# RIAA Takes Down Popular Open Source YouTube-DL Software



## NapoleonWils0n (Oct 24, 2020)

Bad news folks

from TorrentFreak

"GitHub has removed the open-source YouTube-DL repository as well as several forks.
The developer platform took action following a takedown request from the RIAA."


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## Crivens (Oct 24, 2020)

Next, we will get mail from SCO... it is halloween, after all. This is sad news.


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## hitest (Oct 24, 2020)

Crivens said:


> Next, we will get mail from SCO...



That's a blast from the past.  I remember Caldera before they became evil.  Sad news indeed!


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## a6h (Oct 24, 2020)

Looking forward to see FreeBSD, completely and exclusively lands on GitHub. Then we're going to face a fantastic situation.

An imaginary situation:

Latest news: Friedman was triggered on the twitter, sponsors doesn't approve, Microsoft went woke, THEN =>
Next step: GitHub doesn't approve these users, those IPs, bunch of countries, etc. THEN =>
Block them!
Too bad, no FreeBSD source for them, who cares.
FreeBSD Foundation response: We're very sorry, but we have to comply with the GitHub guidelines, but there's good news:
What's the good news? We're moving forward to replace jail with ducker.
Why? Everybody does.


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## TracyTiger (Oct 24, 2020)

vigole said:


> Looking forward to see FreeBSD, completely and exclusively lands on GitHub. Then we're going to face a fantastic situation. For example: ...



Is FreeBSD planning to move to *GitHub* exclusively or just move to using the Git source code control software on private FreeBSD.org (non GitHub/GitLab) servers?


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## a6h (Oct 24, 2020)

TracyTiger said:


> Is FreeBSD planning to move to *GitHub* exclusively or just move to using the Git source code control software on private (non GitHub) servers?


I don't know and that's the whole point. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. It's safe to say that nobody knows!


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## shkhln (Oct 24, 2020)

vigole, you are only one additional FUD statement away from me hitting a report link.



TracyTiger said:


> Is FreeBSD planning to move to *GitHub* exclusively or just move to using the Git source code control software on private FreeBSD.org (non GitHub/GitLab) servers?



The project uses self-hosted infrastructure.


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## NapoleonWils0n (Oct 24, 2020)

Do we need a decentralized method for hosting code that wont be affected by dcma takedowns,
would be interesting if something like bittorrent could be used utilized


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## getopt (Oct 24, 2020)

Never make yourself depend on external infrastructure. Period.


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## Crivens (Oct 24, 2020)

NetBSD uses Fossil for that. Get the image and sync up on. We need something like that.


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## Crivens (Oct 24, 2020)

Problem: github is central, and has to dance to that tune. They have to leave github. If they can.

Oh, and RIAA? You have met Mrs Steisand? No? Let me introduce you...


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## getopt (Oct 24, 2020)

Searching *"Github has removed" "Microsoft" *
brings interesting results and shows why Microsoft made this strategic investment:

On June 4, 2018, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire GitHub for *US$ 7.5 billion*. The deal closed on October 26, 2018.


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## Phishfry (Oct 24, 2020)

shkhln said:


> The project uses self-hosted infrastructure.


Soon to be based on GPLv2 licensed devel/git/ With a ISC licensed client got(1).


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## shkhln (Oct 24, 2020)

Phishfry said:


> Soon to be based on GPLv2 licensed devel/git/



And? I don't see anybody complaining about a GPL-licensed grep in base, for example.


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## Jose (Oct 24, 2020)

Crivens said:


> Oh, and RIAA? You have met Mrs Steisand? No? Let me introduce you...


Exactly. I'd never heard of this project until now. I found at least two places to download the code on Reddit:


			https://gitee.com/mirrors/youtube-downloader
		









						youtube_dl
					

YouTube video downloader




					pypi.org
				




Git is a distributed version control system. Anyone that has a clone of the Github repo has all the history and other metadata, and can potentially host it.



shkhln said:


> And? I don't see anybody complaining about a GPL-licensed grep in base, for example.


