No, 1201 says, among other things, that it is a violation of the Copyright Act (which may only carry civil liability, so not necessarily "illegal") to share the means to circumvent access controls to a copyrighted work. That is the part of 1201 the RIAA cited in its letter.
It is the sharing that is the alleged 1201 violation. Not any circumvention.
The letter does not cite 1201(a)(1); it does not allege circumvention.
For a section 1201 violation to be criminal it needs to be willful and for the purpose of financial gain. See Section 1204. To me, the term "illegal" means "in violation of the law", and hence enforceable by so-called law enforcement. Here, non-wilful violations of "the law" that are not committed for financial gain are only enforceable by copyright owners. This, to me, falls into the category of violating someone's intellectual property rights, not violating "the law". If you see things another way, that's fine. I respect your opinion and ask that you in turn respect mine.
Note the use of the phrases "primarily designed", "has only limited commercially significant purpose", "is marketed ... for use in circumventing" -- I think the RIAA is on thin ice in this respect, but that's not for me to decide of course. Grepping through my bash history I see some stuff that could perhaps be RIAA stuff, and other things that aren't.
Anyway:
(a) Violations Regarding Circumvention of Technological Measures.—
(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that—
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
(3) As used in this subsection—
(A) to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and
(B) a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.
(b) Additional Violations.—
(1) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that—
(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.
(2) As used in this subsection—
(A) to “circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure” means avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating, or otherwise impairing a technological measure; and
(B) a technological measure “effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, prevents, restricts, or otherwise limits the exercise of a right of a copyright owner under this title.
Section 1201 (a) (1) (A) says:
"No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. The prohibition contained in the preceding sentence shall take effect at the end of the 2-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this chapter."
So circumvention itself is also illegal under the DMCA. But this issue is about trafficking in circumvention devices.
There's really is no way around this. YouTube videos are protected by technological copyright restrictions. ANY attempt to get around those restrictions is a crime.
Even if this were not the case, you would be committing copyright infringement by downloading the videos for unauthorized use anyway. The DMCA just gives legal teeth to technological attempts to prevent casual infringement.
This is incorrect. The website implements the protection mechanism, browsers execute it, just as youtube-dl. The implementor is the person writing the code, not the system executing it.
> Certain YouTube videos are licensed only for streaming playback by the YouTube site or app.
The meaning of this sentence is unclear. What does it mean for playback to only be allowed by the (web)site? Websites alone cannot do anything -- they require a web agent which fetches and executes them. Firefox, Chrome, Safari and youtube-dl are examples of such agents.
> Even if this were not the case, you would be committing copyright infringement by downloading the videos for unauthorized use anyway.
Luckily for me, I am in a jurisdiction where this is not the case and where DMCA plays no role.
In other words, there's a catch-22 in how strict we are about the definition of effective protection. 99% of the public won't even open their browser tools so I guess if youtube-dl is put behind some very generously documented JavaScript that is easily bypassed then it is not actually out in public because it is effectively DRM protected, right?
To over-simplify, you just need to implement a streaming client that saves to disk. That's the reason there are a gazillion youtube downloaders and custom, also open-source, clients that can "show" Youtube.
Thus, unless I've been misinformed and, extrapolating a little, they could just as well take down 'wget' in the same go because it also downloads potentially copyright-infringing files over various protocols.
I'm actually more interested in what this could mean for Adblockers, which often need to employ a variety of tricks to get around anti-adblocking tech on websites.
Illegal (“contrary to or forbidden by law”) , but not necessarily criminal.
If the RIAA where to win, then it would mean just opening a URL would give the site owner grounds to file proceedings.
An example being a DB being left open to the internet, that has sensitive data, the DB owner would be able to file a case if you just opened the DB.
For example, if YouTube has effective DRM. Then I suppose I should be good to throw up all the latest Disney movies on my personal website, for personal viewing, behind that same effective DRM, right?
You can circumvent it using the inspect element feature of any modern browser.
yt-dl "cirucmvents" it by executing the javascript (the same thing your web browser does).
At this rate V8 is going to get DMCAd for the same reason.
Pretending yt-dl simply does what YouTube does is obviously not true either, because if it did, then yt-dl wouldn't exist. The copyright holder decided he would allow the streaming of the work, if you want to download it you should either get the ok from the copyright holder for that or choose another work to download, or even make one yourself. V8 doesn't change that.
No, it means "in an effective manner"; that's also how it is specified in European legal languages (which have more different words with less ambiguity); the effectiveness must be an objectively ascertainable characteristic of the technology, not simply an (unsubstantiated) claim by the claimant; A "mock protection" would not be protected by the law.
> because if it did, then yt-dl wouldn't exist.
You mix up design decisions made by Youtube with copyright law. Even if Youtube requires users to not download videos in their terms of services this has nothing to do with copyright law and the DMCA based actions.
Technological measures shall be deemed 'effective' where the use of a protected work or other subject matter is controlled by the rights holders through application of an access control or protection process, such as encryption, scrambling or other transformation of the work or other subject-matter or a copy control mechanism, which achieves the protection objective.
DIRECTIVE 2001/29/EC OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 22 May 2001 (see https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...) article 6, paragraph 3: what you quoted.
