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

TOS vs TOS

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ultimate Showdown

Re:TOS vs TOS

[maroberts]

It's a ToS up who wins
Everyone prefers their own ToS
They're all a bunch of ToS-ers

Re:TOS vs TOS

[bmo]

And the only winner will be:

"Mr. Rogers in a blood-stained sweater."

--
BMO

Re:TOS vs TOS

[Archangel Michael]

Whoever wins, we lose!

Re:TOS vs TOS

[WeezulDK]

There can be ONLY ONE!!!

Waste of time

[Number42]

People will simply switch to youtube-dl or another local utility.

Re:Waste of time

[mysidia]

Some people will.... However, fewer people will figure it out easily (People tend to give up if they can't find the tool easily), and they can go after those too.

Google's also in a good position to make it hard to find information on youtube-dl/etc.... They're a major search engine, so they can just self-censor their search results.

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

[stealth_finger]

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.

All they have to do is make sure it dls with the ad attached. because honestly, that's why they don't want people downloading the videos, because then they can't advertise to 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.

Re:Waste of time

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Thank you.

This battle should remain one on the technological level, where it is up to the content producers and distributers to make it physically difficult to bypass.

Everything else is just browser variants. I am pissed Chrome no longer permits right click save picture/open in new tab, presumably because the site has some copyright bit set. It used to.

Hint to other browsers that wanna grow.

Re:Waste of time

[hairyfeet]

All they will do is set their servers in Russia or Bumfuckistan or some other country that has zero fucks to give about the USA draconian copyright laws and then give Google a nice high res Goatse as a response.

These stupid copyright police need to quit trying to turn back the clock to the days before the VCR and accept the fact plenty of places in the world aren't gonna play your little reindeer games.

Re:Waste of time

[Grishnakh]

I'm sorry, I don't see how they can easily go after youtube-dl. It's not a service, it's a downloadable program. youtube-dl (the organization who produces the program) doesn't access the Youtube website; only the people who download their program do. And finally, it'd be easy for youtube-dl to simply move its website to another country where Youtube can't touch it.

Re:Waste of time

[Pascoea]

Just because your friends and family are all retarded doesn't mean the rest of the world is.

Said the guy who has never done tech support. Sorry, the ratio of people that could complete the task based on your instructions vs those who couldn't is extremely slanted.

Re:Waste of time

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

Remember the story of the handyman's bill. I have no doubt that most people could enter that command. It might take them a minute or two to hunt-and-peck but they are capable of typing it. That's the $1 piece of the puzzle.

Knowing that one way to obtain the software to download Youtube videos is to enter that command, that's another story entirely -- that's the $9,999 piece.

Re:Waste of time

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people will.... However, fewer people will figure it out easily (People tend to give up if they can't find the tool easily), and they can go after those too.

Google's also in a good position to make it hard to find information on youtube-dl/etc....
They're a major search engine, so they can just self-censor their search results.

The most incredible part of all this is that your browser stores a copy of the youtube video in cache . That's right: every youtube video you view is already stored on your computer. The only thing the downloader does is make it easy for the user to put a copy copy in whatever folder they feel like; no more having to search through the browser cache to find that video; you can store it on your computer wherever you feel like. Is YouTube also going to go after all the web browsers next in the unlikely event that they manage to shut down all the downloaders? The incredible pettiness of the folks at YouTube is matched only by their stupidity!

Re:Waste of time

[swillden]

Just because your friends and family are all retarded doesn't mean the rest of the world is.

Said the guy who has never done tech support. Sorry, the ratio of people among those who call tech support because they have difficulty completing technical tasks that could complete the task based on your instructions vs those who couldn't is extremely slanted.

Fixed that for you.

Yes, you're right that many people struggle with technology. On the other hand, tech support calls are obviously not an unbiased representation of the set of users as a whole, because those who don't struggle generally don't call.

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.

Re:Waste of time

[Actually, I do RTFA]

YouTube totally cares. They get paid per view. It's very much a "stop trying to take what I've rightful stolen" attitude.

Re:Waste of time

[lgw]

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

Illegal is whatever the law says it is - law and common sense have never overlapped much; law and technical details even less so.

All streams are downloads, and all downloads are streams. The Internet cannot work any other way

I'm pretty sure YouTube doesn't send you an unencrypted stream (anyone know for sure?). I've always assumed you run their EULA-bound, DMCA-protected software in order to decrypt that stream and watch it. Easy enough to save that, of course, but you have to bypass the DRM.
 

Re:Waste of time

[liquidsin]

it may depend on the site you're trying to save pictures from, but when I've had that issue in the past of not being able to right click>save image I've been able to bypass it by disabling javascript. ymmv

Re:Waste of time

[Rob Y.]

Except they can stop it. If it gets to the point that it's seriously affecting their bottom line, they can encrypt the stream and require a plugin to view it (or whatever Netflix does).

Re:Waste of time

[FlyHelicopters]

Except they can stop it. If it gets to the point that it's seriously affecting their bottom line, they can encrypt the stream and require a plugin to view it (or whatever Netflix does).

That is just a good way to drive off users...

Netflix is different, being a service you pay for... YouTube has become successful being what it is, and open endless videos is part of that... (side note, I don't sub to Netflix, Amazon Prime gives me all the video I could want)

I don't download YouTube videos myself, but I do block the ads (yes, as a content creator that makes money off ads, I still block them, they suck!, but hey, I'll take the money!).

And no, I don't get all whiny when other people block the ads watching our videos, that is just par for the course. We ask people if they are able to support us to donate $1 a month via Patron if they block ads and like our videos.

Re:Waste of time

[cshay]

It's actually not that simple. People want to download long videos without watching them first. So those videos are not already in the cache. The download helpers download them directly to disk.

Re:Waste of time

[caseih]

No, most Youtube videos (that use the normal youtube player) are not encrypted and you can download and convert them with youtube-dl to your heart's content. In fact youtube uses html5, not rtp. Some content is hosted on youtube but uses an rtp with an encrypted stream and authorized player, such as Crackle. But in general, no youtube streams are not encrypted and there is no DRM.

Re:Waste of time

[mysidia]

doesn't access the Youtube website; only the people who download their program do.

Allow me to enlighten you then... (1) Youtube can use technical means to break the current version of the tool, and (2) Youtube just has to include a small element of the videos copyright by Youtube; A digital watermark would be sufficient... then... There is a a tort called CONTRIBUTORY INFRINGEMENT

One who knowingly induces, causes or materially contributes to copyright infringement, by another but who has not committed or participated in the infringing acts him or herself, may be held liable as a contributory infringer if he or she had knowledge, or reason to know, of the infringement. See, e.g., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., 545 U.S. 913 (2005); Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984).

Re:Waste of time

[jedidiah]

Except that knowledge is also trivial to acquire.

Google? Perhaps you've heard of it. This is not the mid 90s anymore. You can find all sorts of stuff on Google that used to be the domain of proprietary printed manuals or very expensive service contracts.

Of course there are people incapable of doing ANYTHING. They can't even plunge a toilet on their own. These people are truly helpless (and a big pain in the ass) and it doesn't matter what the domain is.

Re:Waste of time

[jedidiah]

I download the longer videos because I have a preferred video player interface. I'm not going to bother with YouTube for anything more than a few minutes long.

Even if something is on Netflix or Prime, I would rather use my own video player and a local copy.

Re:Waste of time

[Bender Unit 22]

Indeed, I downloaded videos from youtube to watch on a longhaul flight. As Youtube "red" isn't available in my country, I used youtube-dl.
Took me a minute to google how to download youtube videos and type "apt-get install youtube-dl".

Re:Waste of time

[TemporalBeing]

Some people will.... However, fewer people will figure it out easily (People tend to give up if they can't find the tool easily), and they can go after those too.

Google's also in a good position to make it hard to find information on youtube-dl/etc.... They're a major search engine, so they can just self-censor their search results.

