Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
samtheprogram
matheusmoreira
It's about control. As a user agent, youtube-dl acts in our behalf in order to do what we want and protect our interests. That's why they hate it. It's the antithesis of everything they want: something that acts on their behalf, does what they want and protects their interests.
If something gives us any power at all, they'll sue it into oblivion.
karaterobot
This sounds like you're describing an evil AI rather than a bunch of humans. I think a simpler explanation might be that they either don't understand that youtube-dl isn't a threat to them, or that OC is wrong and it actually is a threat in some way. I don't think they're sitting at a board room table saying "We cannot let them have freedom, we must control everything they do".
throwanem
> This sounds like you're describing an evil AI
Yes, they're called "corporations". We used to have software that helped keep their incentives aligned with those of the species, or at least those of Americans, but the Citizens United decision and the end of Glass-Steagall EOLed that stuff without an upgrade path - I blame Google lobbyists, that's just their style - and we've spent the last couple decades finding out why that maybe wasn't such a great idea.
matheusmoreira
> I don't think they're sitting at a board room table saying "We cannot let them have freedom, we must control everything they do".
That's pretty much what they said. Not with those words but that's essentially their thought process.
> With the software, which is available on the code sharing platform Github, YouTube videos and music files can be downloaded without a web browser.
They literally want to control how you view the videos. Maybe you think YouTube sucks and would rather use mpv with youtube-dl. According to these guys, you can't because reasons nobody really cares about. It's honestly offensive enough that they think they have any say in the matter.
throwaway09223
OC is wrong.
Online ad serving is a 100 billion dollar market and it is entirely dependent on control of the client, or at least the default behavior of the client, to make it show ads and to not save the media, requiring repeat visits to show more ads. It is vital to their industry that ad systems can display ads on browser clients by default.
This is a huge part of the push toward apps - more control over clients.
If they could go after ad-block extensions in browsers they would, but this is difficult for historic and technical reasons.
Youtube-dl is a separate client with no ad-displaying ability at all. It saves the media. They're going to do their best to portray this as somehow improper because their business depends on it.
TimTheTinker
Consider this: every DVD and Blu-Ray player is working for them. It has region encoding, and a blessed DeCSS decoder. They don't mind that.
But if you build your own Blu-Ray player and distribute the plans for others to do so as well, they'll be legally on top of you in a jiffy.
YouTube-dl is like that homemade Blu-Ray player -- it's something that's working on your behalf, not theirs.
jrm4
The "Evil AI" description is more accurate. Of course, individual humans aren't in a board room being evil -- but the incentives in place -- high paid lawyers, little targets that won't fight back, the ability for the little wormy people inside to show off "wins," and no clear incentive not to.
The behavior will much more resemble the "Evil AI."
namlem
Or there's some bureaucrat who needs to justify his salary and found an easy target to go after.
undefined
andrei_says_
Evil AIs are coded by humans :)
Take a look at China’s use of AI tech.
kavalg
I mostly use youtube-dl for archival of public videos (predominantly some educational material and sometimes rare old tunes of performers passed away many years ago). I do that, because somehow youtube has become the de-facto storage for such material (i.e. people don't host it on their own webistes), yet often some videos/playlists disappear. This is quite annoying, because as you said I have no control on the availability of said content. To me it feels like e.g. someone accidentally or intentionally deleted all Feynman lectures from planet earth as if they never existed. So I as well ask my self what the agenda of the plaintiff may actually be and which of their short and long term interests are being harmed. One hypothesis is that there is increased migration of videos from youtube to other platforms and Youtube wants to diminish that, however they don't want to take the PR negatives for suing youtube-dl, hence somehow encourage the music industry to do this dirty job instead (the latter already has a big track record).
matheusmoreira
> To me it feels like e.g. someone accidentally or intentionally deleted all Feynman lectures from planet earth as if they never existed.
Yeah. It's like a global mass gaslighting. One day there's a video, the other day it's just gone, no mention is ever made of it again and you're expected to just accept it.
nomel
> in order to do what we want and protect our interests
Letting everyone do things in their own self interest, unchecked, is rarely found in stable societies. For example, one persons interest (getting music for free) may not align with another's (the starving artist's).
2pEXgD0fZ5cF
> the starving artist
The "starving" or small time artist is an excuse that is useful for corporations when they want to manipulate public opinion. No music label cares even the slightest bit about individual artists or their fair payment, they care about megahits and big sellers.
