YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

https://github.blog/2020-11-16-standing-up-for-developers-youtube-dl-is-back/

by fusl • 6 years ago

2636 655 6 years ago

github.blog

vagrantJin• 6 years ago

Superb.

envy2• 6 years ago

Excellent.

Looks like they've removed the tests for RIAA member videos as the only change, which I assume helped get this restored: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/1fb034d029c8b7...

offtop5• 6 years ago

Fantastic compromise.

Arguing that you have a right to break RIAA DRM is much harder that taking it out entirely.

I use this for downloading national archive videos off youtube, I'm very happy about this news

crumbshot• 6 years ago

And not even purged from the repo, it's still in the history if needed. Seems like the copyright holders making a big fuss over nothing really.

bigbubba17• 6 years ago

I wonder if RIAA lawyers believe themselves productive members of society, or if they recognize themselves as the parasites they are.

saynay• 6 years ago

I have become convinced that the RIAA lawyers emerge from their crypts every few years, generating a slew of copystrikes to justify their retainer fee.

joseluisq• 6 years ago

Seems like the copyright holders making a big fuss over nothing really.

This should be the conclusion. Since they have won nothing with such whole noise. Only increase more the OSS wave.

userbinator2• 6 years ago

They don't understand technology, and in this case I don't think they should be told...

toyg5• 6 years ago

It's a shot across the bow, to achieve a chilling effect. They've achieved a few weeks of downtime, for now, and sent a message to the project that they're being watched. It might well not be the end of hostilities.

dastx2• 6 years ago

My experience has been that Github doesn't ever purge commits from the history. Even when you rewrite the history, all the dangling commits are still there and can be access. I've yet to find a way to force Github to do a gc so such commits are removed. Without Github running a GC on the repo, the commits will not be removed.

izietto• 6 years ago

I guess that if they want to run those tests they can cherry-pick that commit, run the tests and then drop it

mr_mitm• 6 years ago

The way I read it, the test cases weren't really the problem. The RIAA was alleging that the purpose of youtube-dl is to circumvent DRM and they try to back this statement up by pointing out that copyrighted works are being downloaded in the test cases.

Here is a bit of a discussion about it by seemingly knowledgeable people:

https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/57421/is-youtube-dl-...

> the source code expressly suggests its use to copy and/or distribute the following copyrighted works owned by our member companies: > Icona Pop – I Love It (feat. Charli XCX) [Official Video], owned by Warner Music Group Justin Timberlake – Tunnel Vision (Explicit), owned by Sony Music Group Taylor Swift – Shake it Off, owned/exclusively licensed by Universal Music Group
Complainants are "confused" about actual infringement (which is prohibited by copyright law), and creating a method for infringing copyright. Under DMCA and US copyright law, copying is infringing, programming is not infringing. The complaint does not clearly allege unauthorized copying of another person's intellectual property, and their complaint is based on the theory that certain programming actions constitute copyright infringement. I don't actually think they are confused, I think they are testing the boundaries.

echelon• 6 years ago

It would have been fantastic if every test using RIAA copyrighted music had been replaced with public domain sources. Or, better yet, videos the maintainers created and uploaded themselves.

gpvos2• 6 years ago

That won't work, because Youtube applies the particular sort of protection that those tests exercise only to copyrighted music.

shawnz• 6 years ago

Shouldn't these tests be considered fair use since they are arguably necessary to validate interoperability?

R0b0t13• 6 years ago

Yes, and I unfortunately still see no argument related to the DMCA's provision that breaking copy protection is legal if you have a license to use the work. In this case, a license to use it via a specific browser is not mentioned, so you can rightly download it with anything.

This was the suspected cause for py-kms's reinstatement but as it related to Windows licensing.

umvi• 6 years ago

Is there a way to get equivalent tests on non RIAA videos?

Rochus13• 6 years ago

Looks like they've removed the tests for RIAA member videos as the only change

And even that was more likely to allow certain somewhat too loud organizations to save face, not out of legal necessity.

Sebb767• 6 years ago

Here is the commit: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/1fb034d029c8b7...

It seems that only removing the test was enough.

nivenkos• 6 years ago

Good news.

What if someone were to write a separate script that generated the necessary tests for youtube-dl?

Then prior to releases they could privately generate the code and run the tests, but still ship it not referencing any copyrighted material.

dutchmartin• 6 years ago

So it seems that the dealbreaker was that one of tests that downloaded copyrighted material (see the last commit [1]). Seems like a reasonable thing to not do, and just replace those tests with just random cat videos.

[1] https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/1fb034d029c8b7...

gbl08ma2• 6 years ago

It doesn't work like that since certain videos use obfuscation methods that random cat videos don't.

chongli• 6 years ago

I was under the impression that those obfuscation methods were exclusive to certain YouTube partners, including the RIAA members. If youtube-dl stopped supporting that method, it would still be a useful tool for the bulk of its use cases and the RIAA would no longer have any leg to stand on since it'd no longer be able to download their members' videos.

boomlinde• 6 years ago

I suppose a developer that wants to make sure that it works with certain DRM schemes can add cases of their own, locally, without pushing the change.

toyg5• 6 years ago

Since this affects only tests, they could easily change the relevant scripts to download a list of test videos at runtime. I bet the RIAA github-scrapers would not "see" it. Just serve statically a rot13-encoded list of URLs from pastebin or something, and Bob's your uncle.

TheRealPomax• 6 years ago

feel free to file an issue and tell them that, but clearly it does work in this case.

themihai• 6 years ago

Nice...I bet the evil RIAA didn't think only about the two tests when they reported the project....

sp332• 6 years ago

Actually that's all they complained about.

hvis• 6 years ago

IIRC the complaint was about the "circumvention" algorithm in the code.

josephcsible4• 6 years ago

I think the point was that their real goal was to kill youtube-dl entirely, and the tests just happened to give them something to complain about to do so.

jasonjayr2• 6 years ago

Random cynical thought -- they noticed because the automated testing was bumping up the # of views on those streams, so their members were being forced to pay royalties on views that were not real ...

boogies10• 6 years ago

Great, now they can import the issues to a GitLab/Gitea instance hosted by the same Germans who refused to ever take down youtube-dl.org, and a few other places for redundancy, and not have to go through all this excess stress again.

jrochkind17• 6 years ago

I have trouble believing gitlab would just ignore a DMCA takedown request? This is what people believe? This is something gitlab has said?

Actually, I guess I'm not sure of the consequences to a company of ignoring DMCA takedown requests (whether or not they are US companies; but Gitlab is now btw), but I assume they are not good, or why do companies bother complying? Rather than assume, I should look into it.

But yes, redundancy for sure.

boogies10• 6 years ago

gitlab.com? No. https://youtube-dl.org/ ’s host? That’s almost exactly what they did. (Edit: here’s my comment on a story that details their response somewhat: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24909982).

b0afc375b5• 6 years ago

I think he's referring to a self hosted gitlab instance, not gitlab.com

jrochkind17• 6 years ago

gitlab.com, btw, does clearly advertise that they comply with DMCA takedown notices.

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/dmca/

Others in this sub-thread have identified that the downloadable releases are actually currently hosted on gitlab.com.

Gitlab has their internal workflow for handling DMCA takedown's public (as with most/all of their internal policies, which is cool!). https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/security/opera... It may be that they go a little bit slower with more chance for the alleged infringer to respond (with a counter-notice or voluntary takedown) than others.

But in the end, any major US company (or company doing business with the US) is probably going to comply with the DMCA, which says that if you get a takedown notice that is formatted correctly, you take down. Then there's a process with user filing a counter-notice, then the original filer having a chance to respond to THAT, etc., that you can see in the gitlab workflow, but most of that is just how DMCA works. "If there was a valid counter-notice and no response has been received from the plaintiff within 10 days of the counter-notice being forwarded" then the content might go back up.

boomboomsubban10• 6 years ago

The youtube-dl removal was not a DMCA takedown request, under no situation could you consider the repo to be hosting copyright material.

jedimastert2• 6 years ago

Actually, I guess I'm not sure of the consequences to a company of ignoring DMCA takedown requests (whether or not they are US companies; but Gitlab is now btw), but I assume they are not good, or why do companies bother complying? Rather than assume, I should look into it.

The request is essentially a precursor to a lawsuit, so the consequences are a potential lawsuit and all of the legal fees that go along with it.

IgorPartola• 6 years ago

Well this was a wild ride from start to finish. Anyone got a count on how many times someone suggested distributing YouTube-dl via a blockchain in all these discussions?

Also, how come Google hasn’t asked for it to be taken down given that it has YouTube in the name?

bigbubba17• 6 years ago

Please don't try to give Google any ideas.

DarkWiiPlayer6• 6 years ago

well, git is a block chain, so I guess this is already the case :D

CodesInChaos• 6 years ago

Was a counter-notice filed, or did github restore it without one, once the tests were removed?

Because my understanding was that certain decryption/anti-drm functions were also in the scope of the takedown request, not just the tests.

DoingIsLearning• 6 years ago

I think github's CEO was keen to restore it [0], probably on a matter of principle but also probably on how much negative advertisement it brings them, in terms of 'trusting' github as host.

I am sure they had MS's legal team advise them on what they can get away with.

[0] https://twitter.com/t3rr4dice/status/1320660235363749888

_the_inflator• 6 years ago

I agree with you. They double-checked the issue with their legal team.

I use the dl'er to download talks. I am featured in a couple of talks and want to secure these offline.

DanBC2• 6 years ago

Anti-DRM can't be part of a DMCA takedown request. The remedy available to RIAA is to go to court and get an order.

mackal• 6 years ago

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

EFF did file a counter-notice

solidninja• 6 years ago

How long before we start the discussion about exporting issues/comments and preparing for another event like this? :)

DarkWiiPlayer6• 6 years ago

Negative time I'd say; as in, it has already been mentioned what feels like a million times. Maybe just open an issue on the github repo?

