The campaign to shut down YouTube-dl continues

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/campaign-shut-down-crucial-documentary-tool-youtube-dl-continues-and-so-does-fight

by DiabloD3 • 4 years ago

775 243 4 years ago

eff.org

RobertMiller• 4 years ago

With luck it will take them a few more years to figure out that yt-dlp and other forks with derivative names exist.

ZYinMD• 4 years ago

I switched to yt-dlp a few months ago, under the impression that youtube-dl was no longer maintained? At least for youtube purposes, at least for the one crucial issue that forced me to switch. I forgot what the issue was, but it had several PRs sitting there for months and nobody was gonna merge it.

hunterb1233• 4 years ago

What wasn't maintained for you?

In that I mean what feature was missing or broken for you?

As software gets more stable, updates should be less frequent.

I'm not a fan of feature creep in the name of progress.

I am a fan of options though, so if there was an necessity for a fork I support it.

webmaven2• 4 years ago

I'm not sure what it says about me that my first thought upon reading this:

an independent club owner in San Francisco tried to run a promotional video given to him for a band he’d booked, only to find Instagram’s filer blocked it. He was able to reinstate the video, 17 months after the band had come and gone.

Was "I bet that was jwz".

Indeed, a brief web search turned up this (via a recent-ish Cory Doctorow post on Medium):

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2020/05/fucking-facebook-3/

guiambros• 4 years ago

Reminder to not link directly to jwz.org from HN. Here's a sanitized link: (or right click above and open in incognito)

https://web.archive.org/web/20220121083848/https://www.jwz.o...

colejohnson662• 4 years ago

Anyone know why they block HN referral requests?

perihelions2• 4 years ago

Complementary to this, anyone can simply disable (or spoof!) their HTTP Refer[r]ers. Don't give surveillance adtech an inch.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Referrer

webmaven2• 4 years ago

Oops. Here is Cory Doctorow's post (the jwz reference and link is about ¾ of the way down): https://onezero.medium.com/nonstandard-measures-cf47c67e8f05

md224• 4 years ago

The interesting thing about this is that YouTube is clearly trying to make it more difficult for non-official clients to stream video, as is evident from the required workaround described here:

https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29326#issuecom...

The legal defense of youtube-dl is premised on the idea that there's no circumvention occurring [0]. I 100% support youtube-dl and I want YouTube to stop interfering with it, but I also think we're being a little too cute when we pretend like ytdl isn't circumventing anything... it seems obvious to me that YouTube is trying to put up roadblocks and we're trying to get around them. I would feel better if we could find a way to defend ytdl without the pretense of acting like this cat-and-mouse game isn't going on.

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

charcircuit• 4 years ago

btw that cipher is only on a subset of videos (usually music videos)

MereInterest• 4 years ago

I thought the most recent legal argument was the 2019 hiQ Labs Inc v LinkedIn Corp[0], in which the Ninth Circuit found web scraping to be legal, and forbid LinkedIn from blocking web scrapers. The exact same argument can be made for accessing YouTube via youtube-dl.

The article does indicate that the decision in hiQ v LinkedIn was vacated by SCOTUS following the 2021 Van Buren v United States [0], to be retried by the Ninth Circuit. However, I'm not seeing a way that the decision in Van Buren would change the outcome, as it concluded that the CFAA did not apply to cases where somebody is legally allowed to access a computer at all.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/supreme-court-hacking-cfaa...

infogulch• 4 years ago

Discussed on HN before: Court: Violating a site’s terms of service isn’t criminal hacking (2020) [1] (probably other discussions as well). My comment on this one:

... it's the webmaster's own responsibility to "just not serve" if they don't want it to be served, and their failure to implement their own desires as software doesn't suddenly give them carte blanche to claim whatever they want was breaking the law. ... The fact that Microsoft is too lazy to implement a solution that effectively implements their desired policy isn't material to what the actually implemented policy enables.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22738180

tedunangst• 4 years ago

Are youtube-dl users being charged with CFAA violations?

roastedpeacock• 4 years ago

The interesting thing about this is that YouTube is clearly trying to make it more difficult for non-official clients to stream video, as is evident from the required workaround described here:

Can not reply with the entire situation but I would not be surprised if Google does not care enough to stop the project through other means but tries to reduce mindless zombie-bots from sucking up bandwidth all day long. If you have access to a fast connection you may notice even the web player is throttled sometimes.

Irrespective of that, the complaining party is the RIAA and not Google or YouTube in name.