If you want to support your favourite artist that isn't already a millionaire or multi-millionare paying for spotify isn't it.
To actually support "starving artists" visit their shows, buy some merch (however even this isn't the case anymore for some) or look for independent artists on bandcamp (bandcamp takes 15% of a sold album).
If all you do is pay for spotify or something like that you are not supporting a "starving artist" any more than someone downloading the songs, maybe even less because sharing the music on the right filesharing forums might at least lead to some of the sales (merch/concert) above.
For anyone interested have a look at https://informationisbeautiful.net/2010/how-much-do-music-ar...
To add to that: Big labels hurt small time artists immensely. If you are an artist on youtube getting hit with a (false) copyright claim by a large label is a constant threat to you. It even happens to people with songs with millions of views [1]. We have reached a point where using certain chords or chord progression can get you stomped by music labels.
Music labels are not in any way friends or allys to "starving artists", only to millionaire artists.
matheusmoreira
Then stop making music for free. Find a way to get paid before you put the work in. Because after it's been made and published, it's already over.
Computers exist and are networked. Data is trivially and infinitely copyable. The clock will not be rewound back to the dark ages where data was a finite product that people could buy and sell. No matter how much the music industry rages and sues, it won't change the fact that YouTube is just sending me data via HTTP and there's absolutely nothing they can do if I decide to redirect that data to my hard disk instead. It's up to them to adapt to their new reality. If they can't, that's their problem.
glenda
Except the RIAA isn’t a starving artist and the actual artists make practically nothing from streaming services - the starving artist’s needs are already compromised by large corporate interests.
ClumsyPilot
"Letting everyone do things in their own self interest, unchecked, is rarely found in stable societies."
So far corporations has been pretty unchecked, maybe that's got something to do with political instability today.
jevoten
But they get music for free either way - Youtube and others are broadcasting it. And now they want the legal right to restrict us from recording those broadcasts, no different than stopping us from recording radio.
They broadcast free of charge, and when we don't consume that broadcast in the manner they hoped, they use it to justify taking away our right to run software of our choosing. It's obscene.
philipov
The RIAA isn't protecting the interests of artists, either.
SantalBlush
If it's truly the starving artist we're all worried about, then it should be fine to pirate an album and mail the artist a check for $25, right? Everyone here who cares about the starving artist is cool with that?
shmoopi
>Letting everyone do things in their own self interest, unchecked
As in "freedom"?
>is rarely found in stable societies
As in most of the developed world?
jasode
>The common cases for using youtube-dl, as I understand, is for archival (mostly non-music), watching videos content
Even though videos are the main content, Youtube is also the #1 website in the world for streaming music:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-did-youtu...
https://musically.com/2021/03/22/surprise-youtube-is-the-mos...
abakker
And, even as a YouTube red subscriber, I like YouTube DL because it lets me create local Copies of music from great concerts. Many artists release a lot more great live stuff than there are albums for.
grujicd
What I learned is if you a find concert or something else you’d like to rewatch in the future - download it. Even if it’s legit video on legit yt channel, it could dissapear for number of reasona. And it’s not like - we’re taking it down from yt but you can watch it here for $5 or subscription or whatever. You typically can’t find it anywhere anymore.
bduerst
Doesn't that include YouTube Music which gives you the same live music videos and let you store them offline?
e.g. https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=YQfkm4Vp-1o&list=PLZGh95p3...
helloworld11
And if you don't mind my asking, what's the most practical/useful way to download videos from YT without using spammy 3d party websites?
habeebtc
I was also surprised at this. Despite all the copyright claim controls, I was under the impression that YT was still the biggest source unauthorized music distribution.
This seems to me to be akin to bullying a mouse because bullying the elephant in the room isn't going to pan out.
AnthonyMouse
They do things like this and then turn around and say "X will destroy the recording industry" and are surprised when voters start wondering why it's taking so long and asking if there are any legislative changes or tax incentives that could be used to assist X in its meritorious endeavor.
redwall_hp
"Home taping is killing record industry profits! We left this side blank so you can help." - The front of a Dead Kennedy's tape released in the 80s. The recording industry's been beating the same drum since before I was born.
I don't care about the longevity of the record industry. Music is alive and well, with liberal distribution on the Internet making discovery and independent distribution so much easier. There's more music than ever, and much of it goes straight to YouTube (or Nico Nico).
jrockway
If X will destroy the recording industry, please give me lots more of X!
endofreach
Don‘t forget that many countries don‘t have spotify or any other streaming service. These are countries with much lower GDPs, where buying a song for .99 is not an option.