There's work underway to remove GNU grep:


> ...FreeBSD is very close to provide a base system with only permissive licenses (mostly BSD). The only few components left (for tier 1), progress can be followed here: https://wiki.freebsd.org/GPLinBase...
> So for now really the left components are:
> ...
> - GNU grep (BSD grep is still too buggy but already imported)


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## CoTones (Oct 24, 2020)

So everyone agree with RIAA, Google and Microsoft that YouTube-DL users are criminals?


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## ekvz (Oct 24, 2020)

CoTones said:


> So everyone agree with RIAA, Google and Microsoft that YouTube-DL users are criminals?



Certainly not. Sadly even in countries where usage is fine (circumventing protection or not) distributing youtube-dl might be a bit more problematic than i originally thought. On the bright side the district court of hamburg is just one of many regional courts and given the fact that youtubes videos play using standard codecs their ruling of Youtubes "rolling cipher" being an effective copy protection might not be last word on this matter. Otherwise there is always places like tonga


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## Crivens (Oct 24, 2020)

CoTones said:


> So everyone agree with RIAA, Google and Microsoft that YouTube-DL users are criminals?


No. I believe that a future version of THGTTG will refer to the RIAA as ... you know where this goes, yes?


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## Crivens (Oct 24, 2020)

ekvz the district court of Hamburg, you had to drive that clown car in here?


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## ekvz (Oct 24, 2020)

Crivens said:


> ekvz the district court of Hamburg, you had to drive that clown car in here?



Hey don't blame me. It's the RIAA who brought them up 

On a more serious note: I really hope the developers are going to challenge this. I bet if they started to take donations they'd have a massive legal fund in no time.


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## CoTones (Oct 24, 2020)

I like optimistic people.

Optimists believe we live in the best world possible. Pessimists agree to this.


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 24, 2020)

I am not surprised by this at all and reluctantly have to agree with the takedown. I've been in the entertainment industry for decades and a lot of effort is put into getting permissions, paying the creatives and giving credit. A lot of this is hard work by those creatives and they only want to protect their product and get paid for their labor. It's not all free.


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## memreflect (Oct 25, 2020)

This does not affect www/ytdl since it relies upon a different repo that has not been taken down.
www/annie relies on Go's module system to fetch and build the same repo, so it is also unaffected.

There are other implementations, so taking down youtube-dl and all of its forks should not matter too much.


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## scottro (Oct 25, 2020)

Of course, no due process. For those who live in other countries, the RIAA and others regularly legally bribe politicians (it's called lobbying and it is legal) to get laws passed that should not be.  They can claim anything is theirs and get it taken down and it usually costs lots of money and time, that the average person doesn't have to get it back up. And this isn't even the GOP only. A few days after his election, Obama put RIAA people on the justice department, and I sadly shook my head and thought, welp, little better than the others, still a rich man's tool. 
They have the politicians and I doubt it will change, as they can easily buy politicians with money, drug, and sex.


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## ekvz (Oct 25, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> A lot of this is hard work by those creatives and they only want to protect their product and get paid for their labor.



Do they? From what i've seen at least with musicians it seems the artists themselves more often than not couldn't care less what happens to their main product and unsurprisingly so. In the age of streaming services (especially YT) selling music isn't all that lucrative anyways for the average musician. I guess it was somewhat different when CDs still sold in large volume but even back then usually more money would end up with the labels than with the actual artists. In any case it seems these days making money is mostly about merchandise and touring. The main product is secondary to their bottom line. Kind of a promotional item if you want and the more it spreads the better.



scottro said:


> Of course, no due process. For those who live in other countries, the RIAA and others regularly legally bribe politicians (it's called lobbying and it is legal) to get laws passed that should not be.



It's not much different in other countries. Just the lobby organizations have different names. What annoys me the most is how those organizations act as if they would represent every single artist there is while that simply isn't true. There is a lot of artists who do just fine without affiliating with these groups.


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## msplsh (Oct 25, 2020)

NapoleonWils0n said:


> Do we need a decentralized method for hosting code that wont be affected by dcma takedowns,
> would be interesting if something like bittorrent could be used utilized



They're called mirrors... in different countries.  With different laws and jurisdictions.