Torkel• 6 years ago

The amount of publicity this generated for youtube-dl is astounding... I would love for this to be a ”the plan to get rid of youtube-dl backfired badly for RIAA” ending. But I guess RIAA is reviled enough already so nothing they do really matters. So I suppose the hope is that some political will to change the laws around this arises from it.

xbar• 6 years ago

True. It seems we need to wait for a generation of media-consuming legislators to age into the Senate to get past The Eagles complaining that their music is being "pirated" on Tik Tok.

toomuchtodo2• 6 years ago

Wait? No, no need to wait. Run for office, push out the dinosaurs.

"The chief penalty [of good people who refuse to lead] is to be governed by someone worse." -- Plato

okareaman• 6 years ago

As someone who is old enough to have heard The Eagles when they first came out, this is hilarious. No offense to Eagles fans, but they were mostly forgettable Top 40 from the get go.

mschuster912• 6 years ago

So I suppose the hope is that some political will to change the laws around this arises from it.

We had mass demonstrations across Europe with the Article 13 fiasco and nothing happened.

Revolutions aside, copyright will never be reformed anywhere in a consumer friendly manner - politicians are way too deep in the pockets of the industry.

DarkWiiPlayer6• 6 years ago

All the parties that were pro reform in the "article 13 fiasco" will still get votes. Unless people grow a brain and start remembering things, they will just get away with anything unless it happens right before an election. Alas, we evolved from monkeys, not from elephants.

torstenvl• 6 years ago

Honestly, this is what caused me to install it. Have downloaded one video so far - a U.S. government work, so no copyright.

boomboomsubban10• 6 years ago

If the RIAA notice is to be believed, you've still admitted to a crime as you've bypassed YouTube's DRM, which is their hosting of the video in other public links.

scaramanga2• 6 years ago

I don't think it's about whether they're reviled enough yet, but rather whether the actions they're taking are likely to engender effective activism and organised political opposition to their agenda.

In this case, it looks like they've discovered that the community isn't asleep at the wheel and that this isn't the hill they want to die on.

jraph• 6 years ago

Some clever people working for the RIAA might have suggested to their lawyers that they take down the youtube-dl repository to generate some publicity around the project.

And now they are pretending "What is this youtube-dl thing everybody is talking about recently?"

RIAA, you are heroes. That's very nice to promote underfunded free software projects like this.

Fice• 6 years ago

I don't believe that RIAA's real intention was simply to get rid of youtube-dl. This was probably just a show to push for more DRM on the Web.

petey2832• 6 years ago

Great news!

Aissen5• 6 years ago

Wondering what will happen to forks ? Mine is still blocked, and I can't push to it to rebase/merge, removing the tests.

Aissen5• 6 years ago

Update: I have received the procedure for reinstating from GitHub Support: https://twitter.com/Aissn/status/1328610884109938690

OneTwoPetitFour• 6 years ago

I guess the maintainers will have to send "forbidden" patches among each other outside of Github, in order to run regression tests against the "extra DRM" videos.

siddharthgoel882• 6 years ago

But now I guess Github should be used as a read-only redundancy rather than for development.

josephcsible4• 6 years ago

Why? GitHub didn't do anything wrong. They took this down because they were required to by law. It would have been the same story with anyone else.

siddharthgoel882• 6 years ago

What I meant is that they would rather do a self-hosting (Gitea, etc.) instead of using another platform to have ore control.

Moreover, my statement was more of a speculation rather than an advice :-D

R0b0t13• 6 years ago

Breaking copy protection is only illegal if you do not have a license to the work. Removing the protection breaking code isn't necessary, and everyone needs to stop pretending that it is.

This same clause of the DMCA is the suspected reason for py-kms's reinstatement after a takedown: it's perfectly legal to break the Windows license scheme if you already own a license to Windows.

superkuh• 6 years ago

Github is part of the RIAA via Microsoft. That is something wrong.

DarkWiiPlayer6• 6 years ago

Simply having a good migration strategy might be more than enough.

CivBase6• 6 years ago

GitHub is still hosting the full youtube-dl version history, including versions which include those supposedly infringing tests. Does copyright law end with HEAD on master? Those tests are still there.

This makes it especially obvious that the RIAA's problem with youtube-dl was never really the tests.

DarkWiiPlayer6• 6 years ago

Does copyright law end with HEAD on master?

I think the RIAAs technical know-how ends with the github web interface, so in a way, yes, copyright effectively ends with HEAD.

jbaber• 6 years ago

Then when someone realizes to use the web interface to check out that old commit, the whole thing opens up again. Hopefully github's lawyers who OK'd this know a bit about git.

rectang2• 6 years ago

Does copyright law end with HEAD on master?

With regards to copyright law and "distribution", there's no distinction. The tests are still being "distributed", just from a different URL. If youtube-dl was in violation before, they still are now.

This is a confusing result. I would not expect any copyright litigant to sacrifice legal advantage for the sake of an adversary's convenience in maintaining complete version control history.

Could there possibly have been a miscommunication over what "remove the tests" meant? Or an offer of compromise outside of legal necessity? Or a bad-faith fulfillment of a promise to "remove the tests"?

cosmojg• 6 years ago

Does the fact that the RIAA is packed with stodgy, old corporate lawyers who most likely lack even superficial understanding of the term "version control" lack appropriate explanatory power?

kzrdude2• 6 years ago

Everything just points to the dmca takedown request being treated as if it was invalid; the repository was restored more quickly than needed and without any real changes.

crazygringo• 6 years ago

I've always wondered about copyright and HEAD.

For example, you can find a LOT of copyrighted font files that were committed somewhere in GitHub, and then removed in a later commit once they realized they'd accidentally uploaded a copyrighted file.

But they're still always there in the history, effortless to download.

I'm not really sure what to make of that. I don't think it would really count as removal in court... but it seems rare and complex enough that it's not worth bringing up?

boomboomsubban10• 6 years ago

If GitHub received a DMCA takedown notice, they would be obligated to takedown the copies of the fonts listed in the notice, including if old copies were listed. I'm unsure if they could say "all releases before X" or would need to link each one.

If the copyright owners tried to sue the project for copyright infringement, IANAL but I would assume that the removal from head would show an attempt to correct the mistake and limit liability.

If the copyright holder sued an individual I imagine it would matter if they were mirroring the repo or just intentionally downloaded the copyrighted files for personal use.

chaorace• 6 years ago

On that note, does git as a protocol even have a clean mechanism for redacting history like this? If someone were to press this to the logical extreme, how could a developer most cleanly excise violating history from a repo using current tooling?

TillE• 6 years ago

A lot of stuff like this is technically infringement but will never be worth anyone's time suing over, except maliciously.

jedimastert2• 6 years ago

This makes it especially obvious that the RIAA's problem with youtube-dl was never really the tests.

Or that the RIAA lawyers are technically oblivious

scaramanga2• 6 years ago

Or that they simply don't care about the specific infringement, rather they are just trying to chill the free-speech rights of software developers and fight a culture war on all fronts to expand the rights, privileges, power, and wealth of their clients.

momothereal• 6 years ago

I suppose it depends on how the claim is formulated? Take the CraftBukkit[1] claim for example. In that case, all commits since a specific point, plus all forks, were taken down:

"Pages including infringing content: [...] infringing as of commit [...] and every subsequent commit, including all forks that contain this commit [...] and all forks that share a common first commit [...] and every subsequent commit, including all forks that contain this commit"

This made any effort for restoration futile, since most of the repo was being claimed.

[1] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2014/2014-09-05-C...

IshKebab• 6 years ago

Yes I really doubt the law cares about which commit some code is available on, as long as it is available.

This makes it especially obvious that the RIAA's problem with youtube-dl was never really the tests.

It doesn't, because the RAII were not involved in youtube-dl's restoration at all.

anuila• 6 years ago

I don't think the story ends here.

If the tests are the issue, they can just send another DMCA specific to those pages.

Either way, I think in the US anyone who has the most time and money wins, so… good luck with SLAPP.

disposekinetics• 6 years ago

Does anyone know if youtube-dl accepts financial support? The prospect of losing the program made me realize how much I rely on this project.

rphillips• 6 years ago

It will be nice when the RIAA lawyers start submitting PRs to fix an issue.

DarkWiiPlayer6• 6 years ago

That would have been a great way to go about it. "This part infringes our copyright, here's a patch to fix that". But we all know they don't want to fix anything, they want only to destroy and prop up the corpse as a big bad wolf so the actual content creators get scared and keep paying them.

dbeley• 6 years ago

Excellent news, now the community has a central place to contribute. All in all I think it even had a positive impact for youtube-dl, the community will learn from it, and the number of people knowing about youtube-dl has grown by quite a lot.

MrGilbert• 6 years ago

From the irc screenshot that was linked further down this thread [1], it reads that the "cipher circumvention code" needed to be removed? I can only see some rework being done in the past related to the extractors. [2]

So they gave up on this one, or is there more to come?

[1] https://twitter.com/t3rr4dice/status/1320660235363749888

[2] https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/commit/2de2ca6659a18b...

ihuman• 6 years ago

They don't need to remove the cipher circumvention code, because there is no cipher circumvention code

https://github.blog/2020-11-16-standing-up-for-developers-yo...

swyx• 6 years ago

3.3k issues, 756 open PRs. do they need help?

werid• 6 years ago

this is why it was forked a bit before the takedown, youtube-dlc contains fixes not in main youtube-dl. the guy who forked it tried to help but got banned from posting and helping out.

https://github.com/blackjack4494/yt-dlc

as of last youtube-dl version, the main youtube-dl behaves differently if you simply point it to a youtube channel, while youtube-dlc behaves as you'd expect... i keep both around for now.

aphextron• 6 years ago

Waiting now for the "Why we're moving to Gitlab" blog post.

jjice• 6 years ago

If any maintainers or contributors see this, thank you all for your incredible work! youtube-dl is one of the best tools I've every used. It's polished and always working and with such an incredible community. This is seriously a killer piece of software that is part of my default setup for every new machine I've had over the past 4-5 years.

I've downloaded countless free lectures that some universities offer for offline viewing and sometimes listening if it's a discussion based class. Seriously, this is great software.

platz• 6 years ago

Did they say why?

t0astbread• 6 years ago

Great news! It's also worth pointing out that the team has been releasing new versions while the repository was down which is quite remarkable.

sleepy_keita• 6 years ago

And now more people know about youtube-dl than ever before. What exactly was the RIAA's goal?