Music is culture and important. Yes, it is important to be paid for your music, but it is more important for music to be heard. Piracy should live. Fuck the labels, fuck the whole music industry creating plastic „art“ that has no meaning whatsoever. Let‘s make art, not money.
edanm
> Music is culture and important. Yes, it is important to be paid for your music, but it is more important for music to be heard.
If artists aren't paid for making art, much less art is created. So if music is important to you, you can't just ignore the question of how to pay for it.
It's nice to say "let's make art, not money", great soundbite, but artists are people just like everyone else, who deserve to be compensated for their work. And who can't live without having money to buy food.
endofreach
I have worked in the music industry for a short time. Most people who claim they are artists, are not.
Let‘s talk about this differently. The impact of real art is way more important than a few plastic pseudo-art creating „i am special“ people not making money to live a life as an „artist“ / influencer on instagram… Buuut: anyway.
taneq
> I don’t really know anyone that pirates music, seems like streaming has really solved that with ad-supported listening.
Someone's told them that "X million songs per year" are downloaded via youtube-dl. They get $Y in royalties per thousand views, and they have some number Z which is the average number of times an individual will listen to a song. There's been a boardroom meeting where these numbers have been presented as "X million songs per year are being pirated, costing us X * $Y * Z / 1000 per year, THIS must STOP!"
davidgerard
Streaming has largely defeated torrents, but anti-piracy people in the record companies want to preserve their jobs. So they've invented a bogeyman of massive stream-ripping going on amongst young people.
TeeMassive
Copyright ceased to be a way to reward creators and has now been used to create private monopolies on huge chunk of popular culture.
pydry
I think that was always the point. Rewarding creators was the pretext for this system, not the reason.
redwall_hp
Especially since the recording industry has never been a friend to artists. They used to pay musicians a one off fee to come down to the studio and make some recordings, and didn't pay royalties, in the old days. Now they pay pennies on the dollar.
Meanwhile, independent music is thriving thanks to the Internet. Let it burn.
KarlKemp
I'll just mention, because it hasn't been mentioned before: this is obviously wrong... We all know that it's wrong, but saying it has some symbolic meaning, right?
Because to find a counterexample you would only need a single artist who has the opportunity to spend more of their time working creatively (rather than their previous civilian job) because they get a royalty cheque every now and then. I personally know four of five such people.
nmilo
Artists make most of their money from touring and merchandise. It's the labels that benefit off of their copyright-given monopoly.
nitwit005
If you hire some people to take down tools to bypass copyright, they'll go try to do that, whether it's really a good idea or not.
Honestly, they're probably targeting it because it's easy to find with the Google searches they're trying.
howdydoo
I use youtube-dl to download Cracking the Cryptic videos. The RIAA does not own those videos. In fact there are quite a few videos on youtube the RIAA doesn't own.
zeeZ
They own all videos until you can prove otherwise, and win the appeal.
Longhanks
Ah, I didn’t know other countries too have Germany‘s GEMA-Vermutung (per default assumption of media requiring payment to the GEMA for legal use).
HWR_14
The US doesn't have that same law. YouTube decided to do something similar of their own volition.
mhitza
Romania has something similar as well. If you own a business and want to play even ambiental/lounge music (even free music) you need to pay for a license. Of course the money collected that way doesn't go to the original artists.
kzrdude
Sweden has, and it's stupid.
AlfeG
In Russia everyone pays a penny for each medium that may store music. Not sure if any penny goes to musicians
Accujack
Yep. Youtube's de facto monopoly on video hosting has rules heavily tilted in favor of corporations and organizations like the RIAA and MPAA.
hiptobecubic
They want the revenue from hosting the content.
cheeze
You can use thepiratebay to download legal videos too, but the RIAA still cares.
Not saying that I agree with them, but "I use it for a legit purpose" doesn't mean they are going to act sensibly.
ILMostro7
Just to clarify, do you mean a few videos or many videos? Thanks
thaumasiotes
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quite_a_few
The opposite of "quite a few" would be "quite few".
pmg102
This is not correct. "Quite few" is not correct English.
