youtube-dl – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Recording Industry Forces Important Video Downloading Tool’s Website Offline

from the get-over-it-riaa dept

When will the legacy entertainment industry get it through their thick skulls that recording content is legal. We’ve done this. We’ve done it at the highest level. Tools that have substantial non-infringing uses are legal.

Well, at least in the US.

Which explains why the legacy companies often go overseas to do their dirty work. And that’s the case here.

For a while now, the recording industry has been absolutely furious that it was possible to download YouTube videos, with their ire directed mainly at one tool that enables such downloads, youtube-dl, a command line video downloader, that is also a plugin component for other download tools. It’s a useful tool. Journalists use it all the time. I have used it multiple times myself, most often when I’m trying to generate a transcript of a YouTube video, and the transcript tool I use requires an upload file.

It has, as the Supreme Court notes, substantial non-infringing uses.

That didn’t stop the RIAA from sending a totally bogus DMCA takedown demand to GitHub three years ago. After some public outcry, GitHub reinstated the code.

But, of course, the RIAA never gives up its quixotic efforts to attack the open internet. So, it went to Germany, where copyright law is pretty consistently stupid. Sony Music, Warner Music, and Universal Music went after the hosting company, Uberspace, who was hosting the youtube-dl webpage in Germany.

Using the European equivalent of their argument in the US that failed (here it was that the code violated Section 1201 of the DMCA that forbids “circumvention” technologies), a German court sided with the labels back in April, but the site remained online until just recently, when, as TorrentFreak notes, the labels put up a bond that allowed for the enforcement of the original order, even while Uberspace appealed the ruling.

The ruling was published in March but Uberspace wasn’t required to take action right away. The hosting company decided to appeal, which meant that the youtube-dl.org site remained online, unless the music companies posted a €20,000 bond.

Initially, it didn’t appear that the labels would enforce the order, but that changed a few days ago. The plaintiffs informed Uberspace that they had posted the security, leaving the company no other choice than to take the site offline.

Torrentfreak spoke to Uberspace’s owner, Jonas Pasche, who seems (quite understandably) pissed off about this, but noted that his hands were legally tied:

“I received that information from the plaintiff’s side on July 27, with proof that they did the security deposit at a bank. So I no longer have a choice but to follow the judgment. Otherwise, I would face a fine of €250,000 or jail time,” Pasche notes.

The appeals fight continues in the meantime:

Uberspace will continue the legal battle and is prepared to fight the order up to the highest court possible. If the appeal is successful, Pasche will gladly unblock the site.

“We are confident that a higher court will overturn the judgment of the Hamburg Regional Court, so we will be able to unblock the site as soon as this happens,” he says.

All of this is basically just the major record labels being a fucking nuisance. The (again, perfectly useful for non-infringing purposes) youtube-dl code is still on GitHub where it can be downloaded. And, even if the labels somehow managed to kill youtube-dl, people would figure out other ways to download video content. It’s not going to stop piracy. And, really, at a time when the record labels are making record revenue thanks to the internet, maybe they could lighten up a bit on this infatuation with trying to make everything suck just because some tools might be used for infringing uses in some cases.

Get over it. Some people are going to infringe. If the industry and its lawyers spent like 20% of the time and effort they currently spend on “anti-piracy” efforts on just providing better content in more convenient ways to eager music fans, they’d do so much better.

But the whole industry has built up this stupid faith-based belief that “piracy” is the problem, rather than their failure to better serve their customers.

Filed Under: circumvention, copyright, germany, youtube-dl
Companies: riaa, sony music, uberspace, universal music, warner music, youtube

GitHub, EFF Push Back Against RIAA, Reinstate Youtube-dl Repository

from the DEAR-RIAA-YOU-ARE-CORDIALLY-INVITED-TO-GFY dept

A few weeks ago, the RIAA hurled a DMCA takedown notice at an unlikely target: GitHub. The code site was ordered to take down its repositories of youtube-dl, software that allowed users to download local copies of video and audio hosted at YouTube and other sites.

The RIAA made some noise about copyright infringement (citing notes in the code pointing to Vevo videos uploaded by major labels) before getting down to business. This was a Section 1201 complaint — one that claimed the software illegally circumvented copyright protection schemes applied to videos by YouTube.

The takedown notice demanded removal of the code, ignoring that fact there are plenty of non-infringing uses for a tool like this. It ignored Supreme Court precedent stating that tools with significant non-infringing uses cannot be considered de facto tools of infringement. It also ignored the reality of the internet: that targeting one code repository wouldn’t erase anything from dozens of other sites hosting the same code or the fact that engaging in an overblown, unjustified takedown demand would only increase demand (and use) of the software.