Seriously, this is not a hard problem to solve.  See what the VLC people do.  People are like "omg it's like DeCSS again" but that STILL isn't usually hosted in the USA, so it's not as much "again" as it is that in the USA this problem hasn't gone away.


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## msplsh (Oct 25, 2020)

vigole said:


> I don't know and that's the whole point. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. It's safe to say that nobody knows!



I think it's safe to say that _somebody_ knows.  Several of them, even.  There's no precedent for FreeBSD turning over the central repo entirely to a third party service, so I think this question is a little ridiculous.


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## getopt (Oct 25, 2020)

_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nrjcagZXSM_


"Other kinds of hypocritical deception include claims to knowledge that one lacks, claims to a consistency that one cannot sustain, claims to a loyalty that one does not possess, claims to an identity that one does not hold". (David Walter Runciman)


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 25, 2020)

ekvz said:


> Do they? From what i've seen at least with musicians it seems the artists themselves more often than not couldn't care less what happens to their main product


Yes. They do. I don't know how you got that impression.


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## ekvz (Oct 25, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Yes. They do. I don't know how you got that impression.



Well, i don't really see where one would get the opposite impression. It's always the same tiny amount of people who are complaining about their profit margins being hurt by unauthorized distribution and such and even then it's usually the lobby groups and not individual artists. Once you move beyond the major labels that stuff really isn't a topic. Being noticed in a market that's flooded because there is practically no entry barrier to distributing music anymore on the other hand is. You can get music for free at literally every corner and not because it's pirated or anything but because the owners chose to distribute it this way.

1000000 plays on YT are probably like what? 600$ (with maybe about 10% of it ending up with the artist)? This is not a viable business model for the average musician. This is a promotion tool.


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## drhowarddrfine (Oct 25, 2020)

ekvz I don't know how that works for the artists who actually make a living producing CDs and going on tour. The major ones always gave away some songs for free in order to get you to buy their CDs but, yes, times are different now but, again, I only worked in music radio decades ago where I (indirectly) dealt with music producers. The labels, and any kind of producer of entertainment, always make more money than the artist. They also do a lot of the work to generate that money, too. Things an individual artist could not do on their own and, without the label, would remain in obscurity among those same millions on YouTube who wouldn't exist without it.

My main concern, however, is film/video/theatre.


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## NapoleonWils0n (Oct 25, 2020)

Poormans youtube-dl with vlc and ffmpeg






ffmpeg command: ffmpeg -i 'url goes here' -c copy outfile.mkv


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## getopt (Oct 25, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> I only worked in music radio decades ago where I (indirectly) dealt with music producers.


For a better understanding of "decades ago" when actually was this?


drhowarddrfine said:


> My main concern, however, is film/video/theatre.


What kind of "concern" is it?


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## ekvz (Oct 25, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> ekvz I don't know how that works for the artists who actually make a living producing CDs and going on tour.



My guess would be that for the major part of musicians it simply won't work (as in being able to quit their day job). I don't have any real numbers but i imagine that at best like <1% are actually going to get rich for even wealthy from their music (including related income like merchandise, tours, ...) and another 20-30% end up somewhere between decent income and somewhat being able to scrape by cutting a lot of corners. Even that might still be overly optimistic.



drhowarddrfine said:


> The labels, and any kind of producer of entertainment, always make more money than the artist. They also do a lot of the work to generate that money, too. Things an individual artist could not do on their own and, without the label, would remain in obscurity among those same millions on YouTube who wouldn't exist without it.



Sure even if self promotion and/or getting decent exposure on an independent label is becoming more and more easy there is artists that would likely be virtually unknown if it wasn't for one of the major labels but then there is also those that managed to build a following without such support. It all depends what you are looking for (on various levels). Of course if you just look for those <1% the second group is likely mostly non existent but beyond that the playing field is a lot more open. When i see bands touring pretty much non stop i guess it's safe to assume they are making enough to survive.



drhowarddrfine said:


> My main concern, however, is film/video/theatre.



I see. That's a very different topic obviously.


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