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Comment by burkaman | Hacker News Reader

The RIAA's logic is that a youtube-dl user is equivalent to someone in a movie theater with a video camera. The situation they're concerned about is somebody downloading a music video that they've authorized to be on Youtube. They make money on Youtube views, but they're losing precious fractions of a cent when you download it and watch it offline.

This is obviously not ethically justified, but I have no idea if it's legally justified.

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The problem with their argument is that youtube-dl is a video camera. The US has already rules that video cameras, VCRs, DVD recorders, etc are all devices with legitimate uses, and you can't stop them from being made or sold. A movie theater is within its rights to ask patrons using video cameras to leave, and Google would be within its rights to lock down Youtube.

The RIAA is fishing, and all the precedents are against them pulling up even a minnow.

> The RIAA is fishing, and all the precedents are against them pulling up even a minnow.

Unfortunately there is a lot of precedent for the lawyers of a large organization bullying a smaller one and getting away with it.

Even further, they are saying that the primary use of youtube-dl is reproduction and distribution. Distribution is the actual illegal act.

I can't speak to the average youtube-dl user's experience, but I've used it a lot and have never distributed a video. I've saved videos to watch later on my own, that's it.

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