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Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

> If they did clone youtube-dl, their clone carries the "meant for copyright infringement" colour.

Which part of it? Not the parts that consist of HTTP libraries, apparently? But you can break any given program into arbitrarily many components that are each independently useful as a component of a different program.

In this case the "meant for copyright infringement" part seems to be some of the unit tests. Does that mean the rest of it is fine? Or that the HTTP library part of it isn't?

You need a better way of distinguishing them than just claiming sorcery.

I mean here's a direct quote from your article:

> Most importantly, you cannot look at bits and observe what Colour they are.

So if the same code appears somewhere else, why would you expect to still have the same "Colour"?

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> Which part of it? Not the parts that consist of HTTP libraries, apparently? But you can break any given program into arbitrarily many components that are each independently useful as a component of a different program.

Not parts, but the entire thing. Colour propagates through causality. The article I refer to explains pretty clearly about what it means. It's the intent and provenance, not the bits, that are important. If youtube-dl gets classified as illegal, then any trivial modification to it will get the same treatment. Even if you end up slowly replacing every bit of code, if you forked off youtube-dl and didn't change the functionality, that's still essentially youtube-dl.

(You can argue that after enough work done, the ship of Theseus isn't the same ship that sailed into the dock. But the important part is that it's still the ship of Theseus, no matter how many parts you iteratively replace.)

Consider cases like going after someone who took GPL code and republished it as proprietary, or plagiarism, or copyright infringement itself. For the law, it doesn't matter whether or not the bits you have are identical to those of the protected work; what matters is how did you get them. It's the same principle at work here.

> In this case the "meant for copyright infringement" part seems to be some of the unit tests.

In this case, unit tests are evidence that the whole project is meant for copyright infringement. The offending entries serve to establish intent.

> unit tests are evidence that the whole project is meant for copyright infringement

Minor quibble, it's not so much infringement (Wouldn't that require redistribution? Or that the original upload itself be a violation?) as circumvention of a mechanism as described under DMCA section 1201.

(But does _generally_ circumventing a mechanism that is only _sometimes_ used to protect copyright actually run afoul of this?)

> Or that the original upload itself be a violation?

The original uploads are on the artists' channels and are monetised (i.e. when I accessed 2 out of 3 of them, an ad played, so I assume some of the cash the adverstisers paid Youtube somehow wound up at the relevant copyright owners).

People seem to continually be misinterpreting this as copyright infringement, and you are right that it isn't. The fact that you bypassed the viewing of ads changes nothing in this matter.

Otherwise, if we would allow this interpretation, then the entirety of modern internet technology is potentially infringing. This is ludicrous.

Nothing substantially different happens when you view the video in your web browser than when you download it using youtube-dl (mpv, the media player, even wraps youtube-dl so you can directly stream a youtube video). In both cases HTTP requests are made, followed by some processing of the data. Does that mean adblocking software is infringing too?

I don't know, maybe the US has totally lost its mind and this kind of thing would fly there, but certainly not in Europe.

It is copyright infringement (via the argument that ytdl facilitates and encourages others to commit the infringement), which happens to bypass ads.

The rights holders have effectively said "you can watch this for free as long as we get the ad revenue". Theoretically, if there was some way of preserving that ad revenue while committing that infringement, I would assume they wouldn't care about the infringement. They're just using the infringement as a tool to preserve the ad revenue.

What you're worried about is the converse, if there is a way to avoid infringing on copywrite while bypassing ads (which there is, ad-blocking), then there's no infringement to use as a tool, then they're going to want to make ad-blocking illegal. It's not hard to predict that's coming, especially in Europe given Article 13 last year.

I'm actually arguing that it is wrong to claim that a copy is even being made by the mere act of streaming (i.e. transferring the bytes of) a media file and hence you cannot violate copyright by merely downloading something. You only infringe once you distribute the content further.

In fact, as far as I'm aware of, this is also how the situation plays out de facto in most (all?) European countries.

> The rights holders have effectively said "you can watch this for free as long as we get the ad revenue".

The key lies in the word "effectively" here. They may have said and even meant that, but I am unaware of a legal mechanism that would actually allow them to do this (in Europe). The only way I can think of accomplishing this would be to make the content available under a dedicated, bespoke licence, akin to how GPL works, and even then I'm unsure whether it would be enforceable. TOSes, generally, are not.

> It's not hard to predict that's coming, especially in Europe given Article 13 last year.

This is wrong. Article 13 regulates content hosts (in this case, Youtube), not end users. Hence, Article 13 has no bearing on ad-blocking software.

> cannot violate copyright by merely downloading something. You only infringe once you distribute the content further.

Wrong. Copying something, without distribution, is still violating copyright. It's just taken less seriously than distribution. It's the same difference between drug dealers and drug users.

>> It's not hard to predict that's coming, especially in Europe given Article 13 last year.

> This is wrong. Article 13 regulates content hosts (in this case, Youtube), not end users. Hence, Article 13 has no bearing on ad-blocking software.

No, I did not say anything at all about Article 13. Please re-read what I said.

> No, I did not say anything at all about Article 13. Please re-read what I said.

What? You very clearly stated that the content of Article 13 makes it easy to predict that the EU will attempt to make ad blocking illegal in the foreseeable future. (Granted, the response to that didn't make much sense - the current law doesn't have to directly affect end users for us to make a reasonable prediction based on it that laws proposed in the future would attempt to do just that.)

> Wrong. Copying something, without distribution, is still violating copyright.