Youtube-dl is a tool used by plenty of non-infringers. It isn’t just for downloading Taylor Swift videos (to use one of the RIAA’s examples). As Parker Higgins pointed out, plenty of journalists and accountability activists use the software to create local copies of videos so they can be examined in far more detail than YouTube’s rudimentary tools allow.

John Bolger, a software developer and systems administrator who does freelance and data journalism, recounted the experience of reporting an award-winning investigation as the News Editor of the college paper the Hunter Envoy in 2012. In that story, the Envoy used video evidence to contradict official reports denying a police presence at an on-campus Occupy Wall Street protest.

“In order to reach my conclusions about the NYPD’s involvement… I had to watch this video hundreds of times—in slow motion, zoomed in, and looping over critical moments—in order to analyze the video I had to watch and manipulate it in ways that are just not possible” using the web interface. YouTube-dl is one effective method for downloading the video at the maximum possible resolution.

At the time, GitHub remained silent on the issue, suggesting it was beyond its control. Developers who’d worked on the youtube-dl project reported being hit with legal threats of their own from the RIAA.

There’s finally some good news to report. The EFF has taken up GitHub/youtube-dl’s case and is pushing back. A letter [PDF] from the EFF to GitHub’s DMCA agent gets into the tech weeds to contradict the RIAA’s baseless “circumvention” claims and the haphazard copyright infringement claims it threw in to muddy the waters.

First, youtube-dl does not infringe or encourage the infringement of any copyrighted works, and its references to copyrighted songs in its unit tests are a fair use. Nevertheless, youtube-dl’s maintainers are replacing these references.

Second, youtube-dl does not violate Section 1201 of the DMCA because it does not “circumvent” any technical protection measures on YouTube videos. Similarly, the “signature” or “rolling cipher” mechanism employed by YouTube does not prevent copying of videos.

There’s far more in the letter, but this explains it pretty succinctly in layman’s terms:

youtube-dl works the same way as a browser when it encounters the signature mechanism: it reads and interprets the JavaScript program sent by YouTube, derives the “signature” value, and sends that value back to YouTube to initiate the video stream. youtube-dl contains no password, key, or other secret knowledge that is required to access YouTube videos. It simply uses the same mechanism that YouTube presents to each and every user who views a video.

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 a federal appeals court recently ruled, one does not “circumvent” an access control by using a publicly available password. Digital Drilling Data Systems, L.L.C. v. Petrolink Services, 965 F.3d 365, 372 (5th Cir. 2020). Circumvention is limited to actions that “descramble, decrypt, avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate or impair a technological measure,” without the authority of the copyright owner… 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.

GitHub’s post on the subject explains the situation more fully, breaking down what the site’s obligations are under the DMCA and what it does to protect users from abuse of this law. It also states that its overhauling its response process to Section 1201 circumvention claims to provide even more protection for coders using the site. Going forward, takedown notices will be forwarded to GitHub’s legal team and if there’s any question about its legitimacy, GitHub will err on the side of USERS and leave the targeted repositories up until more facts are in. This puts it at odds with almost every major platform hosting third-party content which almost always err on the side of the complainant.

And the cherry on top is the establishment of a $1 million legal defense fund for developers by GitHub. This will assist developers in fighting back against bogus claims and give them access to legal advice and possible representation from the EFF and the Software Freedom Law Center.

Youtube-dl is back up. And the RIAA is now the one having to play defense. It will have to do better than its slapdash, precedent-ignoring, deliberately-confusing takedown notice to kill a tool that can be used as much for good as for infringement,

Filed Under: circumvention, copyright, copyright 1201, copyright 512, counternotice, recording software, takedowns, youtube-dl
Companies: eff, github, riaa, youtube

Despite RIAA's Claim That YouTube-dl Is Infringing, Journalists Use It All The Time

from the substantial-non-infringing-uses dept

A few weeks ago we had a story about the RIAA getting GitHub to remove YouTube-dl using a bizarre form of copyright takedown. The RIAA claimed that the tool violated rules against circumventing DRM. Over at Freedom of the Press Foundation, Parker Higgins has highlighted how often this tool is used legitimately for journalism purposes, which is important. Under the Betamax standard, tools with substantial non-infringing uses should not run afoul of copyright law. Higgins’ writeup is reposted here with permission.