EDIT: on reading some of the linked sources I realise I was wrong about this.
skrebbel
Not the GP but they mean very many videos, ie the vast, vast majority.
mdoms
You know what he means. Stop it.
skrebbel
Don't assume. Not everybody is a native English speaker and able to pick up nuances such as when "quite a few" means "super many, lol" and when it means "a few" or "a bit more than a few".
(EDIT: TIL from the sibling comments that it always means "super many, lol" which surprised me) (I'm not a native English speaker)
mastazi
To me, it sounds like music industry execs are not familiar with the Streisand effect. The first time I became familiar with Youtube-dl, it was during the Github DMCA PR fiasco. The number of stars for Youtube-dl increased sharply as soon as MS reviewed the decision and let them back online.
smt88
> music industry execs are not familiar with the Streisand effect
The Streisand Effect didn't save Napster or Popcorn Time. It could only save these people from the RIAA if they actually made enough money to fight the lawsuits and win.
JodieBenitez
True... but Soulseek lives on.
victor9000
I personally appreciate the regular reminders to update my local copy of youtube-dl.
oynqr
Here's a reminder to upgrade to yt-dlp
seanw444
For anyone wondering why: it is not consistently maintained anymore. I think I remember something about the owner of the repo steppung down? yt-dlp is an actively maintained, direct fork, with the same features and then some. It also solves an issue that has been lingering for months now where videos download painfully slow on youtube-dl.
icelancer
Yup. This is the move.
smm11
Will the music industry sue the 1978 me, with the tape recorder right next to the radio, and me holding the "record" button to catch my favorite songs (along with the banter leading right up to the first lyrics)?
belter
They already did: "...A royalty on blank audio tape and tape recorders..."
https://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/21/arts/issue-and-debate-roy...
howdydoo
They should also get a royalty on cameras, because someone might take a photo of copyrighted cover art. Oh, and also a royalty on pens and paper, because someone might use them to write down copyrighted lyrics
fimdomeio
I believe than in Portugal one pays a tax with every hdd or any device that might be used to ilegally store copyrighted content. So I pay a tax for the eventuality of doing the thing I cannot legally do but at the same time if I already paid for it how can it still be ilegal?
matheusmoreira
Maybe impose a tax on our brains as well since it stores copyrighted data in our memories. Complete with mandatory brain chips that detect when you remember their data and charge your bank account automatically.
How much more absurd can this become?
iqanq
In Spain they get a royalty from everything you can store data on, from hard disks to mobile phones.
belter
That is called the Microsoft tax. As you pay extra for your OEM hardware even if dont plan to use Windows.
undefined
cronix
Didn't they also do that with recordable CD's (CD-R) early on?
pomian
Yes. To this day. You pay extra tax on cdc-r. (Interesting not on DVD -r)
EvanAnderson
I don't know about CD-R media, but DAT media was that way.
PostThisTooFast
And the bullshit tax on blank CDs, which came later.
The article makes a critical point: We already PAID for the right to download this material, and have been paying for decades.
Also, I've known several friends in bands. So far I've never heard of any of them receiving a check for blank-media taxes collected "on their behalf."
standardUser
Honestly I'm surprised there still is a music industry, considering how many albums I downloaded on Napster in my teens and early twenties.
tshaddox
Short answer: yes, the music industry (and similar media industries) has historically fought tooth and nail against any technology that allows anyone to consume content in any way not directly controlled and monetized by the music industry. There's a well-documented history of media industries fighting against "time shifting."
DrJokepu
That's right, back in the day, music publishers were up in arms about that outrageous new invention, the phonograph!
jacquesm
You don't remember the 'home taping is killing music' campaign?
bshipp
I'm fairly certain record companies have been a decade behind evolving technology since the late 70s, probably earlier.
If their claims were valid they should have all collapsed in ruin 20 years ago.
mrweasel
No because that is not a loss-less copy. The quality is severely affect and that amount of damage you can potentially do to sales is minimal. EDIT: Completely forgot about the "tax" on blank media and tape records.
Anyway, if they didn't want people to be able to copy their stuff, then they shouldn't have put it on YouTube. The music industry is being as dumb as they ever where, it's fascinating that they've learned NOTHING in the past twenty years. How much money can they possibly lose on youtube-dl vs. how much money they continue the scam out of artists.