I 100% support youtube-dl and I want YouTube to stop interfering with it, but I also think we're being a little too cute when we pretend like ytdl isn't circumventing anything

I think the optics are a little different when it's a third party internet service as the medium, but 'we' are still arguing what constitutes fair-use of DRM protected physical media. :-(

icelancer2• 4 years ago

> If you have access to a fast connection you may notice even the web player is throttled sometimes.

This has been happening more and more recently - seriously slow playback when my Internet access is still ~1gbps on all other sites including fast.com/netflix, or Google Drive.

seszett• 4 years ago

If you have access to a fast connection you may notice even the web player is throttled sometimes.

I'm not sure if that's still the case today, but in my case it used to be because of a dispute between Google and Free/Proxad (a French operator) which led to limited peering for years.

I'm pretty sure in your case it's also just anemic peering capacity between your ISP and Google, rather than Google as a whole lacking bandwidth. I haven't noticed anything at all here for example.

seanp2k2• 4 years ago

So long as the https://www.eff.org/issues/analog-hole exists, piracy cannot be stopped. The ever-escalating arms race between content and consumers will go on, but there will be no victory, only collateral damage.

If you have content people value but they aren't willing to pay for it, find out why. Maybe it's because you're charging too much, running too many ads, making it hard to cancel, or they just don't actually value it all that much. In YouTube's case, I would say that for the vast majority of content and the vast majority of users on the site, the content is worth approximately $0.00 to them, and the content is not so crucial that a few unskippable ads in a row will have most users just saying "forget it" and finding something else to do.

Yes, pointing a camera at a monitor is more work and worse quality than getting the original video with best-quality-possible [compressed] audio, but no amount of laws can prevent people from doing that if they really value the content highly.

142• 4 years ago

You gave me an idea if someone was to design a small display attached to a camera paired specifically to capture high quality video not just someone propping up a camera but where external light was blocked and the image size and camera are perfectly matched with an audio input as well they may have a market.

blibble4• 4 years ago

they can put fingerprints/watermarks into the analogue signal pretty easily if they're scared of that

plus the analogue hole is disappearing rapidly (including the 3.5mm jack)

stuu994• 4 years ago

I 100% support youtube-dl and I want YouTube to stop interfering with it

Well if you've bought any client-server app over the last 23 years its a bit too late for computing freedom. They are locking down IO with trusted computing, there's been a 23+ year initiative to move to encrypted computing to take input/output control away from the user, this required the co-operation of hardware manufacturers. Windows 10 and windows 11 are the beginning of you not being able to run or play files or exe's over the next 20 years as youtube, netflix, the game industry update their software to use TPM.

This was from 2001:

https://www.theregister.com/2001/12/13/the_microsoft_secure_...

Here is a paper explaining what the future of files/broadcasts will be like:

https://web2.qatar.cmu.edu/cs/15349/dl/DRM-TC.pdf

Basically they are building a parallel mainframe inside our PC's that only youtube, netflix, the game industry and other software companies will control. They are removing ownership of our devices and they needed microsofts help to do that.

We've seen mirosoft trial bricking cracked exe's via update. Many UWP games only work on certain versions of windows.

See here (ctrf-f then select the UWP link)

https://old.reddit.com/r/CrackWatch/comments/p9ak4n/crack_wa...

They are bringing console lockdown to the PC that is why windows 10 had forced updates. That is why windows 11 was also pushing forced internet connection hard for home users.

r3muxd• 4 years ago

I just wish something could be done about it all.

irrational2• 4 years ago

So, if I don’t use Windows then I’m fine?

dukeofdoom2• 4 years ago

We might end up in a situation in the near future where China provides the more open solutions. Russia will now use Chinese UnionPay to get around MasterCard and Visa banning Russian clients. I have gen2 ipod touch that the hardware is perfectly fine, but no way to update the software that I know.

TheRealDunkirk• 4 years ago

Kind of insane that we’re turning our glorious revolution of cheap, general purpose computers back into TV’s in the name of protecting Big Copyright from a niggling amount of infringement.

TrapLord_Rhodo• 4 years ago

Creator revolt is the only way it seems to force the issue. If everyone started using a open-source medium of storing data and simply extended that to the other platforms, it would take away their control of the medium with which it is presented.