The popular free software project ?YouTube-dl? was removed from GitHub following a legal notice from the Recording Industry Association of America claiming it violates U.S. copyright law. According to the RIAA, the tool’s ?clear purpose? includes reproducing and distributing ?music videos and sound recordings… without authorization.?

In fact, YouTube-dl is a powerful general purpose media tool that allows users to make local copies of media from a very broad range of sites. That versatility has secured it a place in the toolkits of many reporters, newsroom developers, and archivists. For now, the code remains available to download through YouTube-dl’s own site, but the disruption of its development hub and the RIAA saber-rattling jeopardizes both the future of the software and the myriad journalistic workflows that depend on it.

Numerous reporters told Freedom of the Press Foundation that they rely on YouTube-dl when reporting on extremist or controversial content. &Oslashyvind Bye Skille, a journalist who has used YouTube-dl at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and as a fact checker with Faktisk.no, said, ?I have also used it to secure a good quality copy of video content from YouTube, Twitter, etc., in case the content gets taken down when we start reporting on it.? Skille pointed to a specific instance of videos connected to the terrorist murder of a Norwegian woman in Morocco. ?Downloading the content does not necessarily mean we will re-publish it, but it is often important to secure it for documentation and further internal investigations.?

Justin Ling, a freelance investigative reporter who often covers security and extremism for outlets including Foreign Policy and VICE News, described the scenario of reporting on the rise of conspiracy theories as the relevant posts face removal and bans. YouTube ?has been a crucial hub for QAnon organizing and propaganda: I’ve often used YouTube-dl to store those videos for my own benefit. Good thing, too, as YouTube often, without warning, mass-removes that sort of content, which can be ruinous for those of us using those YouTube accounts to trace the spread of these conspiracies.?

In other cases, local copies are necessary to conduct more rigorous analysis than is possible online, and journalists turn to YouTube-dl for the highest quality copy of the video available. John Bolger, a software developer and systems administrator who does freelance and data journalism, recounted the experience of reporting an award-winning investigation as the News Editor of the college paper the Hunter Envoy in 2012. In that story, the Envoy used video evidence to contradict official reports denying a police presence at an on-campus Occupy Wall Street protest.

?In order to reach my conclusions about the NYPD?s involvement… I had to watch this video hundreds of times?in slow motion, zoomed in, and looping over critical moments?in order to analyze the video I had to watch and manipulate it in ways that are just not possible? using the web interface. YouTube-dl is one effective method for downloading the video at the maximum possible resolution.

Jake, a member of the Chicago-based transparency group Lucy Parsons Labs, uses YouTube-dl to save copies of recorded incidents involving police use of force or abusive behavior. Once copied, the videos can be stored in an archive or modified before publication, such as by blurring the faces of bystanders or victims. ?We have sometimes been able to take a closer look at individual frames after downloading with YouTube-dl to identify officers when they are not wearing their badges intentionally or obfuscating them with things to avoid accountability.?

One misinformation researcher told Freedom of the Press Foundation about using YouTube-dl to create a baseline for machine learning models developed to do automated real-time fact-checking. ?While our production systems are designed to be used on live video streams, it's not feasible to test on live video. YouTube-dl allows us to greatly increase the speed of our research development and allow us to be able to actually test our software on a day-to-day basis, not just when politicians happen to have a speech.?

Similarly, a number of reporters described using YouTube-dl for nuts-and-bolts workflows such as transcribing videos they?re covering. Jeremy Gray, a data scientist with The Globe and Mail, described a Slack tool he provides to journalists to allow them to automatically transcribe their own interviews and, until Friday, to transcribe YouTube videos from a URL. ?It used YouTube-dl, and now that part is broken.? Another journalist, who works at a ?small-ish public media newsroom,? described a common situation where a reporter needs ?a recording of a public meeting for a story but is on deadline and doesn?t want the hassle of recording the parts they want it in real time or wants the full file for something like AI transcription.?

That same journalist described how YouTube-dl helps address the challenge of incorporating user-generated content on-air. In the immediate aftermath of an earthquake, their newsroom began expansive continuous coverage and sought to include photos and videos that locals had recorded. ?We are scrupulous about making sure we get permission (and the person granting it actually owns the copyright), but especially right after an earthquake asking people to send the video to us specifically can be a much bigger ask than just allowing us to use it (if they even have a recording, which they probably don?t for a livestream), so often after getting permission I?d just download it straight from social media to transcode for TV.?

That use case is common. Reporters frequently need high-fidelity copies of video or audio tracks for publication or reporting. Ling, the freelance security reporter, said he also uses YouTube-dl to ?get the best audio quality? when downloading copies of press conferences or news events ?to grab snippets of audio for use in podcasts or radio work.?