At this point who doesn't have a subscription to a streaming service? Those who don't where never going to pay anyway. They aren't losing money.
jacquesm
The funny thing is they did this to themselves. Consumers were perfectly happy with their regular HiFi stuff and records. But the recording companies and the big hardware manufacturers (notably: Philips, Sony, both owners of enormous music catalogs) would love to sell everybody an upgraded HiFi system and get them to buy all their music again. In a format so dense that no computer would ever be able to store that much information on a writable medium so pushing large numbers of lossless copies of music into the world was a no brainer. We all know how that ended.
tremon
Everything available on Youtube is not a lossless copy. Especially music is lossy-compressed and loudness-optimized, so lossless vs lossy isn't a valid argument here.
mrweasel
My point was that it won't degree further as you make copies of the file you got with YouTube-dl
zamadatix
YouTube is just another streaming service, they make money by delivering their copyrighted material on it just like every other delivery method and people pirate via it just like every other delivery method. Choosing to put their content on YouTube isn't a dumb choice at all, it's one of the few sane things about the situation.
PostThisTooFast
The music industry (in collusion with Congress) killed DAT with this same specious argument, when everyone knew that "perfect digital copies" were the LEAST-likely vector of attack on their industry.
The obvious and dominant form of music copying was with double-cassette boom boxes in dorm rooms and bedrooms around the world.
And in the end, the media publishers' lies about "perfect digital copies" were proven to be just that, as profoundly IMperfect MP3s became the real threat.
grishka
Those tape recorders with a built-in radio that are capable of recording it directly should be illegal
/s
2pEXgD0fZ5cF
I would've preferred submitting the article by netzpolitik.org [1] where I first encountered these news but as far as I am aware HN submission are required to be in english.
[1]: https://netzpolitik.org/2022/urheberrecht-musikindustrie-ver...
ILMostro7
Just another example of "Netzpolitik" ;D
Sorry, couldn't resist.
dredmorbius
Not absolutely required, but very strongly preferred.
English is the Lingua Franca of the tech world.
jvanderbot
I'll never understand the logic behind 'we sent them this file, but they kept it, those evil people!'
nightfly
They don't want normal people to know that's how it works
grishka
Any person capable of basic reasoning would understand that any information at all sent to your device could be written to a file for long-term storage. They can't expect people to accept that technology is magic and is sacred enough to not be thought about too hard.
Asooka
I have been informed by lawyer friends, who have read the YouTube terms of service, that viewing the content from YouTube in any way other than on the YouTube webpage using an interactive user agent is a violation of the terms of service and keeping the file sent to you is a copyright violation, because YouTube didn't authorise such use. Obviously your browser's cache is allowed to keep a partial local copy, because it's doing it in the approved process of showing you the content in the approved manner.
ZoomZoomZoom
Sorry, but that's not true. A concerning number of users don't know the concept of a file at all.
We're losing the battle for general computing, or may have lost already.
BurningPenguin
> They can't expect people to accept that technology is magic and is sacred enough to not be thought about too hard.
Did you ever work in IT support? Because that's exactly what way too many people think.
smt88
I seriously doubt that this would be an issue at all if they believed it ended at "they kept it". They think youtube-dl (and similar programs) are enabling people to share these files widely, not just to save them.
jvanderbot
That's essentially what I contest: They aren't going after sharing, they're going after keeping. It's youtube-dl, not youtube-ul.
smt88
I agree with you, and I think the music industry's abuse of the legal system should be criminal.
That said, they don't know if youtube-dl users are planning to share their files in torrents, upload them to random websites, etc. I think their goal is just to prevent anyone listening to music in DRM-free environments, regardless of how harmful of a crusade they have to go on.
sdoering
Damn. I probably need to up my monthly fee for my different projects I host with them.
For more than 12 years now I host my web projects (nearly) exclusively with them. I really enjoy the way they are setup and structured.
You pay what 10GB of hosting is worth to you (min 1 Euro). Shared hosting without sudo. Great user support. Really helpful and real knowledgeable people actually trying to help.
I can't recommend them enough.
When I started I couldn't afford to pay more than a few bucks a month. Now using them professionally and hosting client projects there I can support them by paying more per month.
Sadly having to fight in the Hamburg doesn't help. In Germany the Hamburg court is known for their pro music industry stance.
champagnois
Youtube-DL has been an incredible tool for a very long time. I have never used it for music, but I have used it for countless educational videos that I intended to use while on a subway or a transcontinental flight.
The experience of consuming media via an offline software is just infinitely better for my focus.
I would rather see Youtube die than Youtube-DL. Youtube-DL has a lot of use cases.
charcircuit
I use it for music all of the time. I've downloaded hundreds of songs using it.
