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Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

Sure, not the EU. The EU will cooperate with the US if they want an extradition.

In all seriousness, move it to Russia, China, or some other country that has better freedoms in this particular regard and won't take crap from the US about silly copyright concerns.

Or put the source code on the blockchain and it will never be eraseable.

Even better, build a decentralized Github that is actually based on a blockchain but allows transparent interaction via the "git" command. No matter what the DMCA or RIAA want there is nobody that can erase anything from past commits.

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Right Europe will extradite and enforce copyright claims, but the first one would require actual charges to be filed and the second does not apply here. DRM circumvention is a purely American ban, and a European host would not have to pay mind to it.

DRM circumvention is absolutely not "purely an American ban." EU law bans circumvention software under DIRECTIVE 2001/29/EC from 2001.

This is codified into local law in various ways by various member states, but as an example in the UK it became section 296zb of the Copyright Design and Patents Act (as modified by the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003), which can be found at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/296ZB.

(1)A person commits an offence if he—

(a)manufactures for sale or hire, or

(b)imports otherwise than for his private and domestic use, or

(c)in the course of a business—

(i)sells or lets for hire, or

(ii)offers or exposes for sale or hire, or

(iii)advertises for sale or hire, or

(iv)possesses, or

(v)distributes, or

(d)distributes otherwise than in the course of a business to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the copyright owner,

any device, product or component which is primarily designed, produced, or adapted for the purpose of enabling or facilitating the circumvention of effective technological measures. (2)A person commits an offence if he provides, promotes, advertises or markets—

(a)in the course of a business, or

(b)otherwise than in the course of a business to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the copyright owner,

a service the purpose of which is to enable or facilitate the circumvention of effective technological measures.

I shall spare you the rest, which is available at the link. But I would note it's not even a civil offence, it's a criminal one, with a maximum two year prison penalty.

"effective technological measures"

That's the grey area.

Or, you know, you could just ask the people posting their videos (aka the copyright owners) to make them available for download. Most will if asked. They'd probably even provide the highest-quality versions available.

Why do the solutions on HN always involve complicated technical solutions that ignore the rights of the people affected?

> Most will if asked.

No, most people who post good videos don't respond to e-mail.

Whenever I take a flight or long train ride or are otherwise going to be without reception I often youtube-dl a bunch of stuff to watch. That usually happens a couple hours before the flight, and I can't be bothered to deal with e-mailing National Geographic and Coyote Peterson and Smarter Everyday and their ilk and pray that they'll send me a high-res video file. They probably won't.

And there are all the times I've used hundreds of downloaded videos as datasets or test sets for machine learning algorithms.

Just because rights can be theoretically violated with a tool doesn't mean we should ban the tool. My use of youtube-dl is legit as far as the copyright claims of video creators go. I'm not reusing or redistributing their content without permission.

No, most people who post good videos don't respond to e-mail.

Probably just due to the different industries, but every time I've asked a presenter at a legal conference for a video they have been overjoyed that someone would want a copy. 100% yes rate, except for the presenter at a CLE conference (and in that case, the video was available through the conference organizer).

I can't be bothered to deal with e-mailing National Geographic and Coyote Peterson and Smarter Everyday and their ilk and pray that they'll send me a high-res video file. They probably won't.

And yet that is what copyright law generally requires. "Convenience" isn't a valid justification for fair use.

My use of youtube-dl is legit as far as the copyright claims of video creators go. I'm not reusing or redistributing their content without permission.

No, actually you mentioned a number of infringing uses that wouldn't be protected as fair use except for the training bits.

But the issue for youtube-dl is different: as a tool, the question is whether it is designed to infringe copyright, and the answer thus far appears to be that it is, especially given that they explicitly design for and test this ability.

What it may come down to (if this gets to court) may be the percentage of the user base that uses it for legitimate purposes and the percentage that doesn't. If they can't show that a substantial portion of the userbase uses it for downloading stuff other than RIAA licensed videos, youtubedl is DOA.

> "Convenience" isn't a valid justification for fair use.

Not specifically for fair use, but convenience is a perfectly valid justification in my book to transform, edit, or save content for personal use.

[My body + my electronic devices] is a black box, and nobody has the right to meddle inside the workings of that black box. Once YouTube sends bytes into that black box, the extent of their control is done, and don't get to ask what happens inside after that. They don't get to know whether content got recorded on an organic brain or on a silicon brain within that black box, for example. The black box is private, and is not open for introspection.

They can only require that said black box not re-emit information that came from them, or derivatives of that information, back into the outside world.

> number of infringing uses

First of all, fair use is enough reason to have a tool.

But regardless, I don't believe downloading a video for offline personal consumption violates the spirit of copyright, and that's all that matters to me.

When Youtube, or anyone, sends any content into my personal LAN I can do whatever I want with that content within my private spaces and for my private viewing in any way I wish. If the law suggests otherwise, I don't believe in that law.

The law also banned women from voting, and colored people from from sitting in the front of the bus, and it's because of people who didn't believe in those laws that we are where we are today. Sometimes the law is wrong, and I firmly believe the law is wrong to say anything about how I'm allowed to save or consume content that was legally transmitted to a device I own for my own private use.

Maybe what you are looking for already exists?

https://github.com/noffle/git-ssb-intro

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