Filecoin might be a good usecase here.

crtasm• 4 years ago

How many UWP games are there? That page lists six and the stickied post from last April say MS no longer makes UWP exclusive games.

gizmo686• 4 years ago

As I read that post, the circumvention applies only to a throttling control, not an overall access control. Since it should have been just as easy (if no easier) to simply block unofficial clients instead of throttling them, it seems like a clear argument that Google does not intend to block 3rd party Downloader, but merely give preferential treatment to first party ones.

If you by that argument. Then bypassing the protection might be illegal, but would not be a copyright issue, and Google would be the only one with standing to sue.

Nextgrid4• 4 years ago

Maybe it's a compromise because they still have their own legacy versions of the client that can't support the new scheme and yet need to remain at least semi-functional?

foo_barrio2• 4 years ago

The throttling is so severe it is effectively blocking. The throttling goes down to 50KiB/s on my PC trying to download a basic youtube video. That around 0.4mbps which puts you barely around the bandwidth needed to stream a very low quality 360p/480p video. For reference, this video is about 2 minutes long and that's how long it took me to download it via the last version of youtube-dl:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVRInek075g

reshie• 4 years ago

it is practically a wget for web videos and can be forwarded to like mpv. you should look at the supported sites it is quite extensive and youtube being a humble beginning.

agilob• 4 years ago

The interesting thing about this is that YouTube is clearly trying to make it more difficult for non-official clients to stream video

My Android One phone has camera app which has "stream to YouTube" functionality that stopped working in late 2020

feanaro7• 4 years ago

We're not being a little too cute. If you are supposed to be able to access YouTube from Firefox or Chrome, then you are also supposed to be able to access it via youtube-dl, given all of those are HTTP clients. Saying otherwise would be setting a dangerous precedent of trying to legislate which HTTP clients are allowed and which are disallowed.

lelandfe2• 4 years ago

Surely things like Widevine show that that precedent has already been set? There are many online things that cannot be consumed by unblessed clients.

paulcole6• 4 years ago

I can go to an all you can eat restaurant with my empty stomach. I can’t go to an all you can eat restaurant with an empty garbage bag to fill up with food for later.

blowski• 4 years ago

I'm sceptical there is a long-term solution for people to have all the content available on YouTube (and similar services) accessible by the freedoms we experienced in 1995-2005. You choose either the range of content, or the freedom of choice in how you access it.

hbbio2• 4 years ago

The best way to ensure there is no "copyright infringement" would be to shut off Youtube altogether and make sure nobody can see a "music video" without paying a subscription. Other than that, they should assume their content is accessible from any device which was exactly their original intention.

The duplicitous attitude of music executives is that they even pay radios to play some songs in loops to turn public attention to them, but then cry wolf when people need tools to see/listen to them as they want. There are so many great artists that we don't know about because they are struggling to be "discovered" beyond the music industry streamroller...

edit: typos

SixDouble5321• 4 years ago

Are you sure? Payola[1] is illegal last I knew.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola

hbbio2• 4 years ago

Not my industry so I don't know but it has been illegal for a long time in the US... and they were still doing it in 2007:

https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/2007-04-13-214...

Also probably going on elsewhere where it is still legal. Looks like shilling NFTs has a precedent after all!

BrianHenryIE• 4 years ago

I signed up for YouTube Premium because I wanted to watch some videos offline (on a flight). The download speed is awful. Now I use YouTube-dl when I want to watch videos offline. I still have Premium because ad-free is great!

jsmolka• 4 years ago

I did the same because I wanted to consume podcasts with the screen locked and not have adds. But the download speed for me is pretty good. Downloading a 2.5h podcast in 480p (which has the same audio quality as 1080p IIRC) takes less than half a minute.

RealStickman_3• 4 years ago

Why would they not allow audio-only downloads?

hhmc2• 4 years ago

Is there really not a audio only version of the podcasts your interested in. i.e. the classic rss feed of audio files.

It's such a shame what has happened to podcasts

zeepzeep4• 4 years ago

I still have Premium because ad-free is great!

Use an alternative ad-free client if you don't wanna pay for a not working download feature.

danuker2• 4 years ago

Who knows whether you can stop paying for it.

TingPing• 4 years ago

Or just support the platform/creators because it's a small amount...

Nextgrid4• 4 years ago

I wish the media industry understood this and took action. A lot of what they call "piracy" is less about people not wanting to pay and more about the paid experience being on-par if not worse than the pirate experience.

kaladin-jasnah• 4 years ago

I wholeheartedly agree. With video games, especially on Linux, it is far better to pay. On Steam, it was far easier to just pay and click Play than to pirate the gane and deal with Wine and getting the game to work. So I pay.

wintermutestwin2• 4 years ago

We are already paying Google with our data.