Havoc• 6 years ago

Congrats on the Streisand RIAA!

Flawless execution.

Thev00d00• 6 years ago

I didnt think I could have much more goodwill toward the EFF, yet here we are.

Donations link: https://supporters.eff.org/donate/30for30--D

gogopuppygogo• 6 years ago

If you want to put your everyday Amazon spend to good use by sponsoring EFF at no cost to you then checkout http://smile.Amazon.com and start sending the EFF money today.

paledot• 6 years ago

If you want to put your everyday Amazon spend to good use, don't spend on Amazon.

toomuchtodo2• 6 years ago

Say what you will about Github and Microsoft, this was a classy move. A million dollars is a million dollars. "Putting your money where your mouth is".

"Nonetheless, developers who want to push back against unwarranted takedowns may face the risk of taking on personal liability and legal defense costs. To help them, GitHub will establish and donate $1M to a developer defense fund to help protect open source developers on GitHub from unwarranted DMCA Section 1201 takedown claims. We will immediately begin working with other members of the community to set up this fund and take other measures to collectively protect developers and safeguard developer collaboration."

Thanks Microsoft/Github.

boogies10• 6 years ago

I wonder how much MS funds the RIAA as a member of it.

geofft2• 6 years ago

Dues are $2500/y if you have revenues of $1-5MM, $5000/y if you have revenues of $5-15MM, and "contact us" beyond that: https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/RIAA_ApplyFo...

Since one presumes that Microsoft does not sell much music (didn't they shut down their music store a few years ago?), I can't imagine they've negotiated dues that scale linearly on Microsoft's total revenue - so, in fact, I'd expect that $1M is well beyond their RIAA dues.

Now, it's possible that MS is contributing money other than dues to the RIAA, but you can bound that a bit from their Form 990: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/131... For 2017, they got under $100K in "contributions and grants" and $29MM in "program service revenue," which is later determined to be dues. They received no other significant revenue. So no donor could have possibly given them more than $100K.

(... also, why did the RIAA give $4K to the Kenai River Sportfishing Association?)

varispeed8• 6 years ago

If MS is a member of RIAA they should consider putting forward a motion to close it down or at very least leave it.

tboyd472• 6 years ago

They are creating a fund that they control to take the place of EFF and avoid future stand-offs.

bayindirh• 6 years ago

Is replacing EFF that easy?

Honestly asking.

disown2• 6 years ago

A million dollars is a million dollars.

Not if you are a company worth $1.6 trillion dollars.

But that $1 million dollars probably bought them a lot more in free press.

To put it into perspective, it would be like someone worth $1.6 million giving a homeless person $1, filming it, putting it on youtube and profiting off of it.

Thanks Microsoft/Github.

Is this real?

Edit: Of course the downvotes. Not sure if employees of microsoft or people working in microsoft shops or the quality of people HN has attracted as declined.

For people saying nonsense like "A million dollars is a million dollars even if the company is worth 100 trillion dollars."...

Do you think forcing someone who makes $100 million to pay $1 million in taxes is the same as forcing someone who makes $2 million to pay $1 million in taxes? $1 million is still $1 million right? I guess the concept of proportionality is foreign to many here?

The "love" for microsoft recently is interesting. Facebook should look into buying that kind of love.

skrebbel• 6 years ago

Wow. No good deed goes unpunished, right?

ffpip• 6 years ago

Not if you are a company worth $1.6 trillion dollars.

A million dollars is a million dollars even if the company is worth 100 trillion dollars.

Expected contribution to legal defense costs of developers - $0

Current contribution for legal defense costs of developers- $1 million

samatman• 6 years ago

Your metaphor is kind of silly, since it compares the EFF with the unhoused, but, playing along, it's more like someone worth 16 billion giving an unhoused person $10,000.

A million bucks is real money, EFF can do a lot of good with it. They're not going to buy a pack of chewing gum with it.

I'm old enough that I doubt anything will ever turn me around on Microsoft, it annoys me to no end that they bought Github. But by the same token, I'm big on the EFF, and I'm stoked that they scored some loot: I'll give Microsoft credit for that, but the only way I'm forgiving the company its past sins is if it liquidates the company and sets up a charitable fund for free software.

RonanTheGrey2• 6 years ago

There's now a bulwark between developers and bad actors attempting to use Github and the legal framework against them. It is very probably that outside actual, valid legal justification, what the RIAA tried will never be tried again, thanks to the presence of that fund.

Put a price on that.

bergstromm466• 6 years ago

Is this real?

I'm as amazed as you are.

The "love" for microsoft recently is interesting.

The Corporatocracy has never been so polarizing.

zamalek• 6 years ago

GitHub will establish and donate $1M

What is really needed is a "counter-DCMA troll." So far as I understand DCMA, legal fees can be collected for a successful counter-claim.

With the rife DCMA fraud these days, someone could make a pretty penny. DCMA has provisions for claim fraud, it simply requires attorneys to creatively weaponize it (which unfortunately doesn't apply to YouTube, because their process is not DCMA/legal).

Karunamon• 6 years ago

As I understand it, DMCA claim fraud requires legally proving bad faith, which is a quite high bar to clear.

There are no provisions for negligence (which is what most of these claims probably amount to - you could even make a good argument for depraved indifference, but there are no provisions for that either) or mistakes, it has to be intentionally fraudulent. Even if it was a completely BS takedown, you're left with proving malice rather than error.

quantumwoke• 6 years ago

Truly surprising and welcome response from GitHub. I did not expect them to go this far for developers at all. As a FOSS developer myself, I wish more companies would treat DMCA requests like this.

redvenom2• 6 years ago

Take that, RIAA!

OzzyB4• 6 years ago

The forks still seem to be borked, hopefully they will get resolved.

My fork[0] is still showing DMCA notice and shows that it's a fork of some repo I'm sure I never forked, I forked the original ytdl-org.

[0]https://github.com/ozburo/youtube-dl

qilo• 6 years ago

Yeah, my fork of the original also shows the same never seen before repo as source: https://github.com/ppawel/youtube-dl

disk0• 6 years ago

(Unless I'm missing something) you can't even delete the dcma'd one in the repository settings to clear up the repo name again :/

OzzyB4• 6 years ago

FWIW: My fork is now back up -- I got a friendly support email from GitHub, and based on their suggestion I opened a support ticket to have them delete my current fork/url and then I simply reforked the original repo.

I guess this is best outcome one could expect from dealing with such a situation xD

ggoo3• 6 years ago

Good job GitHub.

Rochus13• 6 years ago

In what respect?

ggoo3• 6 years ago

If you read the blog post, it goes over several good changes:

- What we’re changing

- Developer defense fund

- How we’re working to improve the law

amelius• 6 years ago

This makes me wonder, what would happen if Google started blocking yt-dl?

GranPC• 6 years ago

The developers would release an update to circumvent the block.

bigbubba17• 6 years ago

Would they? They've not for Netflix, nor (to my knowledge) does youtube-dl support even the videos on youtube that you have to pay to watch.

Daniel_sk• 6 years ago

Good job GitHub and Microsoft!

arriu• 6 years ago

I wonder how much involvement there was from Microsoft on this matter. Either way, good job guys!

layoutIfNeeded• 6 years ago

Microsoft is a member of RIAA.

fastball• 6 years ago

And also the owner of Github.

iso1631• 6 years ago

"The RIAA reports that total retail value of recordings sold by their members was $10.4 billion at the end of 2007, a decline from $14.6 billion in 1999"

Not sure where that value's gone in the last 13 years, but it didn't look like exponential growth.

Microsoft's annual profits are about $14b.

aDfbrtVt2• 6 years ago

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.

acqq• 6 years ago

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...

dragonwriter3• 6 years ago

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.

aDfbrtVt2• 6 years ago

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.

torben-friis• 6 years ago

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.

nakovet• 6 years ago

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'"

anonymousab• 6 years ago

I think it only queried the metadata of that video.

Macha• 6 years ago

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).

hunter2_5• 6 years ago

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.

wgjordan9• 6 years ago

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...

petey2832• 6 years ago

Pleasantly surprised here.

ryanar• 6 years ago

It seems like EFF fought for youtube-dl and GitHub used their letter as legal firepower to bring the repo back online. If GitHub were fighting for the developer they would have funded the attorney, right? Though from their blog post it does look like they are taking steps to fund defense in the future as well as other steps to improve the situation.

Reading EFFs claim is pretty interesting, they state that saving a copy of a video is only one function of youtube-dl. I think the biggest problem is the name is called "youtube download", it is sort of difficult to downplay that saving a copy is only one function when the name implies it is the main purpose of the program.

globular-toast2• 6 years ago

Whenever you watch a video you are downloading it. youtube-dl merely gives you control over where that stream goes, whether it's to a hard disk or to a media player like the regular Youtube.

bigbubba17• 6 years ago

The point is that youtube-dl does more than just download videos. It can also be used for downloading metadata. I use -J to download metadata formatted as JSON.

baobabKoodaa2• 6 years ago

Whenever you watch a video you are downloading it.

Why is this comment downvoted? It's highlighting one of the most common misunderstandings that laypersons have regarding video download/streaming. Most people think that you can "view" content on the internet without downloading it. In this context, a tool which purports to "download" content, you know... sounds like it's nefariously doing something that the "viewing" tool (like a web browser) doesn't do.

TechBro86154• 6 years ago

AFAIU the argument is more that youtube-dl is effectively a web browser and doesn’t do anything that a web browser doesn’t do. Further, it does not include any “secret” key for DRM circumvention like might be bundled with e.g. Chrome in the case of Widevine, where browser vendors agree to protect the secret key.

kmeisthax2• 6 years ago

Right, but the law makes no mention of secret keys, it just says you can't go around anything that controls access to a copyright work; and you can't provide tools to do so. The actual legal definition of tools covers both actual technical purpose as well as marketed purpose. Rebranding, say, OBS as "Recorder for YouTube" and talking about how you can use it to get around YouTube's downloading protections by screencapping the entire video would possibly constitute a 1201 violation.

