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Comment by smashah | Hacker News Reader

The tech industry failed the invidious team and other projects like this. This should be 100% legal and allowed based on a right-to-mod precedent but not lawyer is willing to take it that far because this is open source.

This project gives control back to the user. It shouldn't be a grey zone and it shouldn't put maintainers at risk to work on it.

Till this issue is resolved, OSS projects like this are unsustainable.

Some evil megacorp is already carpet bombing maintainers with C&Ds and there is ZERO help for this.

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"Some evil megacorp is already carpet bombing maintainers with C&Ds and there is ZERO help for this."

Is it possible or realistic for a code host to not care about US copyright laws and for developers to contribute anonymously?

It’s certainly possible, but going down that path sounds like a good way to end up like Aaron Schwartz.

I don't really see how. I think it's more like a good way to end up like Dmitry Sklyarov.

In that case, the software developer dropped charges because the circumvention wasn't available in the US. That was lucky for Dmitry, because they might have still won civil damages even if he was not charged criminally. Would Google drop the case? I'm not convinced they have any reason to. I wouldn't take the risk. But, I'm not a lawyer. Regardless, this clearly is available in the US, and provides circumvention to US users via an Iceland (EU) server. This is not similar to Dmitry's case.

It is and some projects do it already, it's just that 99% of developers don't have the necessary knowledge to do it properly or don't even care (until they do)

I.e. set up your own git server + web frontend, get a domain name from "DMCA-ignoring" registrar, same with hosting, pay with Monero etc.

...or they know all of this but are reluctant to proceed for some irrational reason, along the lines of "they will get me anyway", "it doesn't matter" and so on

It isn't about copyright laws. These megacorps send the MAINTAINERS THEMSELVES C&Ds based on their TOS - why? Because OSS devs do not have the means to pay for a potentially unlimited defense.

I think it's possible to support open source projects and not support the idea that you should be able to pirate content by bypassing the monetization effort of the host and content creators.

If Google wanted people to pay to watch their videos, then they shouldn’t make them available to stream without paying.

I have the right to skip whatever content I don’t want to watch. That’s not piracy and frankly it’s ridiculous to suggest that it is.

I guess you think the Mute button on TV remote controls shouldn't exist too, right?

Ads horribly downgrade the experience of watching videos.

Then pay for premium.

uBlock Origin + SponsorBlock already removes 100% of ads on native YouTube.

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