The most incredible part of all this is that your browser stores a copy of the youtube video in cache . That's right: every youtube video you view is already stored on your computer. The only thing the downloader does is make it easy for the user to put a copy copy in whatever folder they feel like; no more having to search through the browser cache to find that video; you can store it on your computer wherever you feel like. Is YouTube also going to go after all the web browsers next in the unlikely event that they manage to shut down all the downloaders? The incredible pettiness of the folks at YouTube is matched only by their stupidity!

A lot of these work by screen scraping the HTML to find the video files (flash, wmv, mov, theora, etc). Some, like Video Downloader, will also provide a transcoding service so you can get the quality video you like; others just enable you to download what you would otherwise get directly. Either way, if the developers are not using the APIs, etc then they are not bound by any ToS (as the accused in TFA points out). Google could try to add encryption stuff and use the DMCA, but...that won't likely work since these typically operate as browser extensions and therefore have access to the unencrypted content and URLs any way, just like the browser would, which is necessary for their users to view the videos in the browser. Google could also try to do the old cat-and-mouse game of continuously changing the functionality so these tools have to keep changing to keep up with is going on in...and that's probably the only real solution.

As to Contributory Infringement...well that only works if the tool is within the legal boundaries of that law, and they could just as easily move the company outside those legal boundaries (f.e The Pirate Bay), even potentially keeping the same developer team and staff (just move the legal entity, if necessary have it issue a contract to the old entity, transferring all liabilities, etc to the new entity). IOW, there's lots of legal games that can be used to legally get out of the situation.

Re:Waste of time

[Grishnakh]

Breaking the current version of the tool isn't a problem. They already do this. youtube-dl is easily updated to the latest version with "youtube-dl -U".

However, as for the contributory infringement stuff, that's not a big problem either. That's US law, so if something called "youtube-dl-fork.org" pops up in Russia, there's exactly zero that YouTube or the US authorities can do about it.

Re:Waste of time

[Grishnakh]

It is also trivial for Google to seriously hamper this utility and others like it.

No, it's not. They can't tell the difference between a legitimate browser and a download tool, if the download tool is written specifically to emulate a browser.

YouTube, can simply, throttle its transfer speeds. Instead of allowing me to download an MP4 at max-bandwidth speeds, just serve up the bits slightly faster than real-time speed.

Yeah, so? WhoTF cares? You really think that's going to make people stop downloading them? People have no trouble letting slow-ass BitTorrent downloads run for hours or days, *much* slower than real-time speed. Downloading stuff off YouTube is much easier than finding torrents; if it takes a little longer, so what? Let it run in the background. They already have JDownloader which downloads from YouTube and will queue up downloads; people will just use that.

Re:Waste of time

[mysidia]

"youtube-dl-fork.org" pops up in Russia, there's exactly zero that YouTube or the US authorities can do about it.

They can force Afilias to hand over the .org domain to them, then they can use DMCA letters to remove all references to that website from search results, then DMCA letter against any Forum websites, etc linking to the domain.

Re:Waste of time

[Grishnakh]

Fine, they'll get a Russian domain name then. ThePirateBay's been operating for quite a while with silly LE goons trying to take it down with little effect.

Re:Waste of time

[mysidia]

They could contemplate Amazon/Netflix-style DRM protections. You don't see any Amazon-DL tool existing that allows you to have a permanent copy of a rented/non-owned video, now do you?

If they come back on a different domain: Google could still get the new domain delisted from search engines, and pursue charges against those who originally created the tool, also, they still commit a crime and can eventually be pursued, even if they are in Russia... And, it should still drastically reduce the number of users aware of how to get the tool. After that, they can start setting traps to detect what people accessing Youtube are using the tool, and then contemplate actions against those users.

Re:Waste of time

[Grishnakh]

and pursue charges against those who originally created the tool, also, they still commit a crime and can eventually be pursued, even if they are in Russia...

Sorry, that's total bullshit. Proof: Edward Snowden.

Yes, all this would greatly reduce the number of people using it though because most people aren't savvy enough to find software like this.

Netflix-style DRM would work, but it'd also make it so YT doesn't work on some browsers (namely Firefox and Chromium on Linux, not sure about other OSes). Not a great move for a free service.

But suing users would look really bad (can't wait to see the news headlines about that). It's possible, but also a great way to give their name a big black eye. "We'll sue you if you violate our terms of service!" is not a good way to treat your visitors.

Re:Waste of time

[nazrhyn]

I'm pretty sure YouTube doesn't send you an unencrypted stream (anyone know for sure?). I've always assumed you run their EULA-bound, DMCA-protected software in order to decrypt that stream and watch it. Easy enough to save that, of course, but you have to bypass the DRM.

Depending on the quality, but at HD+ for sure, the videos are downloaded as video and audio streams separately from public sources, without any kind of DRM. It's possible to manually grab those files and mux them locally (that's what the player is doing in real time). I used to do that before I found an acceptable local downloader program that handles that for me.

Re:Waste of time

[mysidia]

Sorry, that's total bullshit. Proof: Edward Snowden.

No.... Snowden was a special case, for political reasons, thus that is no proof. --- I believe the Russians saw Snowden as an opportunity to one-up on the United States, and make their country look like the good guys granting asylum to people the "Repressive US government" wanted to imprison for political reasons.

Re:Waste of time

[doccus]

Well, I really hope the one I use stays under their radar. It's excellent. Little nervous about even naming it here in case their goons read /.

Re:Waste of time

[Reziac]

I think you'll find the majority of people who bother downloading Youtube content are on a slow connection that can't handle streaming at a decently watchable resolution. So the choice really is "download then watch" or "don't watch at all".

Otherwise there's no reason to spend disk space on a video that's available on demand. At least until the advertising aspect gets too obnoxious.

Re:Waste of time

[beastofburdon]

mps-youtube is a good one. It is a cli interface based on py-curses which interfaces with mplayer or other media players. It can download the video or just the audio.

Re:Waste of time

[RockDoctor]

(2) Youtube just has to include a small element of the videos copyright by Youtube; A digital watermark would be sufficient... then...

Never having felt the need to upload something to YouTube (I'm not even familiar enough with the UI to think where to look), I'e never felt the need to read their ToS. Are you saying that by uploading something to YouTube, we're giving them the right to modify our content, even if it's content that we've generated ourselves?

I'm not sure that I'd be willing to do that.

Re:Waste of time

[mysidia]

Are you saying that by uploading something to YouTube, we're giving them the right to modify our content

The very act of uploading results in the content being modified. They re-encode stuff. Several versions of your video are created in different resolutions. They have extra features such as video stabilization.

They can include whatever extra content they want in front of or embedded in the special video files that they encode for use with their service.

Besides:

For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') busines

Re:Waste of time

[RockDoctor]

Hmmm, I'm defiitly not sure that I'd want to submit to that. Maybe for a severely trimmed down "trailer," but for content I actually wished to make profit of ...

But that's what you expect from "free" services, where you are the product being sold.

Re:Waste of time

[mysidia]

They basically do it anyways, by showing their Youtube imagery around the player, and the Youtube logo in the player itself.

Also, I think many content creators would welcome YT doing that, and offering services to pursue copyvios, Because of Rampant content theft by Facebook users, and the Freebooting problem.

On a tangent

[PmanAce]

I'm curious, if I download a copyrighted image and convert it to say a base64 string, is it still copyrighted? Who can prove that my string is not just my creation and that by chance (the probability is very slim but still) it converts to an image that is very similar (or exact) to the copyrighted image? What if the same thing is done to a video?

Re:On a tangent

[Khashishi]

Yes, it would be a derivative work. It doesn't matter if you change the format.

Re:On a tangent

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. But you have to get every digit of pi.

Re:On a tangent

[ljw1004]

hey, on this note, if you do decide that you can indeed copyright a string, then can I copywrite pi in base64?

Of course you can copyright a string. That's what a book is - a string.

No you can't copyright pi because it's NOT AN ORIGINAL WORK.

Re:On a tangent

[PmanAce]

So a Chrysler car is derivative work from lets say a Ford car (Ford existed earlier, or the first car company)? Both are cars. In my case, one is an image and the other a string. I could go even further and generate random base64 strings using super computers (would go faster than my current laptop) which eventually one would convert to an image that already exists and no copying was done.

