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Comment by no_time | Hacker News Reader

>Almost all of them have the same protection: some code that triggers only when you open the tools and stops the video by creating a debugger statement you cannot skip

If you missed it, not so long ago there was a submission that evaded exactly this. Their solution is so simple yet effective: Recompiling the browser with the debugger keyword renamed. Made me smile.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36961445

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Honestly recompilation shouldn't even be necessary, browsers should just let us disable the debugger statement when "clever" sites start taking advantage of it. This usage of debuggers to circumvent our tools is abuse and should be literally impossible unless we consent to it.

Our computers are our realms. God giveth and god taketh away.

Chrome Developer Tools allows this. There's a button in the Source tab to deactivate breakpoints from debug statements. The button looks like an arrow cut in half.

This doesn't work for debugger statements.

You're wrong, it very much does work for debugger

I believe the reason you and the person you're replying to disagree, is that it works for existing debugger statements, but seemingly doesn't work for debugger statements injected after you toggle the flag.

The "disable breakpoints" button is seemingly performing a one-time imperative action on toggle (maybe "find all the breakpoints + debugger statements in existing loaded code, and patch/unpatch them") rather than being a declarative state-change in the system (i.e. "disable this tab's access to the debugger/breakpoint logic itself").

I love this exchange. It’s so symbolic of how discussion and disagreement in general works

Just wait until you won't even be able to open devtools on a WEI protected website. For your security, of course.

Can't wait when websites start voluntarily cutting themselves out of non-WEI traffic. This means we can take it and serve it, and we will.

If I recall, you can work around this by putting a conditional breakpoint on the debugger statement and then setting its return value to just `false`.

You just need to disable breakpoints in the 'Sources' tab of dev tools and refresh. Then you can get the .mp4 or .m3u4 url that can be used with yt-dlp.

> Their solution is so simple yet effective: Recompiling the browser with the debugger keyword renamed

Not exactly what I'd call simple...

Conceptually simple at least :-)

Definitely a clever hack

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