RICHTLINIE 2001/29/EG DES EUROPÄISCHEN PARLAMENTS UND DES RATES vom 22. Mai 2001 (see https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/DE/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...) Artikel 6, Paragraph 1: quote "gegen die Umgehung wirksamer technischer Maßnahmen", Paragraph 3: "Technische Maßnahmen sind als „wirksam“ anzusehen, soweit die Nutzung eines geschützten Werks oder eines sonstigen Schutzgegenstands von den Rechtsinhabern durch eine Zugangskontrolle oder einen Schutzmechanismus wie Verschlüsselung, Verzerrung oder sonstige Umwandlung des Werks oder sonstigen Schutzgegenstands oder einen Mechanismus zur Kontrolle der Vervielfältigung, die die Erreichung des Schutzziels sicherstellen, unter Kontrolle gehalten wird.
DIRECTIVE 2001/29/CE DU PARLEMENT EUROPÉEN ET DU CONSEIL du 22 mai (see 2001https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/FR/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...) Article 1: "le contournement de toute mesure technique efficace" and "Les mesures techniques sont réputées efficaces lorsque l'utilisation d'une œuvre protégée, ou celle d'un autre objet protégé, est contrôlée par les titulaires du droit grâce à l'application d'un code d'accès ou d'un procédé de protection, tel que le cryptage, le brouillage ou toute autre transformation de l'œuvre ou de l'objet protégé ou d'un mécanisme de contrôle de copie qui atteint cet objectif de protection."
plus another 22 translations.
German national law: "Wirksame technische Maßnahmen zum Schutz eines nach diesem Gesetz geschützten Werkes", see https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__95a.html
Swiss national law: "wirksame technische Massnahmen", https://www.admin.ch/opc/de/classified-compilation/19920251/...
So the laws in general only apply to technical measures objectively (i.e. corresponding to the state of the art) able to protect legal rights in an effective manner. Measures which are not considered effective cannot claim legal protection.
"technological measures in effect" (as you proposed) means "technische Maßnahmen in der Tat angewandt" in German or "les mesures technologiques en vigueur" in French which is not the same as "wirksame technische Massnahmen" or "de toute mesure technique efficace" or "effective technological measures"
The whole point of youtube was to make it convenient for decentralized content creators to share things. Most WANT their stuff being downloaded. If I'm uploading an educational or family video to Youtube, it's because it's a convenient way for others to watch it, not because I want to maintain control, or earn $0.0001 in ad revenues for Auntie being shown a Trump campaign ad.
youtube-dl makes it possible for kids in the developing world to watch educational videos, for people to watch family videos in rural America, and for kids to learn remotely.
Youtube-dl doesn't do what Youtube does. What it does is extends Youtube to millions of people without high-speed internet connections. That's not a population Google particularly cares about including (not a lot of ad dollars), but it's also not one Google particularly cares about excluding (they are not douchebags, like the RIAA).
If the RIAA wants locked-down controls, they should go with centralized platforms. That's what they're there for. In the meantime, shooting educators using Youtube in the foot means, eventually, educators will go somewhere else.
He discusses exactly this issue, and points out that it does not matter how strong the protection really is...even if it's a basic obfuscation that could be reversed with a one-liner, it still qualifies.
You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/wZITscblMBA?t=889
In short, even though the above comment is being downvoted, I think it is correct from a legal perspective, in the sense that even YouTube's basic approach to obfuscation will be sufficient to quality.
But in the case of youtube, it exists to automate what can trivially be done by hand using the inspector. Seriously, yt-dl really does just selectively run some javascript which gives it the video URL.
I disagree that "effectively" means "in effect", it's the first time I've heard of this and in past court cases regarding such protection measures, the plaintiff had to prove that the measure was effective (not trivially bypassed by an unskilled average user by accident as I think could be argued in this case).
Regarding your claim that I am "pretending" that yt-dl simply does what YouTube does: When I go to the inspector and find the URL for the video and audio streams, without prior knowledge that youtube is using some kind of "rolling cipher" I would have no idea that there was some kind of protection in use. I can access the video stream of a youtube video using just my mouse, I don't have to run any functions or find any decryption functions. You should try it. It's hard to argue that there is a protection mechanism in place if someone could by accident discover the video data if they were a curious user who started playing around with the inspector console.
Finally, to address your implication that the tool is designed to unlawfully acquire content from youtube. I don't think the tool is intended for that purpose, at least not the way it is presented. I think it's important to distinguish between "downloading with intent to keep" and "downloading with intent to temporarily access". I'm not sure if such a distinction is ever made in the courts but it should be considering the former may be illegal depending on whether you asked the copyright holder if you can do it and the latter is literally what your web browser does. 99% of the time I use youtube-dl (which is also the way it gets used by programs like mpv or the kodi youtube plugin), I use it to access and temporarily view a video. I may be on a machine where having a full fledged web browser would be impossible because of performance reasons or whatever. Or I just don't like the youtube viewer and want more control over the playback. The project also codifies in multiple places the intention that it is not designed for illegal use. Extractors which bypass DRM or access control measures are not accepted.
If you look at the implementation of youtube-dl's youtube extractor (please do, the code isn't that complex) it is easy to claim that: youtube-dl is simply a very heavily stripped down web browser which is intended simply to provide the ability to view videos and audio streams on websites with minimal overhead without any intent to circumvent any protection schemes.
As a final note: youtube does have DRM protected videos which use some kind of encryption, these do not work with youtube-dl, I tried (and I paid for the video not knowing that I would be stuck with it being encrypted unless I had EME enabled, in a last ditch effort to watch it I tried youtube-dl but it had the same problem, I got a refund).
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/first-amendment-case-a...