Re:On a tangent

[Megol]

It would be copyrighted.

(Warning - long and boring rant ahead)
Once upon a time I tried to create a distribution system which (among more important goals) would make it possible to have parts or the whole of a copyrighted file on a computer with plausible deniability (and making it hard to prove that it's there). The distributed caching system was intended to ensure that parts of popular files were cached more than others so that one node that cached many blocks could with a high probability have all parts of a copyrighted work even if the node user(s) never intentionally downloaded it.

The solution which I _think_ would make deniability possible (and more importantly making the aggressive caching realistic) is to divide all files into blocks (where blocks could be overlapping), use one-time pads for encryption, store the procedure to extract a file in the same kind of blocks.

But the trick would ensure that each block can't be tied to a specific file (or even groups of files), so the blocks have to be reused. As they are encrypted they can be considered random - so they can be used as the one-time pads mentioned above. So to upload a file one 1) divides it into blocks 2) encrypts the blocks using either pseduo-random data or another existing block. There can be several overlaid blocks in practice - logical exclusive or is used for mixing them, blocks needn't be a uniform size so the block(s) selected as keys also have associated position relative to the block to be encrypted.

The final step is to encode how to create a file: a list of identifiers of required blocks, a list of how they should be combined, file names etc. This is generated as one or more blocks (very unlikely to be needed) and encrypted with a pseduo-random stream. To begin to download a file one have to know the (first) block that contains the descriptor, the seed for the random generator and some other things (including an index into the block). This can be stored as a 256 bit number - a file identifier. Several identifiers can map to the same encoded file, one identifier can specify several ways to extract the same file etc.

There are more things that are important for this to be opaque legally including making sure that all nodes cache popular blocks, that all kinds of blocks are promoted to ensure survival of rarely accesses blocks, that blocks are ensured to be error free and that nodes that fakes blocks can be detected and blacklisted.

Stopped working on the system as making the search system scalable, anonymous and tolerant of statistical analysis was a problem - even for the lower limit of presenting a plausible deniability for copyright violations. For some things if statistical analysis point out a user as a _possible_ distributor it may be enough to severely damage the user.

Re:On a tangent

[phantomfive]

Similar sorts of absurdities can be found in all areas of law. The problem is that its impossible to word laws in such a way that every (real-world) case is covered. Courts handle it by not dealing with the details until there is a real-world case where it comes up (try your super-computer generator, see what happens).

So a Chrysler car is derivative work from lets say a Ford car (Ford existed earlier, or the first car company)? Both are cars

With that, you're just showing your ignorance and the fact that you didn't do basic research on the question.

Re:On a tangent

[Dragonslicer]

Who can prove that my string is not just my creation and that by chance (the probability is very slim but still) it converts to an image that is very similar (or exact) to the copyrighted image?

Why would anyone have to do that? If you're in civil litigation (which copyright infringement almost always is), then the standard is "preponderance of the evidence", i.e. greater than 50%. Even in a criminal trial, that probably wouldn't even meet the requirement of being a reasonable doubt.

Re:On a tangent

[lgw]

Ever heard of Freenet? It never really took off, but it did (does, I guess) everything you wanted. But no one uses it because, by its nature, it's slow.

Re:On a tangent

[AK Marc]

Yes, but the initial patents on the first Ford have long since expired. Copyright never expires. You can't apply patent concepts to copyright. Mickey broke copyright.

Re:On a tangent

[swilver]

What if I put each copyrighted video through a hash function that outputs zero or one...

Re:On a tangent

[Megol]

It will be slower than doing normal downloading yes. But the inherent overheads aren't huge, locating nodes with blocks is the largest bottleneck. Freenet have larger overheads but is also more secure.

Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Don't web browsers download video content from YouTube (if the user chooses to visit that site)?
It's a website. It's designed to send out "content."

Re:Obvious

[bluefoxlucid]

In this case, it's clear and well-understood that "Download" is used as a lay term to mean "save locally as a file". People don't consider downloading to memory as downloading in a general sense.

The same reasoning is also what makes the ridiculous ass dance TubeNinja is pulling a complete failure in court--and possible grounds for liability. If TubeNinja seriously tries to argue that their material, despite being clearly designed to market the downloading of YouTube content, is not liable because, while that would be illegal and a liability, they plainly state that you should check the TOS of the service you're accessing, the court might call bullshit on them and lay all kinds of penalties for trying to bullshit the court. It's like if a Tobacco company used children's shows to market cigarettes, but had the person Barney is smoking up in front of and passing a Camel to be an adult: the courts would call bullshit on claims that they're not targeting children in their advertisements, and the argument that Barney is an adult and is sharing his smokes with an adult would be wrapped round the end of a golf club and driven back into that lawyer's skull.

This is different with BitTorrent providers. The client legitimately allows you to access large, free downloads such as Linux DVD images, free music (mostly independent albums released for free by the artists), Gutenberg collections, and other such things. It's a major use case, and the clients aren't branded to allow you to download illegal content--unlike Kazaa and LimeWire advertising infinite free music from every band on the planet.

JDownloader

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

I have problems with Video Download Helper. It works but sometimes it is awkward. Ever since I discover that you could use JDownloader I have used that.
Much simpler more control.

I have never even heard about NinjaTube.

Re:JDownloader

[Anonymous Coward]

ClipConverter.cc is pretty good; Tubeoffline claims to be able to download from dozens of sites, mostly porn but also YouTube.

Re:JDownloader

[drinkypoo]

I am using Youtube Downloader HD. Hilarious that the first thing they're going after isn't the program literally named Youtube Downloader. Not only do I like to save YT videos, but it's also the only way to watch long ones without interruption, especially recently. YT has been hanging and even crashing my browser a lot lately. The only way to get through a long video is to download it first. I don't see ads anyway, because I am blocking them.

Re:JDownloader

[stealth_finger]

I use YTD too. It's just works great. The converter is so handy.

Re:JDownloader

[FlyHelicopters]

Not only do I like to save YT videos, but it's also the only way to watch long ones without interruption, especially recently. YT has been hanging and even crashing my browser a lot lately.

My company is a content creator, we have over 50 videos on YouTube that we make money with, both from adds and from subscriptions/donations. We post a new video every week.

My take on the whole downloading thing is that it is way beyond my control. If you can watch the video on your computer, then you can download it, nothing is going to stop you.

So downloading doesn't bother me. If you are downloading for personal use, that is a non-issue as far as I'm concerned. Now if you download because you want to make money with the video, then we'll have a problem, but that doesn't remotely sound like what you're doing.

If you took 15 second clips from our videos, along with 9 other videos, and posted a video saying "here are my 10 favorite educational videos and links to the channels", I wouldn't care, that strikes me as fair use (so long as you're quoting sources and using only small snippets of video). In fact, if you're doing that, shoot me an e-mail and let me know, I could provide you with better source clips. :)

I don't see ads anyway, because I am blocking them.

:) So do I, I hate ads, but we have to have them for income.

That being said, we do ask those people who watch our videos every week, if you're able, donate $1 a month via Patron if you wish to support us and block ads.

If Google asked me if I wanted my videos blocked from people using ad-blockers, I'd say no. Those people might subscribe, or might choose to support us on Patron, or perhaps they have no money, have a crappy internet connection, and block ads because they pay for bandwidth. What do I gain by blocking them? That would just be stupid, I hope our videos are still helpful to them.

People who use an ad-blocker aren't going to turn it off if they are site-blocked, they'll just go somewhere else.

Re:JDownloader

[drinkypoo]

That being said, we do ask those people who watch our videos every week, if you're able, donate $1 a month via Patron if you wish to support us and block ads.

If I liked your videos, I would happily give you twelve bucks to feel good about myself for the year, but I will never ever use a service which signs me up for a recurring payment if I can avoid it. Does Patreon let people make one-time tips yet?

Re:JDownloader

[FlyHelicopters]

If I liked your videos, I would happily give you twelve bucks to feel good about myself for the year, but I will never ever use a service which signs me up for a recurring payment if I can avoid it. Does Patreon let people make one-time tips yet?

