Add "pwn" before youtube in the url of any youtube video to download it

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458409

by pclark • 17 years ago

164 53 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Fantastic implementation.

bcater• 17 years ago

Remarkable.

jws• 17 years ago

Brilliant! My wife sometimes shows Youtube clips in her psych classes, but the classroom internet is unreliable. She tries to use tubesock to nab them, but that fails more than it works.

To be clear, the url should be something like //www.pwnyoutube.com/....

martythemaniak• 17 years ago

as an example, I present kittens riding a roomba http://www.pwnyoutube.com/watch?v=GTxW3GWZ5hI

greggraham• 17 years ago

I've been using Applian Media Catcher http://www.applian.com/replay-media-catcher/ to capture videos for teachers at my school for a while now. It's not free, but it works with a lot of sites besides YouTube.

antiismist• 17 years ago

Small world, my wife also shows youtube clips in her psych class, and has to download them b/c of lack of connectivity too.

whacked_new2• 17 years ago

Hahaha, I just had to say, that isn't "small world", that's coincidence.

loowee• 17 years ago

Adding "kick" also works. :))

chanux• 17 years ago

Don't be cruel. Add 'kiss' ;)

grouchyOldGuy• 17 years ago

I sent this info to my sister. She teaches science in a high school and the school's Internet filter blocks all access to YouTube, so she was thrilled to learn about this.

jcl2• 17 years ago

I wonder how fast this will be disabled... Youtube need only check the referrer, right?

there• 17 years ago

considering youtube is starting to add their own download links (http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/01/19/youtube-begins-addin...) and there are already tons of sites and utilities to download them already that haven't been blocked, i'd say youtube doesn't really care.

wesley• 17 years ago

Do they care about the "youtube" trademark used in other domains?

palish• 17 years ago

If data is broadcast, someone will find a way to download it, regardless of any software DRM.

nazgulnarsil• 17 years ago

this is something I've never understood about DRM. If I can watch/listen to it I can capture it. Period. DRM is supposed to simply make the barrier to piracy higher so that less people overall pirate.

But this is a total misunderstanding about how piracy works. Someone will take up the challenge of breaking your DRM, and when they do everyone will download it from that person and then each other. DRM is completely ineffective in a situation where a single point of failure means total failure.

bobzimuta• 17 years ago

Determining the video url is done on pwnyoutube's server and they can set whatever referrer (or none) they like. The real question is whether Youtube will start checking the request ip address and block pwnyoutube's. But then just put the site in a cloud.

My experience is that Youtube combats this (either intentionally or just by way of code changes) by changing the method in which the flv urls are determined by the player. The download sites break until they reverse engineer, and the cycle continues.

mark-t2• 17 years ago

Or just copy the file from /tmp.

pwoods• 17 years ago

I don't think the flash file will play. Try it.

ahpeeyem• 17 years ago

yep i've trawled through my /tmp (the osx equivalent anyway) for the flv file, and if you use an flv player you can play the file

mark-t2• 17 years ago

I did. mplayer will play them.

jmatt• 17 years ago

Now the question: What other sites can be pwned the same way?

jah• 17 years ago

For the past few years I've been using the youtube-dl Python script to download youtube videos on my 64-bit linux box (thanks for dropping the ball on a 64-bit flash player Adobe ... thankfully GNU gnash has become more stable recently).

http://www.arrakis.es/~rggi3/youtube-dl/youtube-dl

dfranke2• 17 years ago

There is at long last now a 64-bit Linux build of Flash 10 beta. http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libfla...

apu• 17 years ago

Except that this version seems to make Firefox massively more unstable.

acangiano• 17 years ago

This is really well executed. Coming up with a bookmarklet is straightforward too. For example, for the international site you could use javascript:location.href='http://pwn'+location.href.substring(11). Of course, this can be refined to handle the presence or lack of www and international prefixes (e.g., ca.youtube.com), but you get the idea.

kwamenum86• 17 years ago

so how long until they get shut down. youtube has argued that this is against their terms of use.

dominik2• 17 years ago

Out of curiosity, how does Hulu.com prevent its videos from being copy-able?

Xichekolas• 17 years ago

Since it's run by two major networks, I'd imagine with a big legal sledgehammer.

dominik2• 17 years ago

Very true; I should clarified I meant technically.

wmf• 17 years ago

I've read that Hulu uses RTMP instead of HTTP.

emmett• 17 years ago

It doesn't; you can certainly download a Hulu video if you know what you're doing.

callmeed• 17 years ago

Awesome. Now, please someone make this for Vimeo.

app• 17 years ago

Why? You can download almost any Vimeo video if you're logged in.

infinity• 17 years ago

Very very nice! :)

critic• 17 years ago

Similar services have been around for a while. Then, there is the DownloadHelper plugin for Firefox.

jcl2• 17 years ago

Indeed, and they're popular, too. If you type "youtube" into Google's search, the number one suggestion in the Ajax autocompletion box is "youtube downloader".

paul7986• 17 years ago

Brilliant website and use of a domain name, which I'd guess will bring you 97% of your traffic!

dc2k08• 17 years ago

http://kickyoutube.com has been doing the same thing.

petercooper• 17 years ago

For years you've been able to add "mp4" after the word "youtube" and it does a similar thing.

ismalls• 17 years ago

WOw thats incredible

kschua• 17 years ago

This is so cool! I have been looking for something like that for a while. Thanks for the tip!

kin• 17 years ago

This is perfect feature that I have missed ever since I switched from Firefox(and its many great extensions) to Chrome. On the down side, I've had a lot of crashes recently when downloading large files in Chrome.

dgolden• 17 years ago

... or just use http://clive.sourceforge.net/ from the command line.

apoorvkhatreja• 17 years ago

Thanks for the tip! Though the mp4 downloads rarely work.

Add "pwn" before youtube in the url of any youtube video to download it

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