YouTube video download artifact youtube-dl is still being hunted down. This open-source tool, which has accumulated 100k+ Stars on GitHub, was removed from the shelves at the end of 2020 due to a complaint from the Recording Association of America (RIAA).
Recently, the three major music giants Sony, Warner and Universal sued a small web hosting service provider called Uberspace in Germany. Uberspace does not provide any youtube-dl source code, just hosts its official website and provides a link to GitHub.
In the beginning, GitHub resisted the pressure to get youtube-dl back on the shelves. Since GitHub could not be moved, the record industry began to turn its attention to other companies.
The three major recording giants said in their prosecution documents that youtube-dl bypassed YouTube’s digital protection lock, which a German court found illegal as early as 2017. youtube-dl lets users download music videos of singers without restrictions, which the RIAA believes violates their copyright.
The Rasch law firm, which is currently entrusted, has issued a cease and desist order against Uberspace.
Web Hoster: Will Not Bend
In response, Uberspace’s CEO told copyright news site TorrentFreak that the lawsuit was moot because the software itself wasn’t hosted on their system, and it would be ridiculous to get them involved.
He also said that blocking youtube-dl is like blocking the Firefox browser. Because YouTube has DRM measures to protect film and music copyrights, in fact, youtube-dl does not crack it but is equivalent to viewing online videos with a browser.
You can’t ban Firefox just because you can access music videos on YouTube with Firefox. Uberspace lawyers say the record company lawsuit is designed to achieve a precedent that, if successful, could lead to legal action against other companies in controversial situations.
While YouTube’s terms of service generally don’t allow downloads, German citizens also have the right to make private copies by paying a fee to GEMA, the German music copyright protection association. In the face of strong copyright pressure, the German Free Rights Association (GFF) began to provide legal assistance to Uberspace.
Felix Reda, a prominent copyright expert from the GFF, said the GFF decided to support these lawsuits by Uberspace in order to ensure that Uberspace would not take the legal risk of defending fundamental rights.
Uberspace has certainly resisted the pressure, the company stated: youtube-dl is just a tool that does not circumvent any digital locks, so Uberspace will not be forced to close the homepage.
youtube-dl turmoil
On October 23, 2020, the RIAA issued a notice to GitHub to remove youtube-dl, citing Regulation 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The RIAA thinks youtube-dl cracks the copyright protection lock on paid music.
The move infuriated a large number of programmers, who began to fork the project, making it difficult for the RIAA to completely remove every copy of the code. Some netizens even turned the source code into pictures and spread it everywhere in protest.
24 days later, on November 16, 2020, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) officially sent an open letter to GitHub, questioning GitHub’s delisting. In fact, music videos on YouTube are not encrypted, and youtube-dl downloads videos in a similar way to watching videos, without cracking the copyright protection, in fact, obtaining a downloaded copy in a way that does not infringe copyright.
After discussions, GitHub’s legal team determined that youtube-dl was not infringing. The incident even cost GitHub CEO Nat Friedman his own exit. He said on Twitter at the time that GitHub stood with the developers and restored the youtube-dl repository and that Bill 1201 was outdated and needed to be fixed.
GitHub has also established a $1 million Developer Defense Fund to help developers with claims after they have been taken down for no reason. But the record company didn’t give up, and finally made a comeback this year. I don’t know if youtube-dl can stand it this time.