Proudmuslim• 4 years ago

Just use uBlock origin, easy way to block ads on YouTube

vmception• 4 years ago

“no copyright infringement” is clearly inaccurate but also isn’t a relevant standard here

so strange to try to reach a goal of less copyright infringement by going after access to this codebase

lazzlazzlazz• 4 years ago

How can we create a video platform with high-quality discovery, personalization, subscriptions, comments, voting, and more — while also making it technically incapable of being evil and closed?

Are there technologies that we can use to allow network effects to accumulate to software that isn't controlled by a single, rent-extracting, and private entity?

klabb3• 4 years ago

Several different problems. First, we need an architectural design that folks can actually agree on. Then we need open protocols. Then we need implementations. Then we need infrastructure. Then we need to migrate existing content. Finally we need network effects.

If we ever get there, I suspect it'll be through a combo between a decentralized registry core and federated and commercial gateway system (similar to VPN or usenet providers). The biggest challenges are related to identity, moderation and abuse, while appealing to a mainstream audience.

"It's not the format, it's the business model."

mateo1• 4 years ago

The only functional model so far is patreon-like funding of independent creators.

dehrmann2• 4 years ago

rent-extracting, and private entity?

Google isn't really rent seeking with Youtube. It pays for distribution (even for demonetized content), site development, building recommendation systems, content moderation, accessibility though subtitles, etc. That doesn't mean they don't make money on it, that their decisions are always just, or what they promote is good for society, just that they add a lot of value beyond someone hosting a webm file on s3.

TaylorAlexander4• 4 years ago

I think maybe this was true five years ago, but at some point they decided to turn the screws and really ramp up advertising. I don’t follow their financials but I assume the site was self sufficient with far fewer ads than today, and that now they are extracting profit (rents) from their established behemoth. Of course I could be wrong.

zozbot234• 4 years ago

How can we create a video platform with high-quality discovery, personalization, subscriptions, comments, voting, and more

Ideally, by decoupling these things from one another. There's no reason they'd have to be part of a single platform - for instance, a client (app or web) could fetch public 'likes' and/or comments referencing (or "annotating", per the relevant Web standards) a PeerTube video from Mastodon. This is already superior to what YT does.

moltke• 4 years ago

I'm pretty sure peertube does that, stuff like picking an instance is confusing to new users though and they get scared off.

madeofpalk5• 4 years ago

What happens when someone uploads universally abhorrent, illegal, immoral, and harmful videos?

hirako20004• 4 years ago

that's a matter of opinion. i find YouTube filled with plenty of videos I would deem immoral, harmful, abhorrent. they remain there. and that's fine, nobody forces me to watch them.

izacus2• 4 years ago

Are there technologies that we can use to allow network effects to accumulate to software that isn't controlled by a single, rent-extracting, and private entity?

When you'll understand that YouTube's monetization is the reason why it's so popular (because, as opposed to other services, it's self-sustaining and, most important, profitable FOR CREATORS publishing there), you'll be closer to your answer.

Competition died mostly because:

- They have shit user experience that's outright broken (I'm looking at you Nebula and your portrait locked tablet apps and broken TV apps).

- They don't earn enough to cover bandwidth and transcoding costs (bandwidth is VERY VERY expensive even in western world when you stream video at scale).

- They don't have a simple answer for creators uploading videos on how to earn money from their creations. YouTube makes it a click (and a die roll for random demonetizations). Others don't and add friction to users as well.

UncleMeat• 4 years ago

You can't, if copyrighted content from the major media companies ends up on this product. Things that feel like anti-features on YouTube (can't watch videos with the screen off, can't download videos) are consequences of lawsuits against YouTube from ages past.

snarf21• 4 years ago

It is an unpopular opinion but we need to change the business model. Highly tax digital advertising so that subscription/patron business models have a chance and then we start to have more aligned incentives. Right now, digital advertising is too cheap and easy to exploit.

lkxijlewlf• 4 years ago

Until bandwidth and storage space is practically free, there's no real way to compete.

Hakashiro• 4 years ago

The technologies exist.

The reality is YouTube bleeds money like crazy. Pretty much only huge enterprises like Google can afford to run a service like YouTube.

You can try. Many have tried before and YouTube continues to be king for a reason.

Good luck!

usrbinbash3• 4 years ago

So, what is the point of this again?