Kaze404
That's interesting. I don't personally pirate music (I like collecting CDs), but I know there are much better ways to do so. Some streaming services are so laughably insecure that you can straight up download lossless FLAC from them if you know where to look.
stemlord
That can be done with bandcamp but ironically bandcamp is the one place I'd rather pay because they are a rare platform that's actually pretty good for the artists and listeners alike.
blacklight
The more they are obsessed with taking down youtube-dl, the more they advertise it and let other people know that it exists, the more I feel like I'm doing the right thing using it on a daily basis.
Seriously, we're talking of a tool whose purpose is to download publicly available videos. What's the big deal? It's not even used for music piracy, for God's sake. I've never seen anyone download their favourite album from YouTube videos and use ffmpeg to extract the mp3s. Most of the folks just use Spotify.
So what's the big deal? That if we use youtube-dl then we don't see ads and we don't get tracked? Oohh, actually that's the whole fcking point, you know? youtube-dl pisses lots of people in the majors not because it's used to illegally download musical content (I'm pretty sure that's only an insignificant fraction of its usage), but because it hurts their "new" way of doing revenue: ads, tracking, and more ads.
And you know what? I'm more than happy to hurt such a shtty way of doing revenue!
forinti
You can download just the audio with
--extract-audio --audio-format mp3atoav
Yes, you can do that. I tend to use that for rare and hard to get music (e.g. obscure iranian 60s stuff).
However cutting the full albums apart and tagging the resulting songs is serious work that I don't think a lot of people would do realistically in times of spotify.
eulgro
You can download and extract one audio file per song in a playlist easily, there you have the album.
sandos
I once used this tool for downloading music into SD cards for our car, this was when we were on road trips I sometimes capped out my data. But I used my spotify playlists to direct the youtube downloads, so I already had some paid access to the same music. Nowadays its just not a problem any more, and I simply use spotify directly.
daef
i prefer
-f251
kolla
But who sees ads on youtube, don't everyone use an ad-blocker?
soco
Only in browser. I'd be very happy to hear of an ad-blocking solution for the Android app... I mean I've heard of ad-blocking VPNs but other than that?
kevincox
Firefox for Android is a pretty great client. There are also third party clients.
ajyotirmay
There are some solutions if you'rere willing to look into it. Not a 100% solution, but they work amazingly.
I'm afraid of naming them here because not sure of the repercussions
Zetaphor
Check out YouTube Vanced. It has this and many other great features.
undefined
JGM_io
I download the music as a dj to try it out before buying the songs via beatport and such
anonimamente
or bandcamp, my preference so that artists get the highest compensation for their work
timwaagh
I used to do that, a long time ago.
undefined
nyjah
Why is that streamers and videos on youtube can't play music but xxx web cam models are allowed to? I really don't understand it. Every cam model plays whatever their heart desires.
Might not be the best place to ask this, but its something I wonder about a lot.
azeirah
Streamers as well as web cam models _aren't_ allowed to play random music, they just do.
The only time it's allowed is when they have the appropriate licenses. (sync license under DMCA for music synchronized to live streams)
Streamers were doing this without repercussion 5 years ago because the streaming industry wasn't large enough for the music industry to care about. That changed about two years ago.
The same holds for cam models, it's just that they're not getting claims for whatever reason. Maybe the music industry just isn't that focused on live pornography?
kadoban
Because enforcement hasn't come for them (yet). No real other reason.
quux
This might be the answer. Peloton in their early years also just streamed whatever music they liked as part of their workout streams, at some point they got big enough to get on the radar of the music industry and now they have to pay royalties.
habeebtc
Indeed. I don't think most xxx streamers (or streaming platforms) are "stones" with enough "blood" for them to be worth squeezing.
yuliyp
Streamers and other popular YT channels rely on ad revenue from their YT channels. If they play content-id-ed music, the revenue from those videos might go to the music rightsholders instead. For channels which aren't going to be able to get ad revenue due to their content not being "advertiser-friendly" this is not a concern, since they make their money elsewhere.
henearkr
At the same time, "music industry" has the worst behavior in total impunity:
Like, for example, how at the beginning of January 2022, Sony Music Entertainment had got ALL the legitimate Youtube videos of the Vienna New Year's Concert forbidden to stream in Japan...
This is yet another example of abuse of the fact that Youtube, confronted with a copyright infringement report, will first just block the reported video, and only after that will consider appeals...