Finally, numerous reporters described using YouTube-dl to download copies of their own works. Freedom of the Press Foundation has previously worked to help writers preserve portfolio copies of their articles, and to help full news archives stay online when the outlet itself is under threat. YouTube-dl plays an important role in that ecosystem as well.

GitHub has not publicly commented on its removal of one of its most popular repositories. Clearly, YouTube-dl in particular and the ability to download and manipulate online videos in general are an important part of the work of journalism and contemporary media literacy. Given the important role that YouTube-dl plays in public interest reporting and archiving, the RIAA?s efforts to have the tool removed represent an extraordinary overreach with the possibility for dramatic unforeseen consequences. We urge RIAA to reconsider its threat, and GitHub to reinstate the account in full.

Filed Under: circumvention, copyright, dmca 1201, downloads, journalism, non-infringing uses, youtube-dl
Companies: riaa, youtube

RIAA Tosses Bogus Claim At Github To Get Video Downloading Software Removed

from the mumbo-and/or-jumbo dept

The RIAA is still going after downloaders, years after targeting downloaders proved to be a waste of time and a PR catastrophe. It’s not actually thinking about suing the end users of certain programs, but it has targeted Github with a takedown notice for hosting youtube-dl, a command line video downloader that downloads videos from (obviously) YouTube and other video sites.

Not that this is going to be any more effective than suing file sharers. The software has been downloaded countless times and forked into new projects hosted (and distributed) elsewhere.

Github has posted the RIAA’s takedown request, which looks a lot like a DMCA notice for copyright infringement. But it isn’t actually targeting infringement. As Parker Higgins pointed out on Twitter, the RIAA — after saying a bunch of stuff about copyright infringement — is actually claiming this software violates Section 1201 of the DMCA, which deals with circumvention of copyright protection schemes.

The request lists a bunch of Github URLs as “copyright violations.” But these aren’t actually copyright violations. A little further down the RIAA gets to the point.

The clear purpose of this source code is to (i) circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube, and (ii) reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings owned by our member companies without authorization for such use. We note that the source code is described on GitHub as “a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites.”

So, it’s not really about copyright infringement. The RIAA tries to blur that line a bit by saying the source code includes a short list of videos the program can download — all three of which are videos owned by major labels. Then the RIAA goes a step further, basically claiming that any software that can download YouTube videos violates Section 1201 of the DMCA and only exists to engage in copyright infringement.

The source code is a technology primarily designed or produced for the purpose of, and marketed for, circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to copyrighted sound recordings on YouTube…

[T]he youtube-dl source code available on Github (which is the subject of this notice) circumvents YouTube’s rolling cipher to gain unauthorized access to copyrighted audio files, in violation of YouTube’s express terms of service,and in plain violation of Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. §1201.

This suggests the primary use of youtube-dl is to violate the law. There are plenty of non-infringing uses for this software, including the downloading of CC-licensed videos and those created by the US government, which are public domain. Basically, the RIAA is mashing up the takedown notice provision of DMCA 512 to try to remove code it claims (incorrectly) is violating DMCA 1201… while ignoring the Supreme Court’s ruling in Sony v. Universal that says that tools with substantial non-infringing uses (in that case — oh look! — a video recording tool) is not by itself infringing.

Making blanket statements like these is irresponsible and misleading, but that’s the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from entities like the RIAA. It’s the same questionable claim the MPAA made back in 2014, when it demanded third-party hosts remove Popcorn Time repositories because the software could be used to engage in copyright infringement. It didn’t make sense six years ago. It doesn’t make any more sense now.

Added to all the stupidity is the fact that the RIAA appears to be threatening anyone even loosely-connected to the youtube-dl project. A couple of contributors to the project over the years have reported they’ve received legal threats from the RIAA for working on unrelated code and maintaining the repository.

The RIAA is welcome to continue its mostly-fruitless fight against copyright infringement. But it needs to do so honestly and do it without causing collateral damage to people who haven’t engaged in infringement. The RIAA has no claim here. Github isn’t engaging in infringement or circumvention. The software isn’t either, not until someone uses it to accomplish this. If the RIAA has a problem with end users, it needs to take its complaints to them. This is just more bullshit being brought by an entity with enough heft it will rarely be challenged, even when it’s in the wrong.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, dmca 1201, dmca 512, downloading, recording, youtube-dl
Companies: github, riaa, youtube