Yes, they do. You can give $1 one time, or $12 one time, or whatever you want.

Color me Confused

[Anonymous Coward]

How do I watch a video without downloading it? Even streaming a video is downloading it? Any way of presenting material from web requires downloading that material to the client.

How can they "outlaw" downloading when by definition that is the process used to present their content to customers?

Re:Color me Confused

[tepples]

How do I watch a video without downloading it?

It's not that you download the portion of the video that you're watching as much as whether your user agent stores a copy of all chunks of the video. What they "outlaw" is storing the downloaded data more than ephemerally.

Re:Color me Confused

[neghvar1]

There is a difference. Downloading refers to saving a full copy on your local device for later use. Streaming copies the data to you system memory where it is accessible as long as you keep the streaming app open. Once closed, it is removed from memory.

Re:Color me Confused

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

So all browser caching is going to be illegal? Tell that to Microsoft, Apple, Firefox and Opera.

Re:Color me Confused

[tepples]

There are laws governing caching. For example, 17 USC 512(b)(2)(B) protects a cache mechanism only if it respects a reasonable expiry policy indicated by the site operator.

Re:Color me Confused

[tepples]

I wonder how the lawsuits against audio cassettes ever turned out?

In some countries, they turned out with cassette manufacturers paying a tax to the major record labels.

What if you view a video of a book and remember enough of the text to write your own copy by hand?

Infringing.

What if you have a eidetic memory and viewing once is enough to replay the videos in your mind while you toil in the salt mines of the bleak future?

Playback in your mind is currently not recognized as "fixed in a tangible medium".

Re:Color me Confused

[tepples]

Hmm... What if you then act out scenes of the video that has been stored in your mind, publicly to other viewers while you are on break from your salt-mine-toiling?

Public performance. Infringing.

Re:Color me Confused

[tepples]

Business contracts, such as YouTube's terms of service, are not concerned with the "span of history" as much as the much shorter span of business.

Re:Color me Confused

[thegarbz]

Streaming copies the data

From where? From the internet? It's almost like we need a word for copying data from the internet .... like downloading?

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...

[Merk42]

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

It didn't.

This one is quite incorrect. There are plenty of brick-and-mortar stores that died due to the Internet.

Before you say "well there are stores that didn't", then I guess I can say "Cancer doesn't kill people since there are a non-zero amount of people that don't die from it"

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

[jbmartin6]

We see a lot of futility in all sorts of endeavors like this. My theory is things like this are trying to defend the source against lawsuits. (in this case Google/YouTube). If it came down to a court case, they could appeal to the "reasonable person" standard. As in "we tried X and Y like any reasonable person would." Even though they know it is futile, it might be bad to go into court saying "we didn't try it because we thought it was futile" then try to explain to a technology illiterate judge why it was futile. Probably cheaper to just make some effort, even though clearly futile.

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

[OzPeter]

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."

If you lived through that period and were paying attention you'd also remember the Private copying Levy applied to various types of media.

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

[PvtVoid]

This one is quite incorrect. There are plenty of brick-and-mortar stores that died due to the Internet.

And good riddance, most of the time. On rare occasions, I am actually stupid enough to think that it's a reasonable idea to try looking in a brick-and-mortar store for something that would be useful for me today, not in two days from Amazon. Almost always, the brick-and-mortar store doesn't have the thing in stock, but "can order it for me." Why the fuck would I go to the trouble of driving out to the fucking strip mall where the box store is, if I wanted it "ordered"?

Most modern brick-and-mortar stores should just die, with the possible exception of grocery stores.

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:There nothing YouTube can do about this...

[silas_moeckel]

Brick and mortar stores can not even seem to figure out what's in any given store at any given time. Sure you have loss from theft but pretty sure 4 bikes walked out the door etc. So drive down to find out they lied to you, great customer services guys.

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

[pr0fessor]

Perhaps the internet made more brick&mortar stores I don't remember there being a dozen places to buy internet connected devices in my little town during the 1970s

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

[Merk42]

Then why phrase it as "The Internet was going to kill brick-and-mortar stores." and not "The Internet was going to kill music and movies"? Though of course that's a question for BMO not you.

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

[CrimsonAvenger]

Supposed illegitimate activities on the internet didn't close brick and mortar stores

I'm curious. What "illegitimate activities" were supposed to kill brick & mortar stores? Because selling things via the internet isn't, in fact, an "illegitimate activity", nor is competing with a brick & mortar store.

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

[EvilSS]

Supposed illegitimate activities on the internet didn't close brick and mortar stores. Which is the theme of this entire post. Which you knew. Which you chose to pretend not to understand to make an irrelevant point.

What supposed illegitimate activities would close brick and mortar stores exactly? I doubt the OP meant it that way, and the parent has the right interpretation. You are the wrong one here.

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

[AthanasiusKircher]

And good riddance, most of the time. On rare occasions, I am actually stupid enough to think that it's a reasonable idea to try looking in a brick-and-mortar store for something that would be useful for me today, not in two days from Amazon. Almost always, the brick-and-mortar store doesn't have the thing in stock, but "can order it for me." Why the fuck would I go to the trouble of driving out to the fucking strip mall where the box store is, if I wanted it "ordered"?

Well, you know, they do have this thing called the "internet," where many chain stores make their inventory available online now. You can easily search online and find out what is in-stock, and then you only end up going to a store you actually know has what you want. They'll even often tell you what aisle to find the item in. That's particularly useful when looking for something obscure at a giant store like Lowe's or Home Depot -- it's actually faster to search online before leaving so I know where to look, rather than wandering around the store for 30 minutes looking for some random thing (which often no one at the store seems to know the location of either).

Most modern brick-and-mortar stores should just die, with the possible exception of grocery stores.

There are all sorts of other stores that people find useful, believe it or not.

This is often a more stereotypical "woman thing," but many people actually like to try on clothes to see how they fit and how they "look on them" before buying. Yeah, you can have clothes shipped to you and then send stuff back, too -- but I've known women who will try on 15 dresses for every 1 they will buy. That's pretty tough to do online.

Or, do you own a home? Have you ever attempted a home repair? I can't tell you how many times I've spent a weekend driving back and forth to Home Depot or Lowe's trying out different parts and then realizing they won't work, so I need something slightly different. In a brick-and-mortar store, you can take a part with you, see whether it looks like it might fit. Or, if you buy the wrong one, you can take it back, and get a different one the same day.

If I tried to do many basic home repairs using only online resources, it could take me weeks or even months of back-and-forth until I got everything right... particularly if you have an older home with older random parts (or even a home with stuff in it that's more than 10 or 15 years old).

And then there are tools you actually want to use regularly -- and you often want to know what the "feel like" first. I cook a lot, and buying kitchen knives online would be horrible, unless I'm buying a hand-crafted knife from a Japanese master I trust or something. Most knives have terrible balance, or the handle hurts your hand when you use it for more than a few minutes, or whatever.

Everyone has their own set of things they'd prefer to see themselves or "try out" before buying. Not to mention the experience of "browsing" is completely different in a physical store. Sure, a brick-and-mortar store may have a smaller selection, but I'm still rather amazed sometimes at the way they group items and what I may discover for a task which I wouldn't find online because search terms wouldn't have suggested it.

I say all of this as someone who buys a LOT of stuff online. But I still recognize the utility of many physical stores for a lot of use cases.

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

[Nchantim]

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

It didn't.

This one is quite incorrect. There are plenty of brick-and-mortar stores that died due to the Internet. Before you say "well there are stores that didn't", then I guess I can say "Cancer doesn't kill people since there are a non-zero amount of people that don't die from it"

Or I can say : "There are plenty of brick-and-mortar stores that died due to George W Bush's Presidency."
Disprove, please.

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

[bmo]

I do remember it.

It's what killed DAT.

The Wikipedia claim is that the cost of the recorders (Sony DAT required a spinning head) was the problem, but people bought more expensive tape decks that had Dolby and metal capability to deal with tape hiss /all the time/, and since DAT effectively did away with tape hiss and low-bias, these would have sold just fine.

