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Comment by AshamedCaptain | Hacker News Reader

No, it's not; this misses the point.

A tarball of _ancient_ DeCSS code has some value because you can use it to "decss" _all_ content made _before_ a certain date (e.g. most physical DVDs). So it makes sense to preserve the tarball in any method possible.

A tarball of an _ancient_ youtube-dl version is absolutely useless because the youtube HTML will have changed a million times in the meanwhile. You will not be able to use it for anything, neither for old nor for new content. Publishing/preserving youtube-dl tarballs is an absolute waste of effort.

The RIAA here is targeting existing project developers, and possibly also users. Trying to scare them away. Not trying to censorship old tarballs of the code which will quickly become useless.

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> A tarball of an _ancient_ youtube-dl version is absolutely useless because the youtube HTML will have changed a million times in the meanwhile.

But it's not a tarball of an ancient version of youtube-dl. It's a tarball of a version of youtube-dl from like two days ago. So then it gets posted to some other host or some distributed thing and development continues over there, only with twice as much support because of all the media coverage.

That takes a lot of coordination between the many contributors to all migrate to a new space. I'll celebrate if and when it happens.

You are basing your argument on the highly erroneous premise that YouTube is all that youtube-dl is usable for.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24905640

No, the argument does not depend on that premise, unless you are suggesting that the other websites never ever ever change their HTML.

i.e. replace YT with $YOUR_FAVORITE_VIDEO_HOSTING_WEBSITE in the message above.

Your argument that "You will not be able to use it for anything" because "youtube HTML will have changed a million times" is most definitely based upon that erroneous premise.

Or a misunderstanding of the word "anything". (-:

You come off as responding in bad faith. The argument is not specific to YouTube; YouTube is just the example. You're reaching to find something that technically incorrect, even though the point is fairly clear. There's an obvious difference between a static target (like a DVD) and a moving target (like a web service). With a static target, an archive is useful for all items produced prior to the archive. With a moving target, an archive is useful until the target moves.

It's not a reach when YouTube was specifically named as the reason that youtube-dl will be "absolutely useless". That was what was clearly stated.

Whereas it is a reach, ironically, for you to assume that all WWW sites are like YouTube, especially given the discussion of "extractors" that I pointed to, and even are moving targets.

As I said before, this premise, that you have assumed like AshamedCaptain, is highly erroneous. I suspect that neither of you have actually looked to see what WWW sites out of the hundreds that youtube-dl works with actually do have changing HTML, and how many of the "extractors" are still happily working years after they were written. (Sadly, the open issues list on GitHub, which would have helped to determine this, is gone, GitHub being a single point of failure.)

This is just entirely erroneous assumption and hyperbole, that everything is like YouTube, that things will change "a million times", and that magically all of those hundreds of WWW sites will stop working and "you will not be able to use it for anything".

At best, it's hyperbole. It's certainly not "highly erroneous." The most useful websites, with the largest user bases, will also have the largest developer bases, and change the most frequently. That's just kinda how the internet is. Consider - if a tool like this had been written 20 years ago, are there any websites it would still work on today? What about 15 years ago? You're not wrong that some of the smaller websites might take longer to change than the larger ones, but the calling the notion that most websites change over time "entirely erroneous" is just silly.

I literally mentioned on the _original_ post that youtube-dl supports other sites. Excuse me for not repeating on every post "YouTube and/or the other websites" as I did on the original one.

Not GP, but I understand what they are getting at. They were shortening to be concise. What was actually meant was...

"You will not be able to use it for anything because YouTube and every other video sharing website supported by youtube-dl will have changed a million times.

... which revision is equally based upon the erroneous premise that all of those WWW sites are the same as YouTube. Clearly, with all of the hundreds of "extractors", they are not.

You're being gratuitously obtuse.

Acknowledge the point and move on.

No, they aren't the same. But they will all change regularly and invalidate their corresponding extractor just as quickly.

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