GitHub and EFF back YouTube ripper in legal battle with the RIAA

The EFF made a very compelling case:

“The YouTube website code at issue in this case is different: it was not clearly designed to limit access to videos, or the ability to copy them. YouTube videos arrive at a viewer’s device with no encryption or scrambling. No login, password, key, or other secret knowledge is required to gain access. “Tellingly, YouTube does use encryption and a password-controlled login to limit access to subscribers of its separate pay-TV service, YouTube TV,” EFF adds.

The article expands: "According to EFF, Yout and similar tools provide the same functions as video cassette recorders once did. They allow people to make copies of videos that are posted publicly by their creators. In addition, these tools are vital for some reporters and useful to creatives who use them for future work."

But they missed an opportunity:

Does DCMA outlaw the manufacturer of DVD burners or Cassette recorders ?

Clearly, the RIAA doesn't think so, since they haven't sued?

What puzzles me is Github aka Microsoft being on the other side for once. Probably so it can harm Alphabet.

So the litigants are claiming that "YouTube doesn't have a download button" but they do have a download button. The trouble is that the download button is paywalled, and so if a free user presses it, they get a come-on to subscribe to a premium service that allows downloading. Now I don't know if it allows unlimited downloads or restricts them in some way determined by YouTube and/or the channel owners. But I did some trials of YouTube Music and they very much had download abilities built-in, whereby you could build a local library of DRM'd tunes and you could play that stuff even while you were offline. It was totally useful and enjoyable for me that I didn't need to be connected but I could have some albums of real, copyrighted music to listen to. But by the same token, the downloaded material was closely controlled by the app, so it wasn't like you could just extract mp3s of the stuff for any use whatsoever.

Now YouTube does permit the uploader to set alternate licenses on their videos, which include free Creative Commons licensing, and Public Domain designations. So not every YouTube video is "All Rights Reserved", and download software (or builtin download buttons) should be able to take that into account. (Even though, as a private citizen I'm still within my rights to download that ARR video and use it privately without distributing it!)

It seems fairly obvious that there are plenty of non-infringing uses of the download software. It also seems to me that the download software really has to jump through hoops to circumvent some barriers put up by YouTube, and perhaps some of those barriers are there because YouTube does indeed have a "premium" download button they'd like to protect, rather than merely some licensing concerns about copyrighted content. We'll see how it plays out.

If youtube/rights holders really do not want people finding out ways to archive free content then they should put it behind a paywall like netflix or other OTT apps, nothing to resolve here per se.