YouTube Threatens Legal Action Against Video Downloader (torrentfreak.com)

Embracing over a billion users, YouTube has become the go-to source of many for music and movies. But the scale of YouTube has also given rise to piracy and copyright infringement. To fix this, the Google-owned video portal has started to contact third-party services that allow users to make a copy of a YouTube video and is urging them to shut down their functionality. TorrentFreak is reporting about a similar instance, in which YouTube's legal team contacted a popular service called TubeNinja. From the report: "It appears from your website and other marketing materials that TubeNinja is designed to allow users to download content from YouTube," the email from YouTube's legal team reads. According to YouTube the video downloader violates the terms of service (ToS) of both the site and the API. Among other things, YouTube's ToS prohibits the downloading of any video that doesn't have a download link listed on the site. Later, Google's video service adds that if the site owner continues to operate the service this "may result in legal consequences." Despite the threatening language, TubeNinja owner Nathan doesn't plan to take the functionality offline. He informed YouTube that his service doesn't use YouTube's API and says that it's the responsibility of his users to ensure that they don't violate the ToS of YouTube and TubeNinja. "Our own ToS clearly states that the user is responsible for the legitimacy of the content they use our service for," Nathan tells us.

Comments

There nothing YouTube can do about this...

[Eloking]

I mean, the video is already on your computer. If they shut down internet service, it'll move client-side. Hell, if I wanted I could output the video/audio of my screen and record them.

It's futile. They know it and we know it. But I guess the shareholders or the lawyer are just not happy if Google doesn't do anything about it. So they do this.

Re:There nothing YouTube can do about this...

[bmo]

if I wanted I could output the video/audio of my screen and record them.

As a kid, I used to record music off FM radio, through the headphone jack to either cassette or reel-to-reel (gawd I'm old). Then the 80s came along and "tapes are killing music."

Which it didn't.

Videotape was supposed to kill movies.

It didn't.

The Internet was going to kill brick-and-mortar stores.

It didn't.

Corporations are composed of lying liars with lawyers who lie for them.

--
BMO

Re:There nothing YouTube can do about this...

[AthanasiusKircher]

I mean, the video is already on your computer. If they shut down internet service, it'll move client-side. Hell, if I wanted I could output the video/audio of my screen and record them.

It's futile. They know it and we know it.

Absolutely. Moreover, I think there should be some more legal examination about the legality of downloading streaming content. I've never quite understood why making a copy of streaming content is not directly analogous to making a copy of "streaming" cable or over-the-air TV, a practice that was explicitly ruled legal 30 years ago in the so-called Betamax decision.

File-sharing has always been a bit more nebulous, because it often involves someone making available copies of pre-made copyrighted files to simply make more copies. Here, YouTube is actually NOT making those files directly available to end users -- instead, a service is allowing you to essentially preserving a "recording" of what would otherwise be an ephemeral stream.

The Supreme Court has explicitly legalized "time-shifting" for VCRs. Why is it necessarily illegal when we essentially do the same thing for streaming video over the internet? (The only answer I can come up with is just because recording is now "easier" than with VCRs... but that doesn't seem like a good legal argument about what should constitute "fair use".)

Re:Waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, some will. Some people, however, can only copy paste a URL into a web-based downloader and cannot run a command line script. It would inevitably decrease the amount of illegal downloads.

That said, YouTube doesn't care if people download illegally, they just have to put up the front of caring. YouTube is the #1 pirate site on the web, but they hope you ignore that fact. Pretty much every video on there has copyrighted video and/or audio in them.

Re:Waste of time

[mrchaotica]

illegal downloads

WTF is an "illegal download?" There is no such thing!

If Google makes a video available on Youtube, they've made it available. Period. Splitting semantic hairs over "streaming" or "downloading" is trying to create a difference that doesn't actually exist! All streams are downloads, and all downloads are streams. The Internet cannot work any other way. If you don't want your shit downloaded, don't post it on the Internet to begin with.

Don't Download?

[Khyber]

"YouTube's ToS prohibits the downloading of any video that doesn't have a download link listed on the site."

Then your own ToS stops you from operating legally, because in order to stream or watch, ONE MUST DOWNLOAD THE FUCKING DATA.

Re:Does it persist?

[mrchaotica]

A distinction without a difference. "Downloading" a video puts a file in /Downloads. "Streaming" a video puts a file in /Temp. Maybe /Temp isn't "intended" for long-term storage, but the things put there are files on the drive just the same.

Pointless arm waving by YouTube legal, really ...

[King_TJ]

I can understand why YouTube feels it needs to take these legal actions ... but in the end, it's just symbolic gesturing.

In the "real world", the very fact you've allowed a video clip to be transmitted from YouTube's server to a client on the other end in a viewable format means the receiver has the technical ability to save a copy of it.

The "low hanging fruit" for their legal team to go after are the web based services offering to make this process easy, since they're effectively advertising to the whole world that they're enabling an illegal activity. Sitting on branches just a little further up are the folks writing plug-ins or extensions for browsers advertising the same functionality. (In those cases, I think we'll wind up with a legal battle, as soon as one of those developers wants to fight rather than give in. If nothing else, I think that's because there's a subtle difference between distributing code that *allows* someone to download/save the video content, and hosting a server that's actually DOING it for users.)

Personally, I think that YouTube will have to move to some sort of encrypted video transmission method if they want to get serious about preventing people from saving videos to redistribute. (EG. You have to install a YouTube app in order to look at videos on the site.) Even with THAT, it only gives the level of copy protection used by services such as AT&T U-Verse with its Cisco set-top boxes. (You won't be able to dump the data saved in its DVR's hard drive to any other device and watch it. But it can't stop something like a VCR or DVD recorder from copying the video and audio coming out of the box, headed for your television.)

Anyone can write software that acts as a "middle man" (similar to the VCR concept) that grabs each frame of video from the video card as it's displaying it on your screen and saved it to a new video file, while doing the same with the audio headed to the sound card output.

Re:Does it persist?

[mrchaotica]

HTTP cache control directives -- just like everything else sent by a web server of any kind whatsoever -- are nothing more than suggestions.

Re:Waste of time

[FlyHelicopters]

My company is one of those content producers, we have over 50 videos on YouTube that we make money with.

I'm sure someone has downloaded them.

Do I care? Not really, it is beyond my control. I try and worry about stuff that is in my control and if someone wants to use a tool like this to download videos, or use an ad-blocker, oh well.

Our business model has to survive that, because we can't stop it, and bitching about it is a waste of our time.

We post a video each week, our business will survive if we offer a good product that people want to come back for again and again and want to support us, not because we get lots of lawyers.