There's also another question of law, though: does 1201 apply when only the intent of the DRM has been circumvented, as opposed to it's technical scope? In other words, does pointing a camera at a monitor constitute circumvention of DRM under section 1201? Most DRM can't actually validate, say, that a human is watching instead of a camcorder. (Let's ignore pesky things like Cinavia which are more akin to post-piracy frustration techniques, and easily circumvented with any kind of Free media player.) Likewise, YouTube's rolling cipher can't really validate that it's not sitting inside of an instrumented browser that will dump whatever URLs it grabs. Our hypothetical OBS rebrand wouldn't actually be a 1201 violation unless the law specifically covers things that DRM can't technically enforce but would like to.

shbooms• 6 years ago

that's how understood it as well:

"youtube-dl stands in place of a Web browser and performs a similar function with respect to user-uploaded videos. Importantly, youtube-dl does not decrypt video streams that are encrypted with commercial DRM technologies, such as Widevine, that are used by subscription video sites, such as Netflix."

"We presume that this “signature” code is what RIAA refers to as a “rolling cipher,” although YouTube’s JavaScript code does not contain this phrase. Regardless of what this mechanism is called, youtube-dl does not “circumvent” it as that term is defined in Section 1201(a) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, because YouTube provides the means of accessing these video streams to anyone who requests them. As federal appeals court recently ruled, one does not “circumvent” an access control by using a publicly available password. Circumvention is limited to actions that “descramble, decrypt, avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate or impair a technological measure,” without the authority of the copyright owner."

Aissen5• 6 years ago

If a program had its own implementation of widevine, why wouldn't you also be "effectively a web browser" ?

feanaro3• 6 years ago

I called this a couple of times[1][2] so it is nice to finally see someone else make this argument. It seems obvious to me.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25006577

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24997072

rzwitserloot• 6 years ago

That's a DMCA argument (I'm not hacking).

But it doesn't really work: If you protect your house with no lock, not even a door, but just a little rope with a sign on: "Do not jump over or duck under this ribbon, or cut it!", that's, for the DMCA, enough - so you get into fun games where you claim that, say, a long random unique key that is right there in the HTML youtube.com serves which links to the video is a 'security measure' and that 'I shall read the URLs in this <video> tag and download what I find there instead of showing it on the screen' is 'circumventing this'.

How far can you stretch the meaning of 'circumventing access-control measures' before, in court, you lose your argument? I don't think anybody quite knows yet, but surely github doesn't want to be on the hook for it without microsoft's legal team and management signing off on the risk.

Furthermore, separate from DMCA's hacking provisions, there is simply the concept of who is responsible for any copyright infringement caused by stuff github hosts. As per 17 USC §512 (the so-called 'safe harbor provision'), the idea of claiming 'hey I just host this stuff, I'm not responsible for this, why dont you take it up with whomever uploaded this' is codified: You can do that, but it does mean that you _MUST_ take down the content in response to a takedown notice, and if you don't, then you are now liable any infringement that content makes.

The idea is that the owner of the data files a counterclaim notice, at which point the hoster (github) is free to re-host everything without opening itself up to liability, but only if, as per 17 USC §512, they do so 'no less than 10 days and no more than 14', and github did it in 1 day, so whoopsie there I guess.

At that point it does turn into a fight between claimer and counterclaimer: The idea behind those 10 days is that the supposed real content owner can then go file in court against the counterclaimer; merely filing a lawsuit is enough: Show that to the hoster (github), and they can no longer re-enable the content without then being liable for infringement by doing so.

You can't file a counterclaim until your content is removed.

Yeah, that means an utter bozo can take your content down for at least 10 days and there is nothing you can do about this. The DMCA is not particularly well designed in this manner (it doesn't protect against trolly crud well, and getting a barratry verdict in the US is borderline impossible). But that's how it works.

In github's shoes, the fact that youtube-dl doesn't infringe is relevant only insofar that they are willing to ride that notion allllll the way to the gavel in the ensuing court case, because they will be defendants if they ignore the takedown request. Presumably they weren't going to just do that without at least a close look by microsoft's legal team, and a signoff from the big wigs for the likely millions this will cost, given that US law in these matters is... well, have you ever seen one of those shows where 2 people are on a beam and trying to knock the other one off with a giant q-tip? US law is like that, except the ends of the q-tips are moneybags.

jonplackett• 6 years ago

I wonder if the RIAA will now be putting pressure on YouTube to use the same DRM as Netflix, so that when a video is downloaded they can’t use this ‘it’s just a browser guv’ defence because there would then have to be some circumvention to make it work.

mschuster912• 6 years ago

If GitHub were fighting for the developer they would have funded the attorney, right?

By expressively taking the side of the accused (such as paying their attorney), Github could have opened themselves to being liable for whatever youtube-dl does.

Having the EFF as an independent party sidesteps that issue.

kodah4• 6 years ago

Open question to HackerNews: are there big tech firms that give lobbying money to free software lobbyists?

Feel free to highlight them here.

I'd rather cut this problem off at the head than sit around and establish legal defense funds if possible. I'm glad GitHub and Microsoft could help contribute to this victory though.

kovek• 6 years ago

I'd rather cut this problem off at the head

I don't understand what you mean by this! I know it's an expression or a way of saying something, but I don't understand what you mean

kmonsen• 6 years ago

Pretty sure Google is ensuring employees to give money to EFF.

wintorez3• 6 years ago

EEF deserves every penny of donation they receive.

dylan6044• 6 years ago

The EFF might deserve it more though

Rochus13• 6 years ago

I don't believe that Github actually needed the EFF's writing for this, or that they don't have the necessary technical expertise themselves. That is probably rather a protective assertion not to lose face. But at least they seem to have learned something from it now and want to review such requests technically before they (unjustifiably) act.

TheKarateKid3• 6 years ago

This. Github is acting like the knight in shining armor, but they really didn't do anything except respond to the backlash their complicit no-questions-asked removal caused.

panarky• 6 years ago

Github links to the EFF letter [0] in the DMCA repo.

This letter spells out in clear, convincing and explicit detail why the RIAA was wrong.

Profit-making Github and Microsoft could have performed this analysis and championed developers themselves, but it was the non-profit EFF that actually did the work.

EFF deserves more credit than just a link for fighting against this shit.

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

Fumtumi3• 6 years ago

Lets assume, for once, that what they wrote, is what they stand for.

I think this is a very very good / exemplary reaction.

remram4• 6 years ago

Why didn't they start with youtube-dl though? They will defend developers and err on their side "going forward" but no not that one?

Surely they already had the legal manpower when the youtube-dl removal started making waves. The fact that they did nothing for over three weeks and are publishing this blog post right after the issue was fixed by someone else (EFF) makes it hard to believe their "changes".

ponker• 6 years ago

When Microsoft and the RIAA square off, the letter of the law isn’t really the battlefield. The battlefield is influence with the US Senate, and the EFF, while well regarded, is a Sancho Panza compared to Microsoft.

AsyncAwait2• 6 years ago

Microsoft won't square off with the RIAA since they're part of it.

NoSalt• 6 years ago

To be honest, I had no idea youtube-dl did anything else other than download YouTube videos. What other functions does it have?

seba_dos1• 6 years ago

"Downloading" doesn't mean "saving a copy" (unless you count "saving a temporary copy of its chunks in RAM"...). Most of my youtube-dl usage comes from its mpv integration, so the video is simply streamed directly for playback.

calcifer• 6 years ago

It supports a lot of video sources [1], not just Youtube.

[1] https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/tree/3f1748b9445e9d93...

dredmorbius3• 6 years ago

youtube-dl is a networked multimedia swiss army knife supporting many operations and manipulations of audio, video, metadata, and auxiliary content from many video and audio hosting sites and platforms, as well as serving as an access layer for several playback tools, including mps-youtube, mpv, and VLC.

npteljes• 6 years ago

It supports audio-only sites too. I personally sync my favourites on Mixcloud with it.

maeln• 6 years ago

It support a gigantic amount of website, including audio one. Most of the time, I use it to have an offline copy of a podcast, radio show or some video that I might need to look at wherever I am not guarantee to have an internet connexion (very useful when travelling). It also has a lot of useful option like downloading the audio only of a video, choosing the quality of the video/audio which might be hidden in the website you are trying to watch it from, download subtitle (this is just so useful), you can pass ffmpeg options also to post-process the video in one go, ... There is just so many thing you can do with it. One last example : one of my computer really struggle to watch video/stream directly from the browser (for whatever reason), but with youtube-dl I can stream directly to VLC/MPV and it use 1/10 the CPU comparing to watching the same video in the browser.

duxup• 6 years ago

Also their examples in their docs for youtube-dl included copyrighted content ...

I'll let the lawyers debate that whole thing, but IMO I think that was a bit of a mistake / bad idea. Granted, fixable, but maybe a lesson of something to avoid.

app4soft• 6 years ago

It seems like EFF fought for youtube-dl and GitHub used their letter as legal firepower to bring the repo back online.

I'm at least one of those who requested EFF to take a look on "The RIAA’s attack on YouTube-dl is not a DMCA 512 infringement" thread.[0,1]

[0] https://twitter.com/app4soft/status/1320617082866847746

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24888234

jjeaff2• 6 years ago

How has youtube not sent a cease and desist for the name youtube-dl?

They would most definitely have a case that the name makes it appear to be a youtube product. Would a cease and desist for the name only somehow imply that google has no issue with the functionality?

Because I know not protecting your trademark can lead to dilution. And by issuing takedown notices, they are showing that they are aware of the existence of this usage of the youtube trademark.

asperous• 6 years ago

Youtube has to realize that a significant amount of content that people watch on its site is reaction, commentary, compilations, and other recycled content.

I think its for this reason that they don't go after these projects very aggressively.

lscotte• 6 years ago

Actually it seems more like the EFF had nothing to do with it at all and the unit test patch is the reason it was restored - just like Github says in the blog entry.

tubbyjr• 6 years ago

i have ytdl bound to some macros on my browser, so i can stream videos outside of the browser for accessibility reasons

sneak• 6 years ago

GitHub is owned by Microsoft, who is a member of the RIAA who created this legal action.