But the RIAA had shit-fits about "perfect third-generation recordings" that only /partially/ ended when Sony bought CBS.

They still don't like CD-Rs. "No sir, I don't like it." - Mr. Horse.

--
BMO

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

[tepples]

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

Please see replies to neghvar1, who wondered the same thing.

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

[Jahta]

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.

IANAL but I suggest that they are doing this to protect themselves from litigation. There's nothing to stop _you_ saving the stream of bits coming direct from youtube to _your_ computer onto _your_ hard drive. But a third party publicly offering a service whereby they retrieve the bits on your behalf, parcel them up, and then make them available to you is a different legal situation altogether.

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

[Solandri]

I'm pretty sure YouTube knows this is futile too. But they have to do stuff like this to cover their butts legally. Otherwise Hollywood can go to a judge and say, "See? They're not trying hard enough to protect our copyrights. Strip them of their DMCA safe harbor provision!" (Never mind why it should be someone else's job to protect their copyrights.)

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

[tlhIngan]

All it means is that stores have to change their business model from selling stuff to people who walk through the door into basically showrooms, where the customer doesn't walk in the door, but deals with the stores to put products on the shelves.

As in, the store doesn't stock product anymore. Instead, they offer a showroom - manufacturers approach them, pay the store some amount of money to display the product on the shelf. If desired, said manufacturer can pay a bit more to put stock on the shelf so customers can buy it immediately, but not necessary. If a person comes into the store, they can view all the products and if they want something, the store can help them buy it online from many retailers they've partnered with to sell it, or have the customer do it.

No more "Amazoning" since the whole point of the store is to display goods and have an online retailer sell it (store makes money from display fees as well as sales commissions from those partnered retailers, and maybe even shipping commissions because people may be in a hurry and need the item now).

And why not include grocery stores in the online mix? There's nothing special about it other than having goods that could perish, which just means better inventory control.

Of course, it means people will have to plan ahead to do things, but that's not too much to ask now, is it?

And yes, a few stores already do this - Best Buy is a mixture of a regular store and a store that serves manufactrurers - Sony and Microsoft rent aisle space in every store (if you ever wonder why there's an empty rack - that's why since most stores would fill it with other product to move them, but Best Buy is contractually obligated to leave that space reserved - so if Sony pays Best Buy to have 2 racks of PS3 games, and Best Buy only has half a rack, they're obligated to leave the other 1 1/2 racks empty - they can't fill it with PS4 games, for example). Ditto other products like DVDs and Blu-Rays - especially the ones in the bins. Movie studios like Fox and such will often ship Best BUy stores a collection of movies for use in clearance bins (at the price they set), Best Buy simply sells them and pays the agreed rate when someone buys them. At the end of the promo period, it all gets shipped right back to the movie studio's warehouse.

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

[Grishnakh]

There's plenty of brick-and-mortar stores that still work well, for various reasons. I'll name a few:

1) grocery stores (which you mentioned): groceries tend to be high-volume, and low dollar-density, that is, they take up a bunch of space but aren't very valuable. Think of a loaf of bread: it costs a dollar or two, but it's pretty sizeable, and would cost more to ship by UPS than the bread itself is worth. Also, lots and lots of people within a 10-mile radius want to buy it, and on a very regular basis too. This is even more true of frozen goods: shipping is very expensive for cold stuff in small quantities, but when you do it in a giant refrigerated truck from the source to a single grocery store, it's cheap because of economies of scale. Finally, grocery stores let you browse around and buy lots and lots of these small, cheap things all in one visit, just grabbing them off the shelf as you walk by. Doing all that online would be cumbersome and the shipping would be too expensive. Online grocers have been around for a while, but it's never caught on well. Amazon's had some success with dry goods, but not huge.

2) hardware store (Lowe's, Home Depot): very similar to grocery stores. The stuff they sell is either small, cheap stuff (like electrical sockets) or otherwise stuff that lots of locals want to buy, so the economies of scale afforded by having a big store with big trucks delivering to them works out. A lot of the stuff they sell is big and heavy, and not very valuable (low dollar-density as I put it above), and they deal in big enough volumes that they can afford to keep prices low. I can stop by HD and buy a new wall switch for less than $0.50, for instance; good luck getting one online for that price. Or what if I need an 8-foot copper pipe or a 12-foot-long piece of lumber? The UPS shipping charges would be insane for that, but I can run by my local HD and pick up the lumber for less than $2.

3) convenience stores (Wawa, etc.). If you're driving and want to stop for a cold drink, an online store isn't much help. Also, gas stations for obvious reasons. And restaurants too for obvious reasons.

4) clothing stores. You can't try on clothes from online shops easily, and shipping stuff back and forth so you can try out three different sizes or 15 different styles is not economical. There are plenty of clothing stores online, but they're mostly online versions of the B&M stores, which haven't gone anywhere yet.

5) auto parts stores. A lot of this has moved online, but Autozone hasn't shut down yet. There again, a lot of items are cheap but bulky, and a lot of times people don't want to wait for shipping because they need to fix their car quickly. If you can wait, though, you can frequently get better deals online. But if you need a new axle tonight so you can go to work tomorrow, you can't beat Autozone.

6) shipping stores. FedEx and UPS charge you extra to pick up a package you're sending.

So there's still a lot of places where B&M stores aren't in danger of dying, because what they do can't be easily done online, they allow the customer to inspect the merchandise before buying, they sell stuff that has a low "value density", or they offer a level of convenience and speed that online shops can't match.

But yeah, the idea of waiting around for some B&M store to order something for you is pretty stupid and archaic: you'll pay much more for the item, plus you'll have to schedule a trip to pick it up during store hours. It made sense in 1970, but not now.

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

[Megol]

No it isn't as the Internet also _saved_ a lot of stores* that otherwise be closed! That isn't the fear mongering those that promoted that view intended.

Technology changes - and the world used in connection with similar technologies changes with it. That's the natural order of things.

(* one example (of several) I personally know about was a small bookstore in a small city specializing in mainly old literature about hunting, fishing and general outdoor things. The population was to small to generate the necessary income so the owner distributed copied lists of most kinds of books available that one could get by phoning him, faxing him or sending a mail. Other than the word of mouth method he sometimes placed ads in some relevant magazines. When the Internet got generally available the costs of ads almost evaporated, the costs of copying and distribution was gone, the time spent on the phone reduced strongly (and the time still used generated more sales) and suddenly there were customers from all over the world instead of one (small) country.)

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

[bzipitidoo]

I would like to see this crap end, and it be established once and for all that copying is a natural right. Freedom to Copy ought to rank right up there with Freedom of Speech and Religion, and the Freedom to Assemble.

Copying is a far more intimate part of our lives and existence than people realize. Copying is inherent in nature, with any action broadcasting echoes in all directions. That is the ability public speakers, radio stations, lighthouses, and all manner of broadcasting depends upon. The copyright propagandists have people mostly convinced that copying certain kinds of data, in certain ways, is somehow morally wrong and equivalent to stealing, and that copyright is the fairest, best, and only way to compensate the poor starving artists and scientists. Think of the starving artists! But that's not so. Our entire education system is a massive copying of centuries of accumulated knowledge to the next generation. We don't and shouldn't have to pay a very few who are trying very hard to elevate themselves to the position of gatekeepers of all knowledge, calling themselves "publishers", for permission to teach our children. Libraries have existed for thousands of years, the Gutenberg press for 500 years, and now, we have the Internet and digital storage on a scale orders of magnitude greater than anything in history. The entire contents of a small branch library can be stored on a few hard drives. There may be good reasons to be cautious, but the enrichment of a few slimy publishers isn't one.

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

[Merk42]

No it isn't as the Internet also _saved_ a lot of stores* that otherwise be closed!

It can be both.

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

[tepples]

Identical acts in not-identical circumstances may have not-identical consequences. One example of said not-identical circumstances is the difference between free-to-air broadcast television without a TOS and video on demand with a TOS.

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

[TMB]

These are all true, but I find the reasons people are giving for grocery stores completely miss the point:

No two tomatoes are the same.