So now all these videos are allowed again. (took several weeks)
somat
"With the software, which is available on the code sharing platform Github, YouTube videos and music files can be downloaded without a web browser."
I could argue that the software is a web browser, admittedly one tailored around a specific use case.
I feel the music industry has to do a better job explaining how downloading a youtude video via the youtube-dl user agent is different than downloading the same video via the firefox user agent.
matheusmoreira
The music industry has no explanation for anything. Its entire existence is based on made up concepts that are irrelevant in the 21st century, ideas such as copyright. To actually explain things is to prove their own irrelevance.
They're not like us, they don't know or care what user agents are. The only thing that matters to them is control. To them, the idea that someone might do something they didn't approve of is an atrocity that must be combated at all costs. They actually think that browsers are glorified passive content consumption platforms where they get to set the rules and it's take it or leave it. Even something as basic as user scripts is an affront to them because it means the user is not a passive consumer anymore.
KarlKemp
What does this drivel even mean? What interest does the music industry specifically have against anything but "passive consumers"? It's a shallow attempt to recast people not paying for their music as some sort active citizenry?
What's the music industry's fear? People making their own remixes and becoming too powerful, rhythmically? No. They don't like people not paying. People don't like paying. Therefore they avoid it. It's not courageous nor morally repugnant, but the motivation is entirely self-interested and the result is mildly negative for the actual people working in creative industries.
matheusmoreira
> What does this drivel even mean?
This "drivel" means exactly what I wrote: there is no acceptable explanation for anything they do. Nothing they say will ever change the fact that copyright is fundamentally incompatible with the 21st century, the age of free flowing information.
> It's a shallow attempt to recast people not paying for their music as some sort active citizenry?
Shallow?
These corporations have robbed the whole world of our public domain rights. They lobbied the US government multiple times until they made copyright duration functionally infinite. They use the US government to impose their copyright on the rest of the world. They work on DRM which means they are completely opposed to the computing freedom we all enjoy today and are atively working to undermine it. And on and on.
Of course copyright infringement is active citizenry. It's civil disobedience and at this point it's a moral imperative. To pay them even one cent is to empower them to do even worse.
tonguez
What does this drivel even mean? Everyone likes to be paid. Everyone does not like to pay. Digital technology has eliminated media scarcity. Some people want to artificially create scarcity so that other people are forced to pay them. Fortunately it is pretty obvious to most people that there is no real advantage to anyone in society to artificially create this scarcity.
Kaze404
> People making their own remixes and becoming too powerful, rhythmically? No.
Yes, actually. It's not uncommon for remixes to be taken down.
undefined
Hamuko
As far as I can tell, the copyright mafia's legal action plan is "throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks".
MPA tried to get the source code repository for Nyaa.si removed from GitHub by saying "the Project, which, when downloaded, provides the downloader everything necessary to launch and host a “clone” infringing website identical to Nyaa.si (and, thus, engage in massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and television shows)."
It was completely bullshit since they forgot to mention that the project provides everything necessary to engage in massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and television shows EXCEPT the actual copyrighted motion pictures and television shows. The repo is back up after a reversal: https://github.com/nyaadevs/nyaa/
daniel-s
Ban Debian. Their distro supplies all the tools necessary to create a website with precisely the same functionality as Nyaa.si.
sattoshi
The only legal platform should be iOS, anything else should require a federal license.
Only once regular people can no longer write dangerous code will the music industry finally be safe.
wldcordeiro
It's sort of like saying the ownership of a gun makes you a murderer.
dane-pgp
That analogy would work if countries with large numbers of privately owned handguns were as safe as (otherwise comparable) countries where such guns were banned.
I think we can agree at least that countries which ban communication tools have worse human rights records than countries which don't restrict them as much.
Also, I don't dispute the media industry's premise that a government which had complete control over all software installed on people's computers could decide to reduce the amount of copyright infringement.
bonzini
More like a gun made of soap, as in "Take the money and run".
andai
I used youtube-dl as my primary way to consume YouTube content (mostly lectures and podcasts) for a year when I had very limited internet access.
youtube-dl -f bestaudio [url]
then convert to 12kbps Opus with
ffmpeg -i [file] -b:a 12K [file].opus
I could even do this from my phone over SSH but eventually made a simple web frontend for it. I haven't opened it to the public though, because of, well, news stories like this one.
autoexec
I still do this. I never watch youtube videos on youtube anymore. It's a better experience. VLC is a better player, there are no ads, there are no comments, there are no recommended videos trying to bait me, and I don't even have to enable javascript for google's domains.