Even if they win, what would it remove? A website, which essentially just hosts some links to github. Within German jurisdiction only. So it would probably be up and running from a different provider within a day or two. And the repository itself would remain completely untouched anyway.

danuker2• 4 years ago

There's no end in sight.

My guess is the point is to make it difficult to get videos from their platform without seeing the ads.

zirobi2• 4 years ago

Google being Google: Decides it has the requisite resources to get into an arms race with both adblockers and the open source community.

WhyNotHugo• 4 years ago

It's also about setting a precedent. Anyone else wanting to host it in Germany will think twice if the courts have already ruled one way.

usrbinbash3• 4 years ago

Can't imagine it's hard to find a hosting provider in one of the other 194 countries.

Nextgrid4• 4 years ago

It's a war of attrition I guess. Wear down the enemy and anyone associated with them over time.

usrbinbash3• 4 years ago

By shutting down hosting a links-only-page, at one provider, in one country, and that only if they win in court and no higher court overrules the decision?

zeepzeep4• 4 years ago

Okay, what again prevents me from making a service that films a browser watching youtube? Could they do anything against that? No? Then ytdl will continue to be a thing.

Tenoke• 4 years ago

Presumably they can take legal action against you if you distribute it and make it harder to access and find by others. Also the quality will likely be lower.

YetAnotherNick• 4 years ago

Maybe fear of law. e.g. recording a movie from theatre is a criminal offence.

izacus2• 4 years ago

I'm pretty sure DMCA has a clause that can hit you with a massive fine over that. Remember, US has sold all of their freedoms off to DRM content owners.

zeepzeep4• 4 years ago

I mean technically. And yes the US (and EU) needs a copyright reform :)

Mindwipe4• 4 years ago

You mean for other people to use? You'd lose any copyright case in Europe. You mean for your own personal use? I'm pretty sure if they limit it only to people who can be bothered to set up a camera pointing to a monitor and cleaned of reflections and lighting artefacts etc etc then the labels would be okay with that given 99.999999% of people won't.

qwerty4561273• 4 years ago

99% time I use YouTube the following way: I download the videos for archival, extract the audio tracks and listen to the in an audiobook app (which is good at adjusting the speed up to 3x and remembering positions I pause at in every track I listen) while commuting or doing chores. I think would consume up to 98% less content if I couldn't do it this way.

It is also important to mention that the YouTube website itself (I don't mean the videos - only the HTML&JS part) is among the slowest websites on the internet, painfully slow to use on Raspberry Pi and old computers.

sdoering• 4 years ago

May I ask what audio book app you are using?

qwerty4561273• 4 years ago

It's Smart AudioBook Player by Alex Software on Google Play. The paid version - extremely cheap and totally worth it.

_0ffh• 4 years ago

For stuff I know I'll only listen to anyway, I usually download with "-f140" from the get-go. Saves bandwidth and storage space.

numlock86• 4 years ago

I download the videos for archival, extract the audio tracks and listen to the in an audiobook app

There's the "-x" option flag (combine with "-f bestaudio") which will only download the audio. No need for manually extracting.

qwerty4561273• 4 years ago

But I also want to archive the video. I used to "like" videos I'm interested in to be able to re-visit them in future but soon found the percent of deleted videos among my likes disastrous so I concluded I must archive everything. I also rarely want the highest quality.

mouzogu• 4 years ago

i always read eff.org as eff.off, i dont know why...

harryvederci• 4 years ago

I'm sorry to hear that, that sounds effin offul!

sylware• 4 years ago

It seems many people are missing one of the most important points:

This is reverse engineering of obfuscated javascript for the sake of interoperability with software which are not google(blink|geeko)/apple(webkit) browsers.

The real problem is the other way around: streaming services not providing support for noscript/basic (x)html browsers (with the <video> HTML element) should not be legal in the first place.

The only real technical issue is with seeking of streamed big videos: only HLS has a standard way to do that as far as I know (I may be wrong). Don't know for mpeg DASH. Because, a noscript/basic (x)html browser would pass the URI of a streamed big video to a media player and must know how to seek into it.

hk1337• 4 years ago

Start a campaign to shut down YouTube?

smashah• 4 years ago

Where will this relentless pursuit for copyright protection end? Sad.

JZL003• 4 years ago

I like YT-DL but I'm amazed it still works. Google pushes use of widevine for netflix/etc to try to around this issue. I know there's a difference b/w 'premium' netflix content where it's only professionals vs youtube where it's semi-ad-supported, but they could just pull the widevine switch on principle if they got serious

The campaign to shut down YouTube-dl continues

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