That really depends on the jurisdiction and context. For example, in the US, making backup copies of materials licensed in perpetuity (ex a movie on VHS) is (always, AFAIK) permitted. Another example is recording broadcast TV for the purpose of time shifting it (ie watching it later), which has been explicitly permitted by the courts here. Yet another example is ripping CDs for personal use, which falls under fair use in the US and is therefore not a violation.

> That really depends on the jurisdiction and context.

No it doesn't. If you haven't legitimately obtained Taylor Swift's Shake it Off, you can't argue the copy you made with youtube-dl is a permitted personal copy, in the US or anywhere with copyright laws.

If you did pay for it, then yes you can argue it's a permitted copy (just not in the UK, which has stricter copyright laws).

(this is mostly a copy paste of this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24882280).

>> That really depends on the jurisdiction and context.

> If you haven't legitimately obtained ...

I'm well aware and never claimed otherwise. I very clearly stated that it depends on the context. (It's right there in the text you quoted!)

I was responding specifically to your previous claim that "Copying something, without distribution, is still violating copyright." which was overly broad for the reasons I specified.

Yeah, sorry I knew it was overly broad and should have been more specific. But it was in response to your completely wrong assertion that violating it requires redistribution. I think we're done here.

> your completely wrong assertion

Oops, apologies Reelin I wasn't paying attention to who said what, that was feanaro who was wrong.

> If you haven't legitimately obtained Taylor Swift's Shake it Off

Obtaining Taylor Swift's Shake it Off from a public YouTube video without watching ads is a legitimate way of obtaining it. That is exactly the point.

You are just wrong. Please go learn about copyright. Then you might understand why this takedown happened.

I like think you are wrong and I have presented my case previously, to which you haven't responded. Nothing in copyright law itself can force you to watch ads while downloading a public video. I am completely sure this is the case in my own jurisdiction. If you want, I would be curious to hear your argument about why you think it does in yours.

This takedown happened because DMCA is a broken, frequently exploited law which allows for illegitimate takedown requests, which you must abide by or risk exposing yourself to legal damage for no reason at all.

> to which you haven't responded.

Where? I responded here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24881656

I can only repeat what's there.

> Granted, the response to that didn't make much sense - the current law doesn't have to directly affect end users for us to make a reasonable prediction based on it that laws proposed in the future would attempt to do just that.

You're right. I assumed the OP was arguing that Article 13 itself somehow regulates ad blocking software, which is the only way I could interpret it so as to not be a non sequitur, but in doing so I made a non sequitur myself.

I never said Article 13 bans ad blocking. What I wrote was too difficult to parse and I should have realised that at the time and made it more clear. E.g.:

"It's not hard to predict they (EU and media corps) will want to make ad blocking illegal in future with a new law following on from Article 13." I could have said something more vague like "not hard to predict it given the direction the world is headed at the moment" to make the same point.

> Wouldn't that require redistribution?

(sorry meant to reply to this earlier)

No, copyright infringement doesn't require redistribution. In the UK if I buy a physical CD and rip it to a PC, purely for personal listening, that's still infringement (there have been attempts to change the law but they failed: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/quashing-of-private-copyi...)

I was unaware that copyright in the UK was so extreme. That's unfortunate.

The topic at hand, however, is a DMCA action between two US entities (the RIAA and GitHub) and so is purely a matter of US law AFAIK. My understanding (possibly mistaken) was that the courts here had nearly always permitted making personal copies of otherwise legitimately obtained media. In fact, my understanding is that reversing this status quo was one of the primary motivations behind the DMCA; by disallowing circumvention of protection schemes, in many instances it effectively outlawed the tools needed to make otherwise permitted copies.

> otherwise legitimately obtained media

That's the issue. If you haven't legitimately obtained Taylor Swift's Shake it Off, you can't argue the copy you made with youtube-dl is a permitted personal copy, in the US or anywhere with copyright laws.

If you did pay for it, then yes you can argue it's a permitted copy (just not in the UK).

> Not parts, but the entire thing.

Which would include the HTTP library and the system call implementations it makes into the operating system etc., and you're back to an intractable mess.

> If youtube-dl gets classified as illegal, then any trivial modification to it will get the same treatment. Even if you end up slowly replacing every bit of code, if you forked off youtube-dl and didn't change the functionality, that's still essentially youtube-dl.

Play it backwards and see if it still works. Somebody forks Chrome and creates Chrome, Pirate Edition. The only difference is the logo and that the third party distributors overtly promote it for copyright infringement. It gets declared "illegal" but it's still 99% Chrome, and Chrome is still 99% it. Is Chrome now illegal? Is the shared 99% of it? If not, how are you drawing the distinction?

> Consider cases like going after someone who took GPL code and republished it as proprietary, or plagiarism, or copyright infringement itself. For the law, it doesn't matter whether or not the bits you have are identical to those of the protected work; what matters is how did you get them. It's the same principle at work here.

Except that copyright actually has some well defined mechanisms for determining which aspect of a work is infringement if you copy it. If you publish a book of poems and one of them is in the public domain, you can still copy that one. And the author of each of the other poems still owns the copyright to that poem, even if they're all published together in the same book.

So how does that apply in this case to an open source project with multiple contributors and components?

> In this case, unit tests are evidence that the whole project is meant for copyright infringement. The offending entries serve to establish intent.

Except that the project has multiple independent contributors each with their own intentions, so "the project" doesn't have any singular intent.

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