For Microsoft to pay for the lawyers to take it down (via their RIAA membership payments) and also pay for the lawyers to keep it up seems... rather silly.

mmcdermott2• 6 years ago

From the outside in, there are a lot of aspects of the legal system that look like this - welfare for lawyers. Unfortunately, fixing it requires changing the law and we've made of practice of sending a lot of lawyers to Capitol Hill who are very sympathetic to the needs of lawyers. It's probably the biggest self-perpetuating interest group there is.

1vuio0pswjnm74• 6 years ago

Add to this that the original author recently posted a story about the origins of the youtube-dl script admitting it was designed to do:- download YouTube videos and name the downloaded files appropriately.

https://rg3.name/202011071352.html

Under DMCA, neither writing a script like youtube-dl nor using it is prohibited (making an unauthorised copy of a video could be fair use).FN1 Section 1201 however prohibits distributing the script to others. Thus, the author of the script who "releases" (distributes) it is not necessarily the only one who might be violating the DMCA. Any recipient of the script who distributes it further, e.g., Microsoft, could be violating the DMCA as well.

FN 1. Section 1201 prohibits distributing technology that is designed to circumvent either "access controls" and/or "copy controls". Similarly, the act of circumventing "access controls" is prohibited. However, the act of circumventing "copy controls" is not explicitly prohibited. Making unauthorised copies, e.g., downloading YouTube videos, is subject to the defense of fair use. It is arguable that youtube-dl is only designed to circumvent "copy controls". As others in the thread point out, there are generally no "access controls" on YouTube videos, e.g., password protection. There could be exceptions. If youtube-dl is designed to circumvent geographic or age restrictions, would those be considered "access controls".

Aside from DMCA concerns, Google's Terms of Service for YouTube would appear to prohibit use of youtube-dl:

"The following restrictions apply to your use of the Service. You are not allowed to:

1. access, reproduce, download, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, alter, modify or otherwise use any part of the Service or any Content except: (a) as expressly authorized by the Service; or (b) with prior written permission from YouTube and, if applicable, the respective rights holders;

2. circumvent, disable, fraudulently engage with, or otherwise interfere with any part of the Service (or attempt to do any of these things), including security-related features or features that (a) prevent or restrict the copying or other use of Content or (b) limit the use of the Service or Content;

3. access the Service using any automated means (such as robots, botnets or scrapers) except (a) in the case of public search engines, in accordance with YouTube's robots.txt file; or (b) with YouTube's prior written permission;"

https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms

Would these TOS be enforceable if challenged. #1 makes no allowance for fair use. What do you think.

RoutinePlayer• 6 years ago

Honestly, the name is problematic. Why do some developers insist on bad names? Stop the bad names .. unpronounceable crap like xoyx-mp4, zycx10 should also be avoided .. what's wrong with vidl, or something simple like that? .. I'm half joking, but it's worth underscoring.

Bqhatevwr• 6 years ago

They literally had a test case in the repo for circumventing copy protection on youtube.

I'm somewhat baffled they managed to get the repo reinstated given that's very much a violation of the DMCA.

joshspankit• 6 years ago

An important point:

There are many videos on YouTube that are 100% legal to download.

cipherzero• 6 years ago

This really is great to see, but it’s clear from their careful wording that the google takedown of the recent widevine l3 repository won’t be reversed:

And our reinstatement, based on new information that showed the project was not circumventing a technical protection measure (TPM)

Since it is clearly circumventing a “TPM.”

nyuszika7h• 6 years ago

It's kinda pointless to reverse that takedown. You can find it elsewhere, and Google plans to revoke the key in Q1 2021 after increasing/changing the obfuscation on widevinecdm.dll.

matsemann• 6 years ago

To help them, GitHub will establish and donate $1M to a developer defense fund to help protect open source developers on GitHub from unwarranted DMCA Section 1201 takedown claims.

At the end. While I hope it won't be needed, I hope it will be useful when the need arises.

kevincox2• 6 years ago

I found it strange that they constantly used "developers". I guess this is the marketing department word to use instead of "users"?

globular-toast2• 6 years ago

Microsoft recognise that it's developers that have been pushing for open source/free software so they are desperate to keep them on side and locked in.

myself248• 6 years ago

Github's users are developers, so I think both terms are fair game. Pick the one that sounds best.

kvark• 6 years ago

Not to be confused with Github developers, who work on plugins, calling GitHub API, etc?

kevincox2• 6 years ago

GitHub also has a large number of other users like people downloading software and reporting issues, product managers, qa testers...

I get that developers are the main drivers but it struck me as some unnecessary pandering.

varispeed8• 6 years ago

You can use git to version almost anything - e.g. your essays or todo lists. That doesn't make you a developer.

coldtea2• 6 years ago

GitHub's users are developers, not the general user.

hunter2_5• 6 years ago

Year ago, long before I developed software, I would search for some software (to use, not to extend) and often find that the way to obtain it was by visiting SourceForge. In many ways, SourceForge and GitHub can be directly compared. Was I a developer for using SourceForge in this manner?

sitkack• 6 years ago

Well done Microsoft!

I can't imagine the political turmoil in the org that led up to this. It wasn't simply a quick sting that would fade, the mass protest on the site was probably the biggest wake up call. MS could easily have pissed away the 7.5+ billion they paid for all the developers that use github.

Without developers, github is nothing.

egnehots• 6 years ago

Thank the EFF for their letter: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/11/2020-11-1...

They explained why the DMCA has no grounds.

genuinebyte• 6 years ago

Even after a repository has been taken down due to what appears to be a valid claim, we will ensure that repository owners can export their issues and PRs and other repository data that do not contain the alleged circumvention code, where legally possible.

So they have the ability to export issues and PRs already, but it isn't exposed to users?

ericpauley• 6 years ago

Exporting your issues and PRs is easy: file a DMCA claim against yourself.

Jokes aside, you might also be able to make a claim under GDPR, as with Spotify.

ChrisArchitect• 6 years ago

I'm late on this discussion but as Google has made Youtube their platform for music streaming, their only platform for music streaming, this can be used to download all music from there no? (not even talking about movies) Kind of sucks for them, seems like this is a major threat to that service in eyes of their content providers (record labels)

wg0• 6 years ago

Would be stupid and naive to ignore or belittle every other contribution but open source and hacker culture has pushed the human race forward by leaps and bounds within just last two decades alone.

This spirit and culture must live on forever.

darepublic• 6 years ago

Cue ewok celebration. However by episode 7 everything we'll be back in the same situation sans ewoks.

huhtenberg• 6 years ago

I take GH/Microsoft won't implement any punitive counter-measures for frivolous 1201 claims?

Their new claim processing appears to be fairly resource-heavy. It'd be only fair to recover some of the costs they will end up sinking into it.

agency• 6 years ago

Sincere question: What kind of punitive counter-measures could they implement here?

goodluckchuck3• 6 years ago

Just spitballing, but maybe Tortuous Interference. The Youtube-DL developers and users have an advantageous business relationship with GitHub/Microsoft, which was interrupted and permanently harmed by the frivolous claim. Github has done this to mitigate the harm, but people will continue to question whether Microsoft will reliably serve, etc.

YouTube-DL could potentially argue Slander of Title, which is well established in terms of claiming ownership of another person's copyright. Claiming someone else's intellectual property is inherently illegal seems pretty similar.

It would be hard for YouTube-DL to prove damages, but with a showing of intent there could be room for punitive damages based on what the RIAA thought they stood to gain.

cosmie2• 6 years ago

Doubtful as the law would likely need updated to allow for that.

They'd basically have no way to enforce the punitive counter-measures. They could certainly hit a company with an invoice, but that company could just ignore it. As Github ignoring future 1201 violation claims from that company would open Github up to liability, regardless of the reason for ignoring the claims.

varispeed8• 6 years ago

They could throw few millions at lawyers to draw a law that makes organisations like RIAA illegal and then put forward few more millions at congressmen and lobby for its passage. That would make real difference. RIAA estate should be confiscated, sold and proceeds distributed among artists (not labels)

floatingatoll• 6 years ago

Previously in DMCA 1201 takedowns, Admiral anti-adblocking v. EasyList (2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14990137

mmastrac• 6 years ago

Competition in the source-control space is a great thing. I am not entirely convinced that they would have done the right thing without the threat of losing developers en-masse to competitors.

hobofan2• 6 years ago

Sadly, I don't think there is any risk for them for "losing developers en-masse to competitors".

Everyone who seriously considers to leave the platform has already left when they were acquired by MS and/or continued to work with ICE, and both of those only caused a miniscule amount of people to leave.

RonanTheGrey2• 6 years ago

I have a rather large project that is in a stage where asking "where do we host it?" is appropriate.

I was >< this close to choosing Gitlab over Github due to this - I stopped all efforts to make the decision until I saw how this plays out.

Happy to push to Github now.

It's a data point of one, but there you go..

Vespasian• 6 years ago

I´ll confess that I did not expect that and am happily surpsied.

hardmath123• 6 years ago

A gem in the EFF's letter (https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/11/2020-11-1...)

To borrow an analogy from literature, travelers come upon a door that has writing in a foreign language. When translated, the writing says "say 'friend' and enter." The travelers say "friend" and the door opens. As with the writing on that door, YouTube presents instructions on accessing video streams to everyone who comes asking for it.

hunter2_5• 6 years ago

I personally agree, but there are some interesting counter-examples. For example, if someone discloses the credentials to an account but says nobody is authorized to use those credentials, I think it violates the CFAA to use those credentials. Even more-so if they only tell you their username, but the password can be inferred without direct disclosure (e.g., if the username is "thepasswordishunter2").

kmeisthax2• 6 years ago

CFAA covers unauthorized access to computer systems - the only case I know of where CFAA was used to prosecute something akin to a DMCA 1201 claim was Sony suing Geohot for putting a tweezer to the RAM on his PS3. It's a novel legal strategy (in case you don't think DMCA 1201 is broad enough), but it was never entirely litigated in court as Geohot settled the case. I still don't think it would have passed muster in court, as it was akin to arguing that someone had violated the CFAA by hacking into their own computer that they forgot the password to. (Either that, or Geohot was poking at PSN and Sony knew this - I never followed that particular case thoroughly)

ComputerGuru2• 6 years ago

For those that haven’t experienced the joy of Tolkien’s writing, this is a reference to the Elvish inscription on the Doors of Durin in The Fellowship of the Ring, that is simultaneously a riddle and literal instructions on entering.

vdfs• 6 years ago

Is it accurate to say more than 90% of HN readers have seen that movie?