Siira
FYI, mpv can open youtube links directly (using youtube-dl under the hood, I think).
Narishma
I still do because Firefox doesn't support hardware video decoding on Linux in any of my machines. Though I use mpv, which then uses youtube-dl in the background.
dylan604
is it still considered downloading if you sent the output of youtube-dl to stdout rather than to a file, then have ffmpeg read from stdin?
Hamuko
Isn't YouTube bestaudio already Opus?
jerf
Often yes, but it'll be much higher quality than 12Kb/s. But 12Kb/s is plenty for human speech to be comprehensible, though you'll generally notice the quality loss.
Plus, I haven't studied this but I don't think they reencode all old content. New videos seems consistent but older videos can have varying things available. Using bestaudio & ffmpeg will definitely get you a consistent result. I can't promise hard-coded -f options for specific formats will be reliable.
andai
Yeah, my main intention was to save bandwidth, so I used just about the lowest possible bitrate and the best codec to match :)
spicybright
On a technical level you're right, of course. But the industry is more concerned with how content is delivered to non software savvy people (the vast majority). So controlling the tools leads to less overall downloads (in theory anyways.)
They'd probably have the same issue if youtube added a "download as audio" button to every video without paying studios.
pvg
I could argue that the software is a web browser, admittedly one tailored around a specific use case.
Most people, including the court, would easily see through this as trivial sophistry. It's not much of a legal strategy.
nmilo
The law isn't based around technical gotcha's but instead on how human judges judge things. It doesn't matter that, if in some very techincally-correct viewpoint, youtube-dl is in theory performing the same actions as a browser. youtube-dl is not a browser, you and I both know that.
matheusmoreira
User agents aren't "technical gotchas", they're a fundamental concept of the internet we enjoy today. Browsers are merely one type of user agent.
If you make content available via HTTP, then obviously any HTTP client will be able to access it. It doesn't matter that they "meant" for the content to be accessed through browsers.
If they had a proprietary client that wasn't a browser, they wouldn't be complaining at all. So why does it matter? It's about control. It's the fact that user agents act in our behalf in order to do what we want and protect our interests. They want to force us to use something that acts on their behalf, does what they want and protects their interests.
This isn't about "human judges". Those are all paid for. Industry lobbyists literally create the laws that they blindly enforce.
No, this is about a stealthy war that's being fought for the control of our computers. There will never be peace between us. Either the entire copyright industry will be destroyed or we will lose the computing freedom we all currently enjoy and the entire concept of "hacking" will be a footnote of history.
onli
No. The law is very clear that you are allowed to make copies. For some time now you are not allowed anymore to circumvent copy protection for that, which is an illegal law but still standing, but even this is not happening here. The industry has no leg to stand on, this is just terror-by-suing, trying desperately to stiffle fundamental rights of german people.
nmilo
I'm not defending the industry or the case at all. I'm just saying that saying "youtube-dl is technically a browser", and letting the defense rest its case, is the kind of technically-correct nonsense that often gets written on HN but would never work in the real world.
pessimizer
No, we don't know that. You're using "technically-correct" here as FUD code for completely correct.
CJefferson
I don't think they would have any trouble explaining that in a court of law, to a jury.
While I like youtube-dl, it's clearly not an intended way to interact with YouTube.
pessimizer
Neither is an adblocker, or the youtube-classic extension I use. There's no reason to care about google's intentions.
akersten
> it's clearly not an intended way to interact with YouTube
I'm curious how you reached that conclusion. The maintainers of YouTube-DL would certainly disagree!
nmilo
They would certainly agree. Most of their work involves playing the cat-and-mouse game of youtube-dl vs. YouTube, all coming from the fact that YouTube never intended people to view their content using youtube-dl.
contravariant
I wouldn't be the first time a web browser has been confused with a server agent.
And as long as DRM software is in browsers it's a somewhat understandable confusion.
Get the top HN stories in your inbox every day.
I’m confused by their obsession with youtube-dl. I don’t really know anyone that pirates music, seems like streaming has really solved that with ad-supported listening. The common cases for using youtube-dl, as I understand, is for archival (mostly non-music), watching videos content out of the browser (also mostly non-music), and derivative works purposes.