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Comment by howdydoo | Hacker News Reader

I use youtube-dl to download Cracking the Cryptic videos. The RIAA does not own those videos. In fact there are quite a few videos on youtube the RIAA doesn't own.

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They own all videos until you can prove otherwise, and win the appeal.

Ah, I didn’t know other countries too have Germany‘s GEMA-Vermutung (per default assumption of media requiring payment to the GEMA for legal use).

The US doesn't have that same law. YouTube decided to do something similar of their own volition.

We do, but it doesn't cover most modern devices.

From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy:

>17 U.S.C. § 1008 bars copyright infringement action and 17 U.S.C. § 1003 provides for a royalty of 2% of the initial transfer price for devices and 3% for media.[20] The royalty rate in 17 U.S.C. § 1004 was established by the Fairness in Music Licensing Act of 1998. This only applies to CDs which are labeled and sold for music use; they do not apply to blank computer CDs, even though they can be (and often are) used to record or "burn" music from the computer to CD. The royalty also applies to stand-alone CD recorders, but not to CD burners used with computers. Most recently, portable satellite radio recording devices contribute to this royalty fund.

>Thanks to a precedent established in a 1998 lawsuit involving the Rio PMP300 player, most MP3 players are deemed "computer peripherals" and are not subject to a royalty of this type in the U.S.

>Currently, private copy royalties are generated in the US by the sale of "blank CDs and personal audio devices, media centers, satellite radio devices, and car audio systems that have recording capabilities."[21]

Okay, that's a fair comment. However, I've never seen it apply to any device actually sold. Even in 1998, manufacturers just changed the label on blank CDs to evade the royalty.

Romania has something similar as well. If you own a business and want to play even ambiental/lounge music (even free music) you need to pay for a license. Of course the money collected that way doesn't go to the original artists.

Sweden has, and it's stupid.

In Russia everyone pays a penny for each medium that may store music. Not sure if any penny goes to musicians

Same in Portugal.

Yep. Youtube's de facto monopoly on video hosting has rules heavily tilted in favor of corporations and organizations like the RIAA and MPAA.

They want the revenue from hosting the content.

You can use thepiratebay to download legal videos too, but the RIAA still cares.

Not saying that I agree with them, but "I use it for a legit purpose" doesn't mean they are going to act sensibly.

Just to clarify, do you mean a few videos or many videos? Thanks

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quite_a_few

The opposite of "quite a few" would be "quite few".

This is not correct. "Quite few" is not correct English.

EDIT: on reading some of the linked sources I realise I was wrong about this.

Hi! English speaker here. It's not common, but it is perfectly acceptable. Here is some data to back this up: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=quite+few%2C+q...

Thanks!

> "Quite few" is not correct English.

I take it you don't speak English yourself? You can apply "quite" to any adjective, including "few".

While one could, it's not an idiom I (native speaker) have ever heard. I've heard "very few", but never "quite few", and I can see why hearing the latter might cause the listener/reader to mistakenly auto-correct it as "quite _a_ few".

But we don't only speak in idioms. "Quite" and "few" are some the least ambiguous words you can come across in English, "quite few" should be clear so long as you don't add words and substitute in your own meaning as the reader.

I think the idiom "quite a few" is arguably worse to use in a diverse audience since it means the opposite of "a few" and is one of the only times "quite a" is used to negate the meaning of what follows.

Using 'quite few' to mean the opposite of 'quite a few' as a non-native speaker is a terrible idea. It doesn't matter how correct it is, a large portion of native speakers are going to assume you mean 'quite a few' and have misheard or mispronounced it.

It's not like either phrase is wanting for totally unambiguous synonyms.

I am a native English speaker and yes quite few is a thing that I have heard and said.

It works, but it's awkward. Same with "quite many" which doesn't get as much use

Perhaps so. But it certainly sounds distinctly odd to me. Fairly confident I have never used or heard the construction myself. (Native speaker, 43, southern UK.)

Non-idiomatic is not the same as incorrect. There’s no semantic or syntactic issue with the phrase.

there are quite few ducks where I live

Not the GP but they mean very many videos, ie the vast, vast majority.

You know what he means. Stop it.

Don't assume. Not everybody is a native English speaker and able to pick up nuances such as when "quite a few" means "super many, lol" and when it means "a few" or "a bit more than a few".

(EDIT: TIL from the sibling comments that it always means "super many, lol" which surprised me) (I'm not a native English speaker)

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