ReidZB2• 6 years ago

Fun fact, that inscription also contains of the few continuity errors in published Tolkien material. It starts with:

The Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria

but as the Tolkien Gateway explains:

The name Moria means "Black Chasm" and was a derogatory description of the place which the Dwarves did not like, and was given after Durin's Bane took over the city in the Third Age. It is therefore a mystery why that name appears on an inscription made in the Second Age, and made in consent with the Dwarves.

The most common "mitigating explanation" I see is that Tolkien, the "translator," perhaps used the name the reader would be most familiar with (Moria) instead of the city's real name (Khazad-dûm) when transcribing the door's inscription.

infogulch• 6 years ago

It means both:

Speak, friend, and enter.

Speak "friend" and enter.

Without punctuation it would be a pun in addition to being a riddle and the instructions.

OzzyB4• 6 years ago

Excuse me, but let's calm down a little with the whole "we're developers for developers" rhetoric.

You didn't restore the repo, the restored repo is a heavily modified version based on the poorly interpreted opinion that having some Taylor Swift (who sucks btw) test cases in your code are grounds enough for a legitimate DMCA claim, and that the only way the repo can be "legally" restored is by removing them.

You didn't "fight" for us because now the precedent has been set (along with the chilling effect) that whenever we push code to GitHub, certain agencies who demonstrably don't have the interests of developers in mind or even understand what code is or what we do, will be able to hold us and our codez ransom.

That's not freedom, that's capitulation.

Also, let's not forget that implementing a methodology in code or in text ("here are the steps you need to take") are one and the same. So based on that principal all the posts on StackOverflow[0] that describe the actual steps needed to take, and accompanying code examples, should be pulled under DMCA also.

[0]https://stackoverflow.com/a/28006836

OzzyB4• 6 years ago

Sorry, I meant to say:

"Great Job GitHub! You really stepped up this time, things are so much better now that you're owned by Microsoft! Remember Developers, Developers, Developers!"

varispeed8• 6 years ago

We need some billionaire to step in and lobby against organisations like RIAA to make them illegal. First one who does it, will be forever remembered as the one who saved artists and their fans. RIAA only protects labels who obtain rights to art in questionable manner (just read so many stories about artists being cheated by the label). We need something that will be paying artists directly and there is technology to solve that. RIAA is a cancer and must go.

mxskelly• 6 years ago

The fact that it comes down to "the RIAA continues to have power" versus "we have to trust some billionaire to stop this" is disgusting, imo.

whimsicalism• 6 years ago

What a world we have come to when the only hope of bad laws being changed is if "some billionaire" takes a fancy in our cause.

varispeed8• 6 years ago

A world where corruption has been labelled as lobbying and everyone seem to accept that. People only vote on who can line their pockets and hope they have some semblance of morals. Unfortunately there is no other way to make change in area protected by massive wealth.

grishka• 6 years ago

Labels must go too. Artists legitimately needed them when distribution required physically producing and distributing media to stores. With the advent of the internet, this is no longer required, so these middlemen serve no practical purpose any more. They're an unfortunate holdover.

noema• 6 years ago

For mainstream labels, sure, but independent labels still serve an important curatorial role.

Rochus13• 6 years ago

This is called "making a virtue out of necessity". I don't believe that Github actually needed the EFF's writing for this, or that they don't have the necessary technical expertise themselves. But at least they seem to have learned something from it now and want to review such requests technically before they (unjustifiably) act.

CivBase6• 6 years ago

Why did the EFF have to step in here? What did the EFF letter provide that GitHub couldn't have figured out itself? If GitHub really was "standing up for developers", why couldn't Microsoft's own army of lawyers figure this out?

If youtube-dl (or any OSS project) continues to use GitHub, I hope they have a backup plan ready at all times. Even if GitHub truly is on the right side, they've proven themselves to be a liability for legitimate projects.

tenacious_tuna• 6 years ago

I suspect it has to do with the EFF being a more formidable legal opponent than Github on their own--also knowing that the EFF has their teeth in the issue, Github won't be dealing with it on their own if it goes to litigaiton.

wgjordan9• 6 years ago

If GitHub really was "standing up for developers", why couldn't Microsoft's own army of lawyers figure this out?

I think the 'What we're changing' section is the real interesting part of this post regarding this. I read this section as a half-apology for not doing enough to stand up for developers in this case (allowing the repository to be taken down to begin with), and a promise to do more in the future to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. We'll have to wait and see if their future actions match this promise.

LeoNatan253• 6 years ago

So ... they didn't stand up for developers? Promise is not "standing up for".

twodave• 6 years ago

If youtube-dl (or any OSS project) continues to use GitHub, I hope they have a backup plan ready at all times.

I mean, I guess I understand the sentiment here, but really, most projects don't run this risk. Youtube-dl, on the other hand, is used by people to download copyrighted material. It's a natural target, and as a project maintainer/contributor you have to be aware of the legal setting in which your project exists.

kzrdude2• 6 years ago

EFF put their credibility in this, and I think that was a strong signal.

drummer2• 6 years ago

Steve Ballmer would be proud!* Developers, developers, developers!!!

*) and throw chairs at the RIAA

dylan6044• 6 years ago

Was this something Ballmer is known for doing? Was he practicing to be a NCAA basketball coach?

drummer2• 6 years ago

Yeah you can search for Ballmer's chair throwing online. It was fucking hilarious.

typon• 6 years ago

ACLU and EFF are two of the last few remaining "Great" American institutions - living up to America's own image of itself.

dkdk8283• 6 years ago

Recently the ACLU’s absolutism on free speech has begun to waver. I won’t post a link here but search for it if you want to know more.

rndgermandude• 6 years ago

The ACLU has had a bit of a paradigm shift recently, from "defend any speech" to "defend any speech we do not think is abhorrent". That's not necessarily a bad change, or a good change, depending on where you stand. I am just wanting to point out that the ACLU isn't necessarily "remaining", more "reinventing" these days.

Here is a fresh Glenn Greenwald writeup on it (which is just one opinion, of course):

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-ongoing-death-of-free-s...

evilsnoopi3• 6 years ago

There's a lot of "trust me" in this article that simply isn't backed up by the ACLU's own outline of it's free speech position: https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech

It is one thing for an individual in the organization to have a nuanced view of the issue and another thing entirely for the organization to have backed off a maximalist view of the right. I encourage you to read the ACLU's position (which interestingly includes "We’ve called on big social media companies to resist calls for censorship.").

goodluckchuck3• 6 years ago

The ACLU openly opposes the right to keep and bear arms.

https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment

canada_dry• 6 years ago

striking down Washington D.C.'s handgun ban by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court's decision in D.C. v. Heller held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms, whether or not associated with a state militia.

This ruling is the crux of the matter. And ACLU's interpretation (against it) seems very logical. Sadly there's no putting the genie back in the bottle though.

jaikant77• 6 years ago

Well thanks github/Microsoft. But can we really trust you? My post from before they restored youtube-dl

https://tech47.in/blog/youtube-dl-takendown-on-github

shmerl2• 6 years ago

Github and others should team up to repeal DMCA 1201 for good. This censorship and rogue lawmaking tool shouldn't have existed in the first place.

goodluckchuck3• 6 years ago

What consequences with the RIAA face for the (IMO fraudulent) take down notice?

gorbachev• 6 years ago

This is quite excellent! I'm really impressed by the blog post itself as well as the actions/changes Github mentions in it.

musicale2• 6 years ago

Are 1201 takedown notices even supposed to be a thing, or were they just invented by the RIAA and/or other overly enthusiastic copyright holders?

I was under the impression that DMCA notices were for the removal of infringing content, not alleged anti-circumvention tools. That's what the law seems to specify. The notification and takedown process is specified for infringement of copyrighted works, not distribution of anti-circumvention tools. EFF's explainer video seemed to concur with the assessment that DMCA notices are not appropriate for 1201 violations, only for removal of infringing content.

1201 enforcement appears to be through other mechanisms, such as criminal liability and statutory damages. Presumably those would require something more than a letter or notice claiming violation.

quotemstr• 6 years ago

Right. GitHub seems to have made up a 1201 notice-and-takedown mechanism out of thin air, with this mechanism serving as Microsoft voluntarily doing favors for other big corporations rather than the fulfillment of some kind of legal obligation.

I find the GitHub announcement deeply unsatisfying for that reason: GitHub is unilaterally inventing a body of "law" that's going to meaningfully govern the lives of tons of developers in the future. This body of rules is "law" and not law because the entity doing the enforcement is GitHub and not some government, but GitHub still has enough power to cause injury if it decides it doesn't like you.

musicale2• 6 years ago

GitHub seems to have made up a 1201 notice-and-takedown mechanism out of thin air

This crystallizes my discomfort with github's approach.

They should have said something like "Thank you for your letter. If we receive any 1201-related injunctions or directives from US courts or law enforcement directing us to remove this repository, we will quickly do so."

wgjordan9• 6 years ago

I was under the impression that DMCA notices were for the removal of infringing content, not alleged anti-circumvention tools. That's what the law seems to specify.

My reading is that the DMCA expanded the definition of 'copyright infringement' to include 'circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner' (§1201), and so a DMCA notice specifying 'material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity' (§512) would work for the removal of anti-circumvention tools as well.

§1201: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201

§512: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512

zerocrates• 6 years ago

Infringement of copyright is defined by the statute and does not include the anti-circumvention 1201 provisions.

