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Comment by pests | Hacker News Reader

I have a browser where I can right click on any video and download it locally.

I do not interact with obfuscated URLS, JavaScript, opening any kind of console or dev tools, and no source code.

I save it just as I would save a photo or a pdf.

How is this circumvention? I'm using a feature offered by my browser and using it in a way intended by the creators. The media files are already on my computer (memory or storage, who cares, its been copied already) I am just renaming some metadata like its directory and filename.

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This thread is about YouTube. But the videos you mentioned are fine and no one would call right clicking on a video and downloading it a DRM violation.

But I'm quite confident you can't view or download YouTube videos if your browser doesn't run JavaScript. They require the client evaluate intentionally obfuscated JS in order to determine the video content URL's signature. Whether this counts as DRM or not, I don't know, and I hope it doesn't, but it's clear that YouTube is making it difficult intentionally.

Yes, this is a thread about YouTube. Why are we confirming this?

I meant no JavaScript as in me meddling with the js.

Oh apologizes! When you said you don't interact with JavaScript I thought this meant you didn't run JS but I see your point now.

You can right click on YouTube videos to download them? That sounds slick! How did you set this up? Is something YouTube-specific happening or is it generalized and just happens to work on YouTube? That's totally something I'd like.

I have no idea what that means legally, but to me it certainly supports the argument that doing something so simple clearly isn't bypass DRM/violating the DMCA. (though I'm sure the media industry would argue that whatever browser/extension making this possible is guilty of defeating DRM. )

>I have a browser where I can right click on any video and download it locally.

What browser is that?

Not the parent, but most any browser should support this for basic videos. And with JS disabled I think it's only basic videos you'll see.

That is, any <video> HTML element can be right clicked and downloaded, at least in Chrome and Safari where I tested. Interestingly this even works when for `<video controls controlslist="nodownload" ...>` elements where the developer tries to prevent downloading. (in Chrome that removes the download option from the video player's controls, but not from right-click)

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