I can't tell you which tomato I want without picking it up, looking at it, and feeling it.

[TMB]

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

[Grishnakh]

Yeah, I'm sure I missed a bunch of points. Really, the whole thing could probably be condensed into a more concise and generalized list of things which make B&M stores more attractive than online ones, because your tomato point is almost exactly like the one about trying on clothes.

Some ideas for general pro-B&M points:
1) ability to see/feel/try on in-person rather than through photos
2) low "value density" (cheap but bulky stuff: you wouldn't want to buy mulch or hay online and ship it by FedEx. And anything over 70 lbs or so can only be shipped by freight, which is expensive.)
3) lots of people in the local area buying this same thing, improving economies of scale for a retailer

Some combination of the above 3 points seems to make a B&M retailer hard to compete with for online sellers.

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

[PCM2]

I can think of plenty of other examples, too.

Bicycle shops, for many of the same reasons as auto shops. How annoyed am I going to be if I order a new inner tube online and then the day it shows up I can't find my tire levers? It's the weekend, I just wanted to go for a bike ride...

Toy stores, for all sorts of reasons.

Bookstores. Believe it or not, some people are still persuaded to buy books based on things like the paper stock, the way the cover was printed, the size, the font, and so on.

Furniture stores. Ever try to sit in an armchair online?

Drug stores. When your face is exploding because of allergies, is "Standard Shipping" good enough or do you go for Two-Day?

And so on...

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

[Grishnakh]

Yeah, exactly. I guess I should just make "service" a category by itself, because if you need your bike or your car fixed and you don't want to do it yourself, or can't, an internet shop isn't going to be of much help. Toy stores, furniture stores, and to an extent, bookstores, all fall into the "want to personally inspect it before buying", and also to the "low value density" factors.

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

[AK Marc]

Nope. Most of the brick and mortar deaths are from Wal-Mart, not the Internet. Nothing killed a small town economy like a Wal-Mart moving in. I've seen a down with a Main street that had 30,000 or so people. Wal-Mart moved in on the edge of town, and Main Street is dead. The Internet is blamed for so many things it didn't do.

Before you say "well there are stores that didn't",

Do you know any stores that did? Borders, Barnes and Noble are the only ones I've seen that seem to have a consensus that the Internet (specifically Amazon) took them down. Funny, when they started, they were blamed with taking out the indie bookstores, which have come back after the Internet took down them. Looks like the Internet did more for the local brick and mortar stores than it did to harm them.

When click and collect/delivery eliminates 90% of grocery stores in cities, then I'll belive your silly claims. But for now, it's still all FUD, no truth.

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

[Merk42]

Before you say "well there are stores that didn't",

Do you know any stores that did?

Actually yes. While anecdotal, I was in a store that was having their final day and the owner specifically mentioned that the reason they were closing was people shop online instead.
This was in Brooklyn, I say that because New York City has no Wal-Mart.

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

[AK Marc]

Was that one of the shady camera shops that sold illegal imports as US new? There were piles of those in Brooklyn, and the Internet killed them, not through sales, but in exposing their fraud. They also made money on taking back returns, re-selling them, and not refunding the original purchaser. So they defrauded two people in that, selling used gear as new, and ripping off the original buyer.

So yes, the Internet shut down some of those shops, but if the Internet was so deadly, why didn't Crutchfield, who was catalog-only before the Internet, also die after the Internet? Oh yeah, they weren't fraudsters, but had a reasonable product at a reasonable price.

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

[Merk42]

Was that one of the shady camera shops that sold illegal imports as US new? There were piles of those in Brooklyn, and the Internet killed them, not through sales, but in exposing their fraud. They also made money on taking back returns, re-selling them, and not refunding the original purchaser. So they defrauded two people in that, selling used gear as new, and ripping off the original buyer. So yes, the Internet shut down some of those shops, but if the Internet was so deadly, why didn't Crutchfield, who was catalog-only before the Internet, also die after the Internet? Oh yeah, they weren't fraudsters, but had a reasonable product at a reasonable price.

No it was the kind of place that sold mostly handmade trinkets and jewelry. They weren't fraudsters, they probably didn't have the budget to do a catalog like Crutchfield though I'm not sure.

It's nice that Crutchfield lived on, that doesn't disprove that the internet may have killed some brick and mortar stores, only that it didn't kill all brick and mortar stores... and.. actually given Crutchfield isn't brick and mortar, it doesn't (dis)prove anything.

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

[AK Marc]

A place that sold hand-made items only to locals wasn't harmed in any way by the Internet. That the owner gave you bad information doesn't mean you have to believe it.

Go on, explain how they lost sales from the Internet.

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

[Merk42]

How do you know it was bad information? Why are you white knighting the internet so much?

Technology does tend to kill off/greatly reduce other businesses. I'm not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing, just that it's a thing that happens.

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

[AK Marc]

I evaluate statements logically. A place that doesn't have mail-order business, that doesn't have online competition, can't be harmed by the Internet. So then, from your statements, I evaluated whether the store had a mail-order business, which it doesn't, and whether there would be online competition for unique hand-crafted items. There isn't.

I evaluated the statements you made, and either you are lying or you are repeating the owner's lie. Nothing else makes logical sense.
br>I evaluated the statements logically. I'm not white knighting the Internet. I just call out lies as I see them. If your lies had been "for" the Internet, I'd have called them out, and you'd have accused me of the opposite. Stop putting everything in pigeon holes that allow you to more easily dismiss reality you don't like.

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

[Merk42]

I evaluated ... whether there would be online competition for unique hand-crafted items. There isn't.

Never heard of Etsy then?
I could understand if you weren't familiar with other options, though.

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

[AK Marc]

Ah, so he didn't sell "handmade" objects, but cheap Chinese imports that were assembly-line made. That would do it. Selling imported shit with 10,000% markup has been killed by the Internet. All the shops where they sell items made by a single human (usually someone local) are thriving, even doing better with the Internet. Even if the shop itself doesn't have an Internet presence, there'll be Yelps and such on them that will boost business.

But yes, shops that sold nothing but factory-made imports at massive markups are failing. And nothing of value was lost.

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

[Merk42]

Both the store I was in, and those sites, sell things that are handmade by a person. Yes some of the items on those sites are mass produced, but not all.

You were under the impression that no website existed that sold "unique hand-crafted items". I cited 3, but instead you chose to ignore that selection and focus on the ones that didn't fit that description, and then act like that's all those sites sold.

"Other products are available"--BBC

[tepples]

Google's also in a good position to make it hard to find information on youtube-dl/etc....
They're a major search engine, so they can just self-censor their search results.

Self-censorship? Let me Bing that for you. Better yet, let me DuckDuckGo that for you.

Re:"Other products are available"--BBC

[mysidia]

They can just paper the competing search engines with DMCA takedown requests.

Re:"Other products are available"--BBC

[tepples]

What counterpart to the DMCA would apply to a Russian search engine such as Yandex? Are operators of search engines even liable in Russia?

Re:"Other products are available"--BBC

[mysidia]

I believe that Yandex has Subject themselves to US jurisdiction, by sending DMCA takedown notices of their own.

Their website is accessible in the United States, therefore, it is possible that DMCA takedowns may be issued against them, and I don't know how Yandex will respond if they do receive them, but if they ignore them, there could potentially be liability.

As far as is known.... Russia is not a piracy haven, and they do respond to issues in that regard.

However, Google might ignore Yandex because Yandex is not very high-profile, even if they're popular in Russia.

I guess you could say this as potentially one of the lesser-known "cracks" that a tool like Youtube-DL could potentially hide in for a longer period of time without getting very much attention, so they might slip under the radar, at least for a time.

Sony Betamax principle

[neghvar1]

I see this act no different than recording a radio broadcast onto a cassette tape or recording a TV broadcast on VHS or DVR’s. Now we record a video or audio stream from an online source onto your hard drive. The same principle applies to these activities, different source on different media. So I say Youtube has no legal basis to threaten the developers of these apps. This is how I get my music today. http://www.freemake.com/free_y...

Does it persist?

