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Comment by aDfbrtVt | Hacker News Reader

Can someone with more knowledge on the matter help explain why downloading copyrighted material using youtube-dl as opposed to a browser is treated differently under the DMCA? In either case you're accessing copyrighted material by downloading from youtube's servers.

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The RIAA's claim includes that the browser UI conspicuously does not provide a download option, and the download option available in YouTube apps coming with protections for the media indicates an intent not to allow this, thereby not providing a download link is a technical protection measure.

The EFF's claim (on behalf of the youtube_dl developers) is that youtube_dl is performing the same actions as a browser as far as accessing the video file and so should not be treated differently, even if its output is to disk and not to the screen.

Under DMCA then we've had a claim, and counter notice. Despite the phrasing of Github inviting and wanting a counter notice, ultimately they are not the arbiters of legality, so their part in the process is now done.

The RIAA now has to bring the youtube_dl developers to court if they plan to keep pushing their argument, at which point we'll have the RIAA lawyers vs EFF lawyers and an eventual legal decision (with potential appeals in the process).

If that ends up in favor of RIAA, that will be a very chilling precedent: that when a client-server application has a UI to perform a client-side translation of user i/o into a more readily transmissible format, you are authorized only to interact with the UI, and you must not touch the translation thereof, at least if the application is handling copyrighted material.

A technologically illiterate company going up against the EFF, the leaders in tech litigation. That's not going to go well for the RIAA. Also, the EFF have github on their side now.

> Can someone with more knowledge on the matter help explain why downloading copyrighted material using youtube-dl as opposed to a browser is treated differently under the DMCA?

It's not.

It may be treated differently under other parts of copyright law based on implied license or other theory, but the DMCA impact is on distributing, offering, etc. youtube-dl, not using it, insofar as it constitutes a circumvention tool under the DMCA.

My understanding is that it's takedown was due to fact that youtube-dl "bypasses technical measures that control access or copying of copyrighted works". I don't see how youtube-dl could be considered a "circumvention tool" if the end user of said tool would have access to the content if they used a web browser instead.

I think the perspective is that they are specifically trying to control your access in restricting it to being through the browser.

out of curiosity (and total legal ignorance)" wouldn't that logic make chrome also illegal? since it's a tool that can be used for circumvention as well. If the defense is that it's not chrome's intended purpose, then one could argue that the defense also applies to youtube-dl since its intended use isn't necessarily to download _licensed_ videos.

AFAIK the integration tests had a link do download copyrighted video and that was the initial basis of the claim. "They are demonstrating how to 'pirate'"

I think it only queried the metadata of that video.

It's not treated differently at all - that's exactly what the EFF just argued in its response to the RIAA [1]:

> Because youtube-dl simply uses the "signature" code provided by YouTube in the same manner as any browser, rather than bypassing or avoiding it, it does not circumvent, and any alleged lack of authorization from YouTube or the RIAA is irrelevant.

[1] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/11/2020-11-1...

EFF responded about that whole subject, and that allowed GitHub to "reinstate" the repo back:

https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/11/2020-11-1...

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