There is no legally-specified takedown procedure for a 1201 violation, and correspondingly no "safe harbor." The "takedown" here was more in the vein of a demand letter.

dannyw• 6 years ago

Thank you GitHub, Microsoft, and Nat. These measures are great.

hansdieter1337• 6 years ago

Free advertising for Github/Microsoft. Sweet. If they would fight for developers they should verify any takedown request imho.

fareesh• 6 years ago

Happy news. Well done Github

tpl• 6 years ago

Github did not stand up for developers here at all. It is wonderful that in the future they might, but it seems to me like they missed/have been missing a chance to really stand up for devs. The DMCA is being used far too often for abusive aims for my tastes and I hope that some reform is around the corner (Maybe more real incentives to not file false claims).

soulofmischief• 6 years ago

Nat Friedman, Github's CEO, personally joined the #youtube-dl IRC channel and initiated working towards the reinstatement of the project.

If the CEO personally taking a stand and working against this DMCA request, if the fact that all DMCA requests are publicly archived, if the fact that youtube-dl is already back up, do not convince you that GitHub had the right motives here, I don't know what to tell you.

nojvek• 6 years ago

Smart PR move from GitHub. Glad it got the recognition it needed. MPAA should not be left unchecked.

mdoms• 6 years ago

Why on earth is this project still hosted on Github? There are plenty of non-US based git providers that would be happy to have them on board.

LeoNatan253• 6 years ago

"Standing up for developers"

No, the EFF stood up for the developers. GitHub only looked for a legal scapegoat to reverse the decision in a legally-protected way. That's not what "standing up for" means.

jrochkind17• 6 years ago

Every single credible 1201 takedown claim will be reviewed by technical experts, including when appropriate independent specialists retained by GitHub, to ensure that the project actually circumvents a technical protection measure as described in the claim.

huh. Can you still take advantage of DMCA "safe harbor" if you are independently applying legal judgement to whether they would have a good chance of winning in court before deciding to comply with them?

sam0x172• 6 years ago

I think the RIAA is going to be shocked and flabbergasted that 1) the community, and I mean the respectable corporate parts of the software development community really rallied together to fight this and 2) that their argument for how this is infringement fizzles to nothing when you look at the wording of the DMCA as pointed out by the EFF's legal note.

The real question is will we see a push from RIAA lobbyists to amend the wording, or see this go to court.

wpdev_63• 6 years ago

Probably less to do with standing up for the developer and more to do with the fact that if github starts DMCAing legit projects then open source developers are going to look at creating a decentralized hosting solution for their repos.

jrochkind17• 6 years ago

gitlab.com has their DMCA processing workflow online (as they do most of their policies and workflow documents, which is awesome and few if any other companies are as transparent).

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/security/opera...

My reading of it is that under that gitlab workflow youtube-dl would still be down. Unless/until "there was a valid counter-notice and no response has been received from the plaintiff within 10 days of the counter-notice being forwarded". (Unclear what happens if there is a valid counter-notice and a response from plaintiff HAS been received, the workflow stop there!). This did not happen here, github reinstated without either a formal counter-notice (that EFF letter is not formatted like one), and definitely without waiting 10 days for a response from plaintiff.

Gitlab's workflow there is a totally typical DMCA workflow, it's not bad it's just normal. It's the workflow more or less spelled out in the DMCA itself, arguably what the DMCA requires for the host to get "safe harbor" status. (I don't entirely understand how Github can get away with what they have done and say they are doing going forward, honestly. It's think it's a potentially risky move for them opening them up to lawsuits from the copyright holders; of course they know they have deep pockets to defend themselves too).

The DMCA is actually pretty terrible in it's real-world contemporary effects. That's general, not about github, or github's fault. You are right to think it's awful. But it's not about github. People seem to be really chomping at the bit to assume that github has somehow acted especially poorly (for those who want to protect people against DMCA takedowns) -- to me the reverse seems to be true.

I think both github's actual current actions and most especially their proposed new workflow go way beyond what most of their peers (including gitlab) do to resist/slow down/stop DMCA takedowns.

I'm not sure how github garnered so much bad will, that people are so eager to paint them in a bad light. They clearly have garnered a lot of bad will from developers though, at least on HN; every thread about github has people piling on to suggest extreme levels of unethical behavior from github.

I do not believe it is justified here.

jsmith452• 6 years ago

The normal safe harbor protections and takedown procedure specified by law does not apply to claims under section 1201 like this one was. This also means no safe harbor protections against being sued for redistributing section 1201 infringing works either. There is instead an "innocent violation" clause that offers extremely limited defense that could apply to sites like GitHub or gitlab, but which would become void upon being informed of serving up a work that infringes section 1201, which practically means if such a site is so informed, it will take down the work immediately, as otherwise they become liable.

GitHub has voluntarily instituted its own takedown procedures for violations of that section, and therefore do not actually need to strictly follow the procedure outlined in the law. Instead they can chose their own procedures for handling these claims based upon percieved likelyhood of being sued and being found liable.

Mircosoft is likely fairly confident that the RIAA will not sue them over this, since the other RIAA members (the Labels) all know that if Microsoft chose to enforce their huge pool of rarely enforced software patents against the labels and distribution mechanisms (like Spotify) the harm to their bottom lines would be many thousands of times larger than any harm to their bottom line from youtube-dl could ever be. Heck even just a more thorough than typical Mircosoft Software audit would likely be more costly to the labels than youtube-dl.

jrochkind17• 6 years ago

Interesting, thanks this clears some things up and gives me avenues for more research to understand what's up.

Sounds like claims under 1201 (circumventing technology) are actually really dangerous for the host, there is no safe harbor? At least not after you've received any notification at all?

All the more surprising that a host would be willing to disagree with a claimant and say "nah, we don't think you'd win in court." they are definitely risking their own liability, not just the customers.

As you say, Microsoft can afford to do this cause Microsoft has deep pockets and the ability to counter-strike. All the more reason we should actually be grateful to the for USING that power to defend in this case, right? (And ironically, that suggests that you will get the most protection hosted by a company that has the resources to stand up, which not all do. I am not a fan of that outcome either).

DMCA is still awful regardless of host of course.

ainiriand• 6 years ago

This is the kind of thing you can do if you have Microsoft to back you up. Deep pockets to fight for what you think is right because unfortunately legal battles are really expensive.

jedberg2• 6 years ago

I appreciate that Microsoft is trying to help developers out and I appreciate their $1MM fund.

But why not just donate it to EFF for the work they already do in this area? When you donate to EFF you can specify which programs you want to fund. I don't entirely understand why they created a new fund.

a_nar• 6 years ago

I can't wait to see the RIAAs reaction.

lynxaegon• 6 years ago

As a developer I liked GitHub from the beginning, but after Microsoft bought it I was skeptical that it would go in the right direction..

I think it's time to start searching for another place to store my repos

mewse-hn• 6 years ago

I find it kinda sad that this article says "the DMCA was written in the late 90s and hasn't aged well", because the anti-circumvention clauses have been tremendously awful since their inception. Anyone who remembers the DeCSS crap in the early 00's knows that this nonsense is our legacy from not getting the problem solved 20 years ago.

bredren• 6 years ago

It is important to recognize when a person or organization takes corrective action.

Between this and Apple’s response regarding the app signature, these are examples of companies seeing problems and taking steps to fix them.

It is okay to want more or see how it could be an even better response. But the fact that a credible response was executed on should be praised.

leafmeal2• 6 years ago

They plan to audit all of the take-down requests which is awesome, and it's more than required by law.

I wonder if they'll regret this move. They're shielding developers, but taking the burden on themselves of managing the legal hassle of take-down requests.

As other commenters have pointed out, it sounds like the real problem is that copyright holders can issue these requests without any limit (or maybe even due diligence).

charlesdaniels• 6 years ago

I think it is important to note that GitHub's parent company[1] Microsoft is a member of the RIAA[0], the group who initially filed this DMCA.

The cynic in me says this was deliberately pre-planned to garnet free press. That type of behavior would certainly be in-line for the company responsible for the Halloween Documents[2][3].

Even if we give GitHub, and by extension Microsoft the benefit of the doubt here, this is a lesson we should not soon forget: Microsoft will not go to bat for you, not unless you can wield the power of the HN/Reddit/Twitter/etc outrage machine to create a PR problem for them.

Don't rely on Microsoft to be the centralized underpinnings of the open source world. At worst, it paves the way for EEE[4] 2.0. At best, it creates a single centralized target for malicious actors, such as the RIAA.

0 - https://www.riaa.com/about-riaa/riaa-members/

1 - https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/10/26/microsoft-comple...

2 - http://www.catb.org/~esr/halloween/

3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents

4 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

warlord12• 6 years ago

I agree. Any globo-corp is going to do funny shit for PR. They operate on an entirely different level that most people don't really understand. This is really just a war game for them... and now they understand how much they can provoke their own users.

ranman• 6 years ago

I sincerely doubt this was planned. If you’ve ever worked for a large global corp you would find it difficult to believe anything could be coordinated. Everyone involved at every level is trying to climb that ladder.

sabujp• 6 years ago

thanks, donated $10 to EFF and company matched :)

AntiImperialist2• 6 years ago

I hope nobody actually believes this had anything to do with what it is made out to be in public (i.e. DMCA violation).

Google owns a LOT of videos on YouTube. The fact that people are able to easily get them out and put it somewhere else threatens them. So, they used their friends to cook up this lawsuit.

Unfortunately for them, this upset a lot of GitHub users and Microsoft didn't want to help Google while taking a hit themselves... so they found a way around it.

Corporations use their legal prowess to advance their bottom line all the time... and many a times, how it's framed in public is very different from what is actually going on.

postingpals2• 6 years ago

There's no evidence that youtube-dl actually hurts youtube, you could just as easily say it makes people want to watch more youtube. There's also no evidence of any of the other things you said.

What I think this comes down to is the music industry is coordinating attacks all over the internet (they do this on twitch too recently), in the hopes they'll get some money out of it. Not much more to it than that.