[tepples]

Unlike tools such as youtube-dl, web browsers do not write a copy of all segments of an MPEG-DASH stream to a file intended to persist longer than an hour.

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.

Re:Does it persist?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike tools such as youtube-dl, web browsers do not write a copy of all segments of an MPEG-DASH stream to a file intended to persist longer than an hour.

Ironically, it was when they deprecated type 37 (MP4 1920x1080 over HTTP) into 137/14[0|1] (MP4 1920x1080 over DASH + M4A 128 or 256 over DASH) that the stuttering became so bad that I switched to downloading ephemeral content that I often deleted.

Being able to use local computing power to single-step/single-frame through stuff for framegrabs, or to rapidly search long documents so I could cite something said at 12:34 out of a 1-hour documentary beats the hell out of trying to do it in some clumsy web browser or "app."

We have supercomputers on our desktops and in our pockets. Let's use them.

Re:Does it persist?

[bondsbw]

Intended or not, Youtube videos will persist in a browser session for days or even weeks (assuming no reboot or browser restart). I listen to certain soundtracks that way, keep them loaded and play when I feel like it.

I'd bet they are written to disk in the form of swap or maybe even browser cache.

Re:Does it persist?

[tepples]

Popular web browsers respect HTTP cache control directives. These downloading tools do not.

Re:Does it persist?

[Kjella]

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.

Well fortunately the law can decide it doesn't only matter what you do but why you do it, like murder and self-defense. Or less seriously, watching a movie by yourself or with your friends and family as opposed to public display. Copies that are temporary or transitory are treated differently from those that are permanent, otherwise all those copies in memory and network buffers, frame buffers, audio buffers and whatnot would all have trouble with copyright. And yes, that includes actual storage in caches and such, your hard disk being one of them.

Or to put it a different way, it becomes a copyright infringement - of the reproduction right - when a court find it was your intent to make a permanent copy. That is to say, if you copy that file from /Temp to /Downloads that's the infringement. Also there's such a thing as legal pedigree, if you have a CD and can legally make an MP3 from it that does not mean you can download the same MP3 from an illegal copy on the Internet - a copy of an illegal copy is always illegal. It does not have anything to do with the actual bits and bytes.

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:Does it persist?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Also there's such a thing as legal pedigree, if you have a CD and can legally make an MP3 from it that does not mean you can download the same MP3 from an illegal copy on the Internet - a copy of an illegal copy is always illegal. It does not have anything to do with the actual bits and bytes.

Fuck that noise.

If I own the CD, and I download an "illegal" copy, who's going to prove that those files are any different from the ones I could make from my own CD? I have actually done this in cases where my own CD had become unreadable due to disc rot.

Copyright lawyers need to die in a fire. All of them. I'll get the gasoline.

Re:Fair Use?

[__aaclcg7560]

And how do Google think people can create their own copy/edit montages of other peoples' videos.

That's another can of worms. Too many people are creating videos using other people's copyrighted work, get called on it, and scream "fair use" for what they're doing. Several lawsuits are underway regarding that issue. It's better to create your own unique content that doesn't use other people's copyrighted content.

If you look there is tons of stuff.

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

It's easier to download and watch, then it is to stream.
Funny if you go beyond the junk they have on the surface, you can find tons of good good stuff.
I picked up C++14 ( having known known C++98 ) from CppCon and from BoostCon.
you an pick up information about languages and tools: Go,Groovy, Haskell, Clojure, Scala, emacs/vi/Eclipse/IntelliJ configurations and plugins, bigger libraries.

Plus old shows nobody cares about. THe short lived series Probe ( the one that Asimov worked on ), The Early Kurt Russel Secret of Boyne Castle etc.

Oh one that realy caught my eye Scott Adams on Bill Maher talking about Trump.

Ensuring uniqueness

[tepples]

It's better to create your own unique content that doesn't use other people's copyrighted content.

How can I ensure success in doing this? For example, if I write a song, record it, and put a music video on YouTube, how do I make sure it isn't substantially similar to any other published musical work in order to avoid losing a million dollar lawsuit like George Harrison (Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs over "My Sweet Lord") and Pharrell Williams (Gaye v. Thicke over "Blurred Lines")?

Re:Ensuring uniqueness

[__aaclcg7560]

How can I ensure success in doing this?

No one will care about your song or video unless you're making some serious money on YouTube. Attorneys go where the money is. If you don't have it, they're not suing you. Until then, you're more at risk for a DMCA takedown notice and being banned from YouTube.

Re:Ensuring uniqueness

[tepples]

Attorneys go where the money is. If you don't have it, they're not suing you.

Tell that to Joel Tenenbaum and Jammie Thomas-Rasset. A copyright owner through its attorney can still seek statutory damages.

Until then, you're more at risk for a DMCA takedown notice and being banned from YouTube.

The question would have the same answer even with a different penalty for failure: How should a singer-songwriter confirm that his song is original before posting it to YouTube, SoundCloud, or another site intended for publishing original video or music in order to avoid losing his account on said site?

Re:Ensuring uniqueness

[__aaclcg7560]

How should a singer-songwriter confirm that his song is original before posting it to YouTube, SoundCloud, or another site intended for publishing original video or music in order to avoid losing his account on said site?

If you want legal advice, go see an attorney.

Re:Ensuring uniqueness

[tepples]

The fact that every author needs to first become able to afford a consultation with an attorney before publishing anything is part of the problem.

Re:Ensuring uniqueness

[__aaclcg7560]

The fact that every author needs to first become able to afford a consultation with an attorney before publishing anything is part of the problem.

That's the cost of business.

Re: Ensuring uniqueness

[__aaclcg7560]

It's also a sure indication that copyright law is broken.

If your business model is to create videos from slapping together other people's copyrighted work and claiming it as your own copyrighted work, you're looking for trouble. This is where people are getting into trouble.

Copyrights is supposed to encourage the creation of new works, not inhibit it.

Nothing prevents you from creating your own original copyrighted works.

Re: Ensuring uniqueness

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, this is all way off topic from TFA.

Second, most of the time the DMCA is used to bully people who have legitimate claims over content through fair use or in some cases direct contracts with content providers.

Probably the best one can be read about in Ars -- http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/buffy-vs-edward-remix-unfairly-removed-by-lionsgate/

The video was mentioned by name in the official recommendations by the US Copyright Office on exemptions to the DMCA as an example of a transformative noncommercial video work. In other words, the US government said this was clearly a good example of fair use.

Fast forward a few months (I think) and Lionsgate issued a DMCA anyway, taking down the video, closing down the youtube channel of the poster and generally making themselves a nuisance-- despite the fact that the incredibly popular video was already named as a clear example of Fair Use.

I do not want to imagine a world where people of your mindset gain an even great control over our media. Gone are valid examples of criticism and education to be replaced by nothing by pure commercialism. Why share the knowledge of our society or build new works out of the existing culture of our society? No all things must be brand new, or "Officially sanctioned" by our corporate overlords. How dare someone build a creative work off of other existing pieces, all things must be entirely original.

Like Disney's Snow White.. oh wait, that was done before... or Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.. oh damn, the Treasure of the Niebelungs eh?, or uh... Shakespear's Macbeth. Oh damn, that one too? Let me think... uh...StarWars! Kurosawa you say? Oh, and Flash Gordan? Wow.. really? Huh...

Oh, and let's not forget that the DMCA can be abused against ORIGINAL works as well:

For example, Person A licenses a song from person B, person B's automated system detects their song on the youtube track and issues a DMCA notice to youtube. Person A's video is automatically monetized with all proceeds going to Person B, even though Person A did not break the law and already paid for the license to use the song in a commercial work. Even if Person A successfully argues and wins, they do not get any of the lost money back.

Another example is UMG taking down a video advertising Megaupload-- they didn't have a leg to stand on, it was all original content, but they did it anyway to disrupt advertising for a platform they didn't like. Similarly SEGA took down all videos pertaining to their content to artificially boost the search indexing of their own advertising videos.

Re: Ensuring uniqueness

[__aaclcg7560]

First of all, this is all way off topic from TFA.

