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.
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.
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.
Yes, actually. It's not uncommon for remixes to be taken down.
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.
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/
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.
Only once regular people can no longer write dangerous code will the music industry finally be safe.
It's both a good short story, and a chilling reminder - especially to anyone who's dealt with textbook companies recently.
RMS was right. Not about everything, but about a lot.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
Originally published in 1996, I believe.
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.
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.
So youtube is already Opus, but it's not already SILK.
They'd probably have the same issue if youtube added a "download as audio" button to every video without paying studios.
Most people, including the court, would easily see through this as trivial sophistry. It's not much of a legal strategy.
The other major defense is that it’s a tool with significant lawful use.
Many digital tools can be used to infringe. It’s only a problem for the tool maker if the tool’s primary purpose is circumventing copyright.
And actually, it is what an expert courts should and do commission in such cases would explain.
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.
While I like youtube-dl, 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!
And as long as DRM software is in browsers it's a somewhat understandable confusion.