AntiImperialist2• 6 years ago

There's no evidence that youtube-dl actually hurts youtube

What do you mean there's no evidence? There's no evidence it doesn't hurt them either.

you could just as easily say it makes people want to watch more youtube

Not if videos are ripped and uploaded on Facebook, which has been a problem for them for past few years.

There's also no evidence of any of the other things you said.

There's no evidence against it either.

in the hopes they'll get some money out of it

From a guy who maintains an open source tool? Those guys sure have a lot of money.

wgjordan9• 6 years ago

Rather interesting that GitHub decided to restore access 1 day after receiving the EFF's counter notice, instead of waiting 10 days.

As a brief legal recap, in 1998 the DMCA added §512 [1] to US copyright law, which established a mechanism for shielding 'service providers' from liability for content posted by users (known as 'safe harbor'), but only as long as they follow formal procedures (known as 'DMCA takedown') to respond 'expeditiously' to remove content when they receive a notification claiming infringement, but also to restore access "not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days" after receiving a counter notification claiming the removal was a mistake.

In the post, GitHub implied they removed the youtube-dl repo after receiving the RIAA's formal takedown notice in order to 'comply with laws', and the law also required them to restore access after receiving the EFF's formal counter notice. However, the counter notice was sent yesterday and they restored access 1 day later, not waiting the legal minimum of 10 days. In restoring access so quickly GitHub isn't fully complying with §512, opening themselves up to liability if the RIAA decides to pursue legal action.

Perhaps a symbolic gesture to restore access a couple weeks before they would have been legally required to restore access anyway, but nonetheless interesting to see their willingness to set aside §512 safe harbor protections in the future if their reading of facts suggest a takedown claim doesn't have merit.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512

akiselev• 6 years ago

Perhaps a symbolic gesture to restore access a couple weeks before they would have been legally required to restore access anyway, but nonetheless interesting to see their willingness to set aside §512 safe harbor protections in the future if their reading of facts suggest a takedown claim doesn't have merit.

Do the DMCA legal requirements differentiate between good faith and tortuous takedowns? Meaning, is that 10-14 day range set in stone even if Github believes that the request was flagrantly over reaching or do they lose safe harbor protections right off the bat? Has this issue been litigated enough that there would be clear precedent?

1vuio0pswjnm74• 6 years ago

The youtube-dl incident was not a section 512 takedown. There was no infringing material, i.e., content, to remove. The RIAA letter made no mention of section 512, referring instead to section 1201. Neither did this letter from EFF refer to section 512. This was not a section 512 takedown. The rules in section 512 do not apply.

dredmorbius3• 6 years ago

Absolutely this.

https://joindiaspora.com/posts/808cf690f8e801381778002590d8e...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24888234

wgjordan9• 6 years ago

The 'copyright violations' section of the RIAA letter (regarding the unit tests) was clearly a standard §512 notice alleging copyright infringement. Even if §512 wasn't explicitly mentioned, it's still a legally effective notification of claimed infringement.

The rules in section 512 do not apply.

Assuming you're referring only to the §1201 'anticircumvention' portion of the claim (the main focus of the GitHub post), whether this portion is also subject to §512 rules is a little more ambiguous. §1201 defines a trafficking violation separate from copyright infringement itself, but some court rulings have established a requirement that §1201 violations establish a 'nexus' to copyright infringement in order to be valid. If this requirement holds, §512 safe harbor protections could indirectly cover §1201 claims as well. However, because there's a circuit split on the issue, unless GitHub is sued on this exact point it's impossible to say for sure what rules would apply in this specific case.

In any case, GitHub handled the 1201 takedown claim in reference to its established, documented process in handling takedown notices and counter notices [1], except for the fact that it didn't wait 10-14 days after receiving a counter notice before re-enabling this content. The deviation from their published policy is still itself noteworthy.

[1] https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/site-...

donmcronald2• 6 years ago

I'm guessing they'd rather fight a battle over youtube-dl than something like popcorn time. Maybe the intentionally pushed the limits a bit.

wgjordan9• 6 years ago

After reading the EFF's letter a little more closely, I realize now that it wasn't even a formal DMCA counter notice representing the repository owners, just an informal legal rebuttal of the original claims. Oops. So GitHub wasn't legally required to restore access at all even after 10-14 days, since no official counter notice was ever received.

That makes it more significant (not merely symbolic) that GitHub chose to short-circuit its DMCA process to restore access and open themselves up to liability in this case.

colejohnson662• 6 years ago

Not true. The first sentence of the first paragraph make mention that the EFF is representing the youtube-dl developers. An attorney-client relationship.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation represents the current maintainers of the youtube-dl software utility, a free software project that uses GitHub as a home for development.

warlord12• 6 years ago

If you have a higher-IQ and don't mind some legwork, then use an open-source code revision solution.

If you entrust a corporation that is, by nature, more sympathetic to Hollywood/Media then brace yourselves to get caught in the churn.

korethr• 6 years ago

So, now that the repo is back up, how many of you have pulled a fresh clone of it?

molticrystal• 6 years ago

There is a little bit more background information from the torrent freak article as it seems they have a comment from the youtube-dl devs: https://torrentfreak.com/github-reinstates-youtube-dl-and-pu...

Youtube-dl Devs Are Happy
Sergey, one of the youtube-dl developers, tells us that he is happy with all the support they have received from the EFF, GitHub, as well as the public at large.
“EFF’s help was invaluable. We’d like to thank EFF and Mitch Stoltz personally for their incredible support and dedication. We’d also like to thank GitHub for standing up for youtube-dl and taking potential legal risks by allowing youtube-dl to keep the rolling cipher code,” he says.
“We’re also grateful to all the tremendous amount of support and offers received lately (we physically were not able to respond to everyone) and all youtube-dl users,” Sergey adds.

dredmorbius3• 6 years ago

Colour me pleasantly surprised.

I've followed this story since it broke. My own (lay) analysis of the RIAA's claims hit HN a few weeks ago:

https://joindiaspora.com/posts/808cf690f8e801381778002590d8e... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24888234)

The EFF's letter makes strongly similar arguments, admittedly with better legal citations buttressing.

I'd hinted in that post, and commented at HN, as to steps Microsoft could take to establish its credibility before the Free Software community:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25007097

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24876199

Specifically:

Microsoft is a member of the RIAA. It could and should resign.

Microsoft can lobby for further exceptions to §1201 anti-circumvention.

Microsoft can issue a statement formally protesting RIAA's action.

Microsoft could offer an Amicus brief or other statements in favour of youtube-dl developers.

As an old-school Linux user and advocate, I'm used to considering Microsoft the opposition, and my praise is grudging, but given where due. By my reckoning, Microsoft are at least 3 for 4 in meeting my suggestions.

Of the fourth, I suspect its upcoming RIAA renewal discussion will be interesting.

Google, on the other hand, have been conspicuously silent. Chris DiBona, are you listening?

bahmboo• 6 years ago

Well done eff and github

throwawayay02• 6 years ago

Yet another case of big corp attacking someone, that someone having an online voice and complaining, big corp doing damage control spinning some tale about how they'll endeavor to do better in the future and how much they agree with the little guy.

For once I'd like companies to be honest, just say you reversed it when it was found out it would be more cost efficient to do so.

mytechtoday• 6 years ago

The action to take down Youtube-dl seemed to be a directed time based action meant to coincide with the election. Most on-line youtube downloading sites were also deplatformed a day or two before the election.

I think that Youtube didn't want users to have the ability to locally save videos that they have seen during the week of the election.

It seems to be a greater attempt to suppress information sharing than anything specific to the copyright.

Youtube just wanted immediate action to prevent people from using the code to get around the online download sites that were also taken down.

Kim_Bruning• 6 years ago

Is no one surprised that the EFF mentions the door at Moria? (page 2, second half)

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

junon• 6 years ago

Good on the EFF. This is wonderful to see.

soraminazuki• 6 years ago

From the EFF letter [1]:

We presume that this "signature" code is what RIAA refers to as a "rolling cipher," although YouTube's JavaScript code does not contain this phrase.

Does this mean the RIAA just invented the term out of thin air to mislead people?

[1] https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/e00bfb544e93bfd3066fe169...

bitwize• 6 years ago

Cheers, GitHub. You did the right thing. That's really rare in today's world.

vincengomes• 6 years ago

youtube-dl -U

dvduval• 6 years ago

If I can watch a video on my computer for free, it's not too difficult to capture it. There is software I can download. There are browser plugins. This is just one of many options available.

I do fear though that this is going to lead some more and more paywall content and less and less publicly available content.

envolt• 6 years ago

In the case where the claim is ambiguous, we will err on the side of the developer, and leave up the repository unless there is clear evidence of illegal circumvention.

1vuio0pswjnm74• 6 years ago

"As a result, Section 1201 makes it illegal to use or distribute technology (including source code) that bypasses technical measures that control access or copying of copyrighted works, even if that technology can be used in a way that would not be copyright infringement."

Section 1201 does not "make it illegal" to use of copy control circumvention technology. It does not prohibit use of copy control circumvention technology. It prohibits use of access control circumvention technology.

Don't take my word for it. Read what is published by the Copyright Office about Section 1201.

"As envisioned by Congress, section 1201 seeks to balance the interests of copyright owners and users, including the personal interests of consumers, in the digital environment. It does so by protecting the use of technological measures (also called technological protection measures or TPMs) used by copyright owners to prevent unauthorized access to or use of their works. Section 1201 contains three separate protections for TPMs. First, it prohibits circumvention of technological measures employed by or on behalf of copyright owners to protect access to their works (also known as access controls). Second, the statute prohibits trafficking in devices or services primarily designed to circumvent access controls. Finally, it prohibits trafficking in devices or services primarily designed to circumvent TPMs used to protect the copyright rights of the owner of a work (also known as copy controls). Copy controls protect against unauthorized uses of a copyrighted work once access has been lawfully obtained. Because title 17 already forbids copyright infringement, there is no corresponding ban on the act of circumventing a copy control."

Source: https://www.copyright.gov/policy/1201/section-1201-full-repo...

hsuduebc• 6 years ago

I have hard time to believe that this isn't a PR stunt to not look like a corporate cucks.

YouTube-dl's repository has been restored

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