You're the one diving off into the deep end here. I have two points in this discussion: 1) Create your own content rather than use someone else's copyrighted content. 2) If you're making serious money from your content, you better have a business to back it up, either as an LLC or C-corp with proper legal advice.

[...] Tolkien's Lord of the Rings [...]

I can a name a few LOTR wannabes... "The Belgariad" by David Eddiings, "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan, and "The Shannara" by Terry Brooks.

Re: Ensuring uniqueness

[lgw]

You seem to be missing the point here: creating your own content in no way prevents big companies from getting YouTube to take down your original content, and even shut down your account. The system doesn't work in the idealistic way you imagine it works.

The original purpose of copyright was to allow the little guy creating original content to make money from it. That's often not what we see in practice today. It's not 100% broken yet, as a system, but it's clearly trending that way.

Re: Ensuring uniqueness

[__aaclcg7560]

I'm confused. I was directly addressing your points:

I'm talking about YouTube. You're talking about everything else not related to YouTube.

It's 100% legal and 100% covered by fair use, do I need to get a lawyer on retainer and form an LLC to protect myself from immense legal costs so I can make $20 bucks a month from stupid T-shirts?

If you're drawing enough income to live off of, say, $50,000 per year, you really need to form a business entity. If you have your own corporation, you can set up a qualified retirement plan and sock away more money for retirement than you can legally as a wage slave. There are many other tax advantages as well, as the tax laws were written for corporations.

The point is there is very little truly original content, so punishing people for making collaborative works is a fools errand.

The fantasy books I pointed out were all inspired by LOTR. But the Tolkien estate never filed a copyright claim against them because the storylines, characters and place names were all different for each one. If someone wrote fan fiction in the LOTR universe, and published it as "collaborative work", they would get sued for copyright infringement. This is where many people on YouTube get into trouble because they don't understand the narrow definition of fair use.

Re: Ensuring uniqueness

[__aaclcg7560]

You seem to be missing the point here: creating your own content in no way prevents big companies from getting YouTube to take down your original content, and even shut down your account.

You're missing my point: you're less likely to run into trouble with your own original content.

The original purpose of copyright was to allow the little guy creating original content to make money from it.

The key emphasis is original content. Most YouTube content creators aren't creating original content, but using someone else's copyrighted content, slapping some commentary on it, and calling it fair use. And later scream bloody murder when the copyright owner dings them. You want to make money on YouTube, do it the hard way with original content.

Re: Ensuring uniqueness

[lgw]

You're missing my point: you're less likely to run into trouble with your own original content.

Less likely? Sure, fine. That's not a very good defense of YouTube's bad behavior, or of the DMCA.

The key emphasis is original content.

Ahh, you're trying to split hairs on "original" content in a different way than the law does (nothing is entirely original, of course, but I don't think that's the point). The point is: YouTube doesn't care about fair use. They should. They've at least shown some progress there, very recently, thanks to all the noise that the WTFU guys have been making, but the trend is still a bad one so I hope they keep up the pressure.

Re: Ensuring uniqueness

[__aaclcg7560]

That's not a very good defense of YouTube's bad behavior, or of the DMCA.

I'm not defending either YouTube or the DMCA.

Re:Ensuring uniqueness

[budgenator]

How can I ensure success in doing this? For example, if I write a song, record it, and put a music video on YouTube, how do I make sure it isn't substantially similar to any other published musical work in order to avoid losing a million dollar lawsuit like George Harrison (Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs over "My Sweet Lord") and Pharrell Williams (Gaye v. Thicke over "Blurred Lines")?

You can't avoid them, all of the combinations of note that are tolerable to listen to has already been written and copyrighted; one short riff in the middle of The Allman Brother's "In memory of Elizabeth Reed" is the whole of Beyoncé's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)".

Re:Ensuring uniqueness

[UnknownSoldier]

Or even oneself !

* John Fogerty sued for copying himself

Re: Ensuring uniqueness

[LinuxIsGarbage]

First of all, this is all way off topic from TFA.

Second, most of the time the DMCA is used to bully people who have legitimate claims over content through fair use or in some cases direct contracts with content providers.

Probably the best one can be read about in Ars -- http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

The video was mentioned by name in the official recommendations by the US Copyright Office on exemptions to the DMCA as an example of a transformative noncommercial video work. In other words, the US government said this was clearly a good example of fair use.

Fast forward a few months (I think) and Lionsgate issued a DMCA anyway, taking down the video, closing down the youtube channel of the poster and generally making themselves a nuisance-- despite the fact that the incredibly popular video was already named as a clear example of Fair Use.

For some reason the crappy movie Pixels created all sorts of DCMA takedown requests on content predating the movie, and even trailers for the movie itself

http://www.slashgear.com/dcma-...
http://www.cinemablend.com/new...

Re:Ensuring uniqueness

[PCM2]

Attorneys go where the money is. If you don't have it, they're not suing you.

Depends. Independent law firms, sure. But if the attorneys in question are on the payroll of a media company, you can bet they will sue individuals where they believe it will send a clear enough message to the broader public.

Re:Ensuring uniqueness

[PCM2]

How should a singer-songwriter confirm that his song is original before posting it to YouTube, SoundCloud, or another site intended for publishing original video or music in order to avoid losing his account on said site?

Register it with the Copyright Office. That's what it's there for.

You don't need to register to own the copyright. Copyright is automatic. But if you register, the government has recognized that you are the owner of said copyright, and registration has additional benefits, such as the ability to sue for monetary damages (including statutory damages, if you can prove willful infringement).

Re: Ensuring uniqueness

[Anpatt7]

The key emphasis is original content. Most YouTube content creators aren't creating original content, but using someone else's copyrighted content, slapping some commentary on it, and calling it fair use. And later scream bloody murder when the copyright owner dings them. You want to make money on YouTube, do it the hard way with original content.

IANAL, but from my understanding of fair use, depending on the amount of commentary, it could very well be fair use. Besides, the current system is that it is nearly impossible to get fair use protections even on things that are very solidly fair use, or even original work from years before the work it is supposedly infringing upon.

After finding that link, I realize that you are probably just mad that people are making probably bogus fair use claims, but it comes across as, "Never, ever, ever make use that goes under fair use: only original work is creative", which is a view that few /.ers can tolerate.

Re:Ensuring uniqueness

[tepples]

Register it with the Copyright Office. That's what it's there for.

I agree that it's a good idea, and I imagine that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams registered "Blurred Lines" with the Copyright Office. But to my knowledge, the Copyright Office's registration service doesn't include a search for similar works that might have raised a red flag about possible claims by the estate of Marvin Gaye.

Re: Ensuring uniqueness

[tepples]

Nothing prevents you from creating your own original copyrighted works.

Other than being unsure of how original they are.

Re:Ensuring uniqueness

[tepples]

I've been cataloging such examples. But as far as I can tell, the difference is that songwriters and performers in the mainstream music industry can avoid expensive lawsuits because they have the connections needed to negotiate cross-licenses. Someone writing background music for a hobbyist short film or an indie video game trailer may not have that option.

Re: Ensuring uniqueness

[__aaclcg7560]

Other than being unsure of how original they are.

When it comes to YouTube videos, it should be quite simple: don't download other videos, splice them into your own video, and then whine when you get dinged by the copyright owner. If you do your own video using no one's video, the originality isn't in doubt. The content might be in dispute but that's not a copyright infringement.

Re: Ensuring uniqueness

[__aaclcg7560]

After finding that link, I realize that you are probably just mad that people are making probably bogus fair use claims, but it comes across as, "Never, ever, ever make use that goes under fair use: only original work is creative", which is a view that few /.ers can tolerate.

I'm not mad about the about the bogus fair use claims. I do believe that the safest course through the copyright land mines of YouTube is original material. If you do ALL THE WORK (that seems to be a big problem for some people) and don't borrow from anyone else's videos, your videos will be original. The content may be in dispute but the originality will not.

funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny this only is an issue after YouTube offering a monthly pay service (YouTube red) but never cared for the years before. Because, uh, protecting copyright?

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

[tepples]

Sony v. Universal (the Betamