtube Premium and still use this utility every day for legitimate reasons (converting talk videos to audio file that I can listen to offline). Sad day for youtube-dl but I expect there will be many contenders to fill the void.

Unless the RIAA is actually going to take the owner of youtube-dl's domain to court, there's nothing (for now) stopping yt-dl from setting up another development platform of some sort. DMCA takedowns are cause for concern but they're not quite the be all and end all of a dispute.

This needs free legal assistance from EFF and needs to go to court if RIAA is actually ready to litigate this

If the README stated that you can download free to use video such as: https://www.youtube.com/c/VideoLibraryNocopyrightFootage/vid...

You're out of troubles?

"We have a good faith belief that this activity is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law. We assert that the information in this notification is accurate, based upon the data available to us." Quick call Pop, Timberlake, and Swift to end this!

Not just users, this is a good nightmare for a lot of projects that were relying on yt-dl (maybe for other features than downloading)

And even a lot of unofficial libraries that allowed easier yt access. Dead in a go.

Do we have a cli alternative that does everything of yt-dl except the video download part?

The actual content of the legal argument being made by the RIAA in this and associated documents is lying by omission at best, and arguably is straight up perjury.

The only _concrete_ circumvention they level at youtube-dl is that it "circumvents YouTube’s rolling cipher". I looked into this more, and before I go into how totally bulshit it is that they've apparently conned judges into believing this, you should read their full accusation (or just read the full DMCA letter from the RIAA):

    For further context, please see the attached court decision from the Hamburg
    Regional Court that describes the technological measure at issue (known as
    YouTube’s “rolling cipher”), and the court’s determination that the technology
    employed by YouTube is an effective technical measure within the meaning of EU

    1 See https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/blob/master/README.md#readme.

    and German law, which is materially identical to Title 17 U.S.C. §1201 of the
    United States Code. The court further determined that the service at issue in
    that case unlawfully circumvented YouTube’s rolling cipher technical
    protection measure.2 The youtube-dl source code functions in a manner
    essentially identical to the service at issue in the Hamburg Regional Court
    decision. As there, the youtube-dl source code available on Github (which is
    the subject of this notice) circumvents YouTube’s rolling cipher to gain
    unauthorized access to copyrighted audio files, in violation of YouTube’s
    express terms of service,3 and in plain violation of Section 1201 of the
    Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. §1201.

So that's what the RIAA is saying that youtube-dl is doing. However, they're referencing a document that I _presume_ was attached to their original email, the document from the Hamburg Regional Court, but we don't have that email, as Github didn't publish that document for us to see.

So I went looking, and it turns out that the RIAA has used this exact same excuse to go after some other people, their documents are available, and we can see more of what they wrote. I'm referencing this[1] document which I found through this[0] blog post about a 2016 case where the RIAA went after an online service called TYMP3. Here are the links, and here's what the RIAA said:

[0] - https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160927/17062135646/can-s...

[1] - https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3114545/YTMP3-Com...

    < The following is found on page 8 of the PDF linked above >
    39. Plaintiffs are informed and believe, and on that basis allege as follows:
    YouTube has adopted and implemented technological measures to control access to
    content maintained on its site and to prevent or inhibit downloading, copying,
    or illicit distribution of that content.  YouTube maintains two separate URLs
    for any given video file: one URL, which is visible to the user, is for the
    webpage where the video playback occurs, and one URL, which is not visible to
    the user, is for the video file itself.  The second URL is generated using a
    complex (and periodically changing) algorithm - known as a “rolling cipher” -
    that is intended to inhibit direct access to the underlying YouTube video
    files, thereby preventing or inhibiting the downloading, copying, or
    distribution of the video files.

    < further down, on page 12, they lay out their accusation >
    Among other things, Plaintiffs are informed and believe, and on that basis
    allege, that YTMP3 employs a means to circumvent the YouTube rolling cipher
    technology described above, and other technological means that YouTube employs
    to protect content on its site.

So, let's go see what the Youtube-dl source code actually is doing. The tl;dr version is that youtube does some slight rearranging of the characters in the URL of the remote resource, but they also supply you with the JS code to un-arrange that code into the actual working "signature" which you can use to request the video from youtube. So youtube-dl downloads the rearranged URL, and the JS that youtube provides, and uses a Python implementation of the JS interpreter to run YOUTUBE'S OWN JS THAT YOUTUBE SENT US IN CLEARTEXT TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO DOWNLOAD THE VIDEO. See the source code (hosted on gitlab for now, hopefully that stays up):

https://gitlab.com/HacktorIT/youtube-dl/-/blob/master/youtub...

So to summarize, youtube creates two URLs: one that's a public video URL, and one that's the URL to the actual video content. The URL to the video content changes on a rolling basis, and is slightly rearranged. All that's true. However, what the RIAA is avoiding saying, and which completely changes the context of this discussion is:

YOUTUBE SENDS YOU BOTH URLS IN CLEARTEXT, AND INCLUDES THE CODE FOR HOW TO DOWNLOAD THE VIDEO, SO YOU AND YOUR WEB BROWSER CAN DOWNLOAD THE VIDEOS WITHOUT USING ANY ENCRYPTION/DECODING.

So when a judge asks "how is it that you're getting around this 'rolling cipher' to access the video?" all you have to say is "Youtube told me where to download the video, so I followed Youtube's instructions and downloaded it from the URL that Youtube gave me."

Frankly, I'm amazed that any judge, or any lawyer, would ever lay out or believe such bare faced lies as is being spouted by the RIAA in this document.

FUCK THE RIAA

There is a lot of CC0 content on youtube that exists so you can download it, like stock video, sounds, background videos etc. How are we going to dowload those now?

Also couldn't the youtub-dl team claim that the whole "drm video download test" was a security test?

This is not youtube-dl please don't fork it or send pull requests back. Don't click this link: https://github.com/scastillo/not-youtube-dl

This is going to be difficult to find the authors' comments if there are any. I am still curious where will the development continue because downloading from YouTube often breaks and requires some fixing, i.e. update youtube-dl and it works! :/

Ha I'd nearly forgotten about the RIAA, thanks for reminding me to re-up my EFF donation.

How is the RIAA still a thing? They came after me in the early 00s for running an indie napster server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenNap

How quickly does Microsoft usually HTTP Response Code 451 (#rfc77525 [1]) sites that get DMCA notices?

They acted very fast on this one.

[1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7725

Does YouTube embed any copyright metadata on the videos? An improved product could check for that first and prompt the user with a legal confirmation that they have the right to download the content if it was marked as copyrighted.

This takes me right back to those heady days of DeCSS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number

I don’t follow, the argument seems to be along the lines of:

Guns can be used to shoot people, they’re explicitly advertised as being for shooting people, shooting people is a crime. We request you stop selling guns.

It’s all just a tad misplaced.

Web browsers download the video too. Take down web browsers! Heck, outlaw operating systems! Hard drives are infringing on our right to profit!

... Actually, I should stop giving them ideas for their next takedown notices...

They could also try to setup a mirror at https://gitee.com/ which is more user friendly than GitHub, as this case confirms.

Isn't DMCA working the way that if you disagree with dmca takedown and fill certain form, the side asking to take down content (RIAA) needs to get court order?

That's the way how it works with google search.

How is this not perjury again? They need to be punished for this harshly.

So if you did not fork youtube-dl but instead had cloned it, changed the repo to be the private nootube-dl and pushed it there - would github detect it was the same code and also take it down?

You could use your rifle/pistol/firearm to shoot unlawful transpasser, but since it's also able to shoot down innocent children in our neighborhood, please cease and desist.

Does a DMCA takedown usually use phrasing “we ask that you do XYZ”?

I’ve never scrutinized one before. I would have assumed it would be of the form “under the terms of the DMCA you are REQUIRED to etc etc”

They should take down all browsers and Internet we can use it too download stuff... this is so stupid. Don't want your stuff to be downloaded, don't put it online.

Maybe someone send an email to https://github.com/jessephus to get more information?

The latest version is: 2020.09.20, yes? I already grabbed the source code days ago, but forgot the grab the Windows binary. Anyone keep the binary, or perhaps simply have to compile it?

Even if youtube-dl doesn't get re-hosted on GitHub, is it likely that it will show up again on another site such as GitLab or a self-hosted repo by the maintainer?

Damn this sucks. Luckily I just recovered a tar from the homebrew cache with the source code. Lets hope someone will create a creative-commons-dl or something soon.

Time to revive GitTorrent? https://github.com/cjb/GitTorrent

Time to use gittorrent! https://github.com/cjb/gittorrent

We need a rouge git server.

Like silk road but for your open source fixes...

Already at number 4 on all-time list: http://www.hntoplinks.com/all

So recently I asked if Unix v6 is the "To Kill a Mockingbird" of computer science, then what is the Huckleberry Finn. Ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24856047

This thing with YouTube-dl makes me consider that one quality that a "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" of computer science should possess is having been banned. Of course YouTube-dl might not be the Huckleberry Finn, but maybe it is something like The Satanic Verses (which I was never a fan of).

You can't even search for it?

https://github.com/search?q=youtube-dl

Should all just clone it and host it in every possible place and on servers outside the US and give them the big middle finger to go F themselves.

Even Meme will be DMCAed in future. Future is dark :(

...and I always though youtube-dl was the tool someone built so that Youtube was in compliance with the GDPA and let us export our videos ;-)

scnr

Strange that email made it through. I delete any email in my inbox that begins with: Dear Sir or Madam as it looks like spam.

Have they countered the claim per DMCA? So much ink spilled on this but there’s a process to fight erroneous removals like this.

I remember during the Napster days dressing up as an RIAA agent for Halloween, with combat gear and a blowtorch to burn CDs

I can also use OBS or a Google Pixel to capture material from youtube but I don't see anyone going after them

I feared this day for a long time. Yet I am still disappointed that it had come.

I wonder if the project can defend itself?

I can't find reference to who is going to defend this? Is EFF going to pick it up? Can we donate?

Why do I always find out about cool and useful things as soon as they are about to be shut down? ;-(

So what's the latest update on it. Did they counter claim? Did anyone set up a fork repo?

This really needs to stop happening

It's still up on gitee

Warning: do a diff against the last archive.org copy to make sure it's clean.

I used YouTube-dl to watch videos, not to download and store them.

Are user-agents illegal now?

Could you just make a fork, take out the offending samples, and call it youtube-ld?

On a technical side-note...

Would it be possible to host a Git server on an IPFS distributed system?

can RIAA be hit back? - to me it looks like the RIAA actions to take down software intimidate the authors of the software and obstructs the authors from exercising and enjoying of the copyright of their software.

Anybody has a fork on the dark web we can all start using? (tor, i2p, whatever)

Where can I find youtube-dl now?

I'm ready to be a sponsor for the project to live further.

Ironically, I've heard of video takedown service that this has broken.

I am not buying this.

Does this mean bittorrent client can be taken down as well?

Who is drawing the line here?

This is a heavy blow for the community, regardless of where forks show up.

Disclaimer: IANAL.

The legal reasoning here is shaky. Notice that they cite a German court and assert that the law there is materially the same as that in the US.

I did some research on this specific issue at one point, and I'm skeptical that Youtube's controls qualify under the law in question.

RIAA cites two sections of the law: >the provision or trafficking of the source code violates 17 USC §§1201(a)(2) and 1201(b)(1).

It almost certainly doesn't violate 1201(a)(2), which is for access controls. This is intended to be used by someone who already has access to Youtube, so no access controls are bypassed.

R. CHRISTOPHER GOODWIN & ASSOCIATES, INC. v. SEARCH, INC., Dist. Court, ED Louisiana 2019:

>While the user id/password combination required for access was surely a "technological measure" that controlled access to the works at issue, Pevny did not circumvent that measure. She validly accessed the system using her id/password combination while she was still an employee with Plaintiff. Even if the use that she made of that access is not something that Plaintiff would have authorized her to do, i.e., copy the materials at issue, it remains that Pevny's alleged abuse of her logon privileges does not rise to the level of descrambling, decrypting, or otherwise to avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating, or impairing anything. As the district court observed in Digital Drilling Data Systems, LLC v. Petrolink Services, Inc., No. 4:15-CV-02172, 2018 WL 2267139, at *14 (S.D. Tex. May 16, 2018), many different district courts have held that using the correct username and password to access a copyrighted work, even without authorization to do so, does not constitute circumvention under § 1201(a) of the DMCA.

Youtube-dl either involves access to files that don't require a login, or it uses your password / cookies to access the file, so it doesn't bypass access controls.

The claim under 1201(b)(1), which is for copy controls, has more potential.

There are the subsections:

>(A)is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof; >(B)has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof; or >(C)is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof.

A and B clearly don't apply. The primary purpose of youtube-dl isn't to download copyrighted content, but simply to download Youtube videos, whether they're copyrighted or not. There's clearly more than limited legitimate uses (such as downloaded public domain videos.) The question here is about C - there's an arguable case that the examples in the repo that this letter cites are "marketing" usage for infringing purposes. I'm somewhat skeptical that counts as "marketing", however, and it could be easily remedied by removing those examples or replacing with public domain examples.

Where can I clone the youtube-dl repo, err.. for educational purposes?

I have Linux and Windows binaries.

If anyone wants them, feel free to shoot me an email.

Just a couple of days ago, I replied[0] to a comment about how the RIAA/MPAA won. Looks like I was right. They just made peace with youtube and now have them enforce their rights, despite the silliness of this "takedown"

Tldr all these comments - youtube dl got in trouble because they link to copyrighted material in the readme which from a legal perspective shows intent to circumvent copyright. If they had just linked to videos they had uploaded themselves as examples everything would be fine.

Maybe it is time to host the project outside of the US?

What if I remember the song I listened to on YouTube and I can remember any copyrighted material? Are they going to serve me with DMCA to disable part of my brain? These organisations are ridiculous.

Sounds like it’s about time youtube-dl moves to IPFS.

I really hope the author will send a counter-notice.

To misquote Richard E Grant: Let the forking begin!

Is there still no safe alternative to GitHub?

why would youtube-dl reference copyrighted material as examples in their documentation/website.... doh!

RIAA should take example from hip hop artists. Instead of worrying about people copying their songs they just talk over the entire piece

This is like issuing a DMCA takedown on Microsoft Word because it's possible to use it as a means to defame someone.

Youtube itself should be taken down because it may be used to upload copyrighted content

and yet the code is still in pypi for any developer to use...

hold on... brew update && brew upgrade

phew. i'm all good.

This is shit!

Better take down wget too just to be sure

Shameful

time to move to gitlab.

anyone hosting mirror?

> this seems outrageous the same way DMCA'ing a Bittorrent client would be

Why stop there? I can use my browser to illegally download content, so I guess we better issue a DMCA takedown that too. But who even needs a browser? Let's issue a takedown for the GNU Project while we're at it because I could use wget to do the same thing. In fact, I could write my own program to illegally download content, so we better just get rid of computers altogether.

Stop attacking useful tools just because they can be used to do bad things! Youtube-dl should obviously change their README to get rid of the copyright-infringing example, but this DMCA takedown is otherwise rotten from the core.

What a shocker

As a technical aside (to the main topic of this HN thread), I had written a blog post some years ago, describing some uses of youtube-dl, and some commentary giving an overview of what its source does:

youtube-dl, a YouTube downloader in Python:

https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/03/youtube-dl-yourube-downl...

Very pathetic that Github took this repository down. I was about to move our company code over to Github from self hosted Gitlab, this move has put the a the brakes on that.

Thanks to this takedown, hundreds of thousands of people will find out they can actually _download_ YT videos. Thanks, RIAA!

Can we pool funds to turn this into a lawsuit?

Music industry died when distribution changed, just die already

RIAA is outta pocket, tell em to eat your ass

I'll download what I want, when I want.

Let them pay to take you to court—

gitlab ftw

fork

They should have counter claimed this nonsense instead of taking down the repo. RIAA is an abusive troll.

Funny this happens right as everyone is scrambling to save JRE episodes, before he goes to Spotify.

What is the simplest way to store source code repos in some decentralized file system? Like store git repo in IPFS folder, would others be able to clone it and submit pull requests?

They literally recommended downloading copyrighted material, which seems like a beacon of "this is primarily for copyright infringement"

Super surprising that software like this could exist in the legal space and with known creators. I mean, it's obviously a pirating app, it makes every effort to circumvent download protection right?

This tool literally recommendeds downloading copyrighted material. This is a good take down.

I doubt there will be many pro-RIAA perspectives here so as someone familiar with their leadership and goals, I might as well add some perspective.

Imagine yourself stumbling upon some incredible technology breakthrough. Let's say, it's some magical script you wrote that automatically improves the efficiency of any container by 70%+. You've worked for years on this specific problem, went broke a couple of times trying to figure it out, and finally struck gold. You form a company, issue that IP to the company, and start getting rich.

Then one day, literally Google comes along and posts your script to some website they own, without your permission. They did this illegally, without your permission, by using this other neat script called gofyourself-dl. You have a problem now. Every is improving their containers or whatever for free. Your company loses revenue every day because why would anyone pay you for tech they can get for free from Google?

What can you do? Sue Google? Good luck with that! No, you would complain to a regulator, which is the only real power (sort of) against that kind of money. You would try and convince that regulator to stop Google from stealing your IP and getting rich from it because it is YOUR IP and YOU should get rich from it. In the meantime, since gofyourself-dl is the way people are stealing your IP, you naturally try to get that taken down because IT IS BEING USED TO STEAL YOUR IP.

Stealing IP is exactly what YouTube is - and has been - doing, for years. There is this weird idea that the major record labels (who fund the RIAA) have unlimited money and are just as evil as blah blah blah, in reality the entire music economy is a minuscule fraction of Google's market cap, power, size, influence, everything, and large tech companies have no real incentive to deal with them in the standard cases because why would an elephant concern itself with an ant.

It sucks to do this to an open source repo, but everything they are saying in this memo is true - this technology is obviously being used to STEAL IP. Its primary focus is the THEFT OF IP. DMCA is a shitty blunt instrument that no one likes, don't for a second think the RIAA is thrilled with that mechanism, but what else are they supposed to do? What would you do if it was someone stealing your proprietary code and posting everywhere after having stolen it from you?

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