Doesn't law enforcement have a means to subpoena Google for such evidence?
* youtube-dl is not just for Youtube (ie. google). It supports heaps of sites, and youtube is probably less likely to have the sort of content I'm referring to than twitter, pornhub, liveleak, who knows.
* I am in Australia, so for a subpoena (or similar) my friends would need to issue an MLAT request, which would indeed take a very long time. In fact, this often does happen, but in the meantime a formal preservation request (to the service provider) and a local copy (via something like youtube-dl) are important steps.
* Many investigations don't go to court, for a litany of reasons (that's a pun I guess). In such cases, a subpoena isn't in context: law enforcement have to investigate what has happened, to figure out if it needs to go to court.
* Some investigations are important but do not meet the 'serious crime' threshold for forcing companies or parties to provide information. If you can imagine being the victim of a minor crime, that someone filmed and put on twitter, I'm sure you can imagine the local police may want a copy of the video before the tweet gets deleted - but also know that there will never be an international cooperative justice process. It's just a local issue.
* Publically posted video is very common and often important, and it is not surprising that the police need a tool to download it. There are so many sites and web browser technologies, and the cops are not efficient spending their time coding youtube-dl equivalents.
I feel quite strongly about youtube-dl being taken down for copyright infringement by the RIAA, but have tried to answer in an informative way. Sorry if it comes across harsh - no ill will intended :)
If I have a subject who has relevant video on a service like YouTube, and I decide to go the subpoena route, here's the process:
- Find the exact video, document the URL, Content creator's account name, and video upload date.
- Submit a preservation letter to Google to ensure the video will still be accessible when the subpoena is auctioned.
- go to my prosecutor/legal team to determine what jurisdiction the subpoena has to go through. It could be the county I'm in, the county the subject lives in, the county the video was uploaded in (unlikely), or the county where Google hosts the video.
- draft the subpoena and get it reviewed by whichever judge/magistrate applies.
- wait who knows how long for the subpoena response, hopefully it comes back with the real video and important content.
- face defense arguments in court that my subpoena was improperly obtained/submitted
No, it doesn't. And that "forever" are human rights that are established and should require a subpoena to contest.
(I can imagine lots of cases how this could be used to fight police corruption.)
If you post a video of murdering someone publicly - no subpoena should be required.
I think we can tell what the RIAA thinks about that.
Being public doesn't mean publicly owned. It means publicly accessible... Like your local shopping mall.
If we have to play by those rules, LEO should too. Boo hoo if it's harder.
They haven't shown anything. They made a claim. We'll know what rules we have to play by if it comes to a court ruling.