It's amazing what kind of mental gymnastics can allow someone to think you can watch a video without downloading it. Lawyers live in a world very unlike reality.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a TOS clause about videos on YT not being your property and that you can't export them off the platform unless you own the rights to the specific video. People that watch videos on YT are using someone else's platform; don't like it, don't use the platform, and tell the content creator to upload somewhere else. Nobody is entitled to bypass intentional blocks by YT and use 3rd-party tools to download other people's videos.
Personally I only used youtube-dl to pirate songs from HQ videos :p I can't imaging there being a large percentage of "legitmate" and fair usage.
> I can't imaging there being a large percentage of "legitmate" and fair usage.
My usage is usually no less legitimate than youtube's usage. I'm usually downloading things that were uploaded without permission from the copyright holders from a platform that is distributing them without permission from the copyright holders.
Yes, it does. It’s called ‘receiving the signal’.
However, video streams are not a signal floating in the EM spectrum. They are 1:1 connections that must be requested, their content must be actively downloaded onto local memory, and the content must be transcoded and/or decoded into images and sound to be consumed by a human. The point is that this description is as true for a video being watched on the official YouTube app on a Pixel 5 as it is for a video that has been downloaded with youtube-dl/yt-dl on a PC. There is no material difference in the actual events taking place.
As a interesting side-note, Norway has stopped using FM radio in favor of digital radio, and Sweden is on route to do the same. The primary argument here on Sweden in favor of keeping FM radio is that older car models might still not be compatible with digital radio, and the FM radio could in theory be useful case of national emergency.
There is literally no possible way I can experience the sound or video without first receiving it. The only difference with "streaming" is that lawyers think it is somehow not downloading when you delete it afterwards. Magical thinking.
The detail is with what's in-between the signal and how you're using it.
- It's fine for me to record antenna TV to VHS; there's no copy-protection and it's for personal-use
- It's probably questionable, but largely fine for me to record songs playing with my phone's sound recorder; you can't copy-protect public audible noise in this context
- It's not fine for me to put a dongle/box in-between a Roku or TV streaming box in order to break HDCP to record content. The problem here is breaking the platform's copy-protection.
- It's not fine for me to go to a torrent site and download a song. I think for archive purposes you have to archive from personally-owned media, but it's likely gray-area if you own the media and pirate content of that media from somewhere else (like if you own a PS2 game disc and download an iso online)
youtube-dl was being used to break/bypass YouTube's copy-protection.
That's between YT and the video uploaders; people using yt-dl are not using it to rebel against YT.
What on earth are you talking about? Recording radio or television for personal use is illegal now? Are we so used to not owning a single thing that these things are alien to us now? I mean, I'm not misremembering the era where people taped shows to watch them later, am I?
Also, pardon my language, but fuck off with your "watching videos on YT's platform". It's my user agent, my hardware, my actions that are causing the video to be shown. I'm already making allowances to youtube by executing their code mostly unencumbered, I'm not bending over backwards and granting them extraterritorial rights.
Outside of straight-up piracy, it could be argued that youtube-dl was bypassing YouTube restrictions.
Also if someone had that attitude towards a service I was offering, I'd go out of my way to block their access; I choose the restrictions on my platform that I offer to others, and people that actively go against that can go use someone else's platform or host their own since they're so sure they must know better :p
technically, you are asking for a video to be shown and Google chooses to show it to you. We don't really have the power dynamic to say "we allow google to execute their code", because we are the ones seeking their service.
So basically you are not allowed to listen to what your mood wants but rather what their sponsors want, that or pay us! Yeah no thanks.
Btw, you can still record songs from FM/AM radio too, just use any SDR and pass that to your preferred application and record it, I would love to see how they will prevent that.
youtube-dl was bypassing geo-blocks.
I don't think it was. I've been told by youtube-dl that content is blocked in my region many times.
The article spells out how they claim youtube-dl is bypassing copy protection.
You used to watch video all the time without downloading it - over TV, the theater, etc. Some people see video playing on a computer and assume it must work exactly like something they grew up with.
Google sees this as a transaction: you pay us for Premium, you get to keep the bits for longer, because offline viewing is a paid feature they advertise. Alternatievely, they see it as "you watch this undesirable ad and we give you what you want". downloading the video first goes past this transaction.