Youtube-dl has been DMCAed off of GitHub

TheCakeIsNaOH · October 24, 2020, 2:33am

The youtube-dl GitHub repository has been taken down due to a DMCA claim by the RIAA. Forks have been taken down as well as normal for a DMCA claim.

See the complaint here:

github.com

github/dmca/blob/master/2020/10/2020-10-23-RIAA.md

October 23, 2020 

GitHub

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am contacting you on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America, Inc. (RIAA) and
its member record companies. The RIAA is a trade association whose member companies
create, manufacture or distribute sound recordings representing approximately eighty-five (85)
percent of all legitimate recorded music consumption in the United States. Under penalty of
perjury, we submit that the RIAA is authorized to act on behalf of its member companies on
matters involving the infringement of their sound recordings, audiovisual works and images,
including enforcing their copyrights and common law rights on the Internet.

Copyright Violations. We have learned that your service is hosting the youtube-dl source code
on its network at the following locations, among others:

https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl  
https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/tree/gh-pages  
http://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/

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Apparently, one of the main complaints is that the example videos to download from youtube are music videos. What were the youtube-dl maintainers thinking using those examples, and not videos that they had rights to download.

Dynamic_Gravity · October 24, 2020, 3:43am

They probably should’ve talked to a legal person about what to display on their front page.

oO.o · October 24, 2020, 4:05am

IMHO, Emby and Plex should take note and remove copyrighted material from their marketing…

TheCakeIsNaOH · October 24, 2020, 4:06am

I’ll make a note for jellyfin as well.

Dynamic_Gravity · October 24, 2020, 4:09am

Better clone Jellyfin just in case

Fouquin · October 24, 2020, 4:10am

Already been reupped under “Suck my dick RIAA”

Zibob · October 24, 2020, 9:28am

Well at least they are being level headed about their mistake…

BookrV · October 24, 2020, 10:06am

Seems like the brew formulae wasn’t affected or if it was, it’s still available:

Hako · October 24, 2020, 2:37pm

That’s a dangerous precedent…
Considering the software itself is not copyright infringing.

BarkingMad · October 24, 2020, 2:52pm

Time to ban and confiscate all automobiles … just in case someone may be tempted to use one in the commission of a crime.

TheCakeIsNaOH · October 24, 2020, 3:18pm

Correct, but that is not their argument. Their argument is that it can break/circumvent DRM.

nx2l · October 24, 2020, 4:02pm

which is total horseshit… you cant download drm videos from YT with it… you get errors

TheCakeIsNaOH · October 24, 2020, 4:23pm

But every single video on youtube has DRM on it, according to the RIAA’s lawyers. Youtube doesn’t do a plain MP4 or whatever stream, they have their own (really really weak) protection for the video stream.

MazeFrame · October 24, 2020, 4:26pm

Time to ban Microsoft from selling Windows, because that has been used to commit crimes…

nx2l · October 24, 2020, 4:55pm

FurryJackman · October 24, 2020, 10:52pm

Should have been on GitLab in the first place. And Big Buck Bunny should have been the examples.

This is now gonna go underground like Windows 10 AME.

FurryJackman · October 24, 2020, 11:00pm

Ooh. https://twitter.com/GalacticFurball/status/1319765986791157761

fredrich_nietze · October 24, 2020, 11:01pm

your favorite copywrite lawyer is talking about it in detail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZITscblMBA

FurryJackman · October 24, 2020, 11:28pm

RIAA wasn’t just targeting them alone. 17 other projects on Github got taken down:

It’s following up on the Twitch takedowns. They’re getting trigger happy.

SgtAwesomesauce · October 24, 2020, 11:36pm

The other 17 projects were just forks, probably for development.

Keep in mind that github just automatically responds to DMCA by taking it down. They don’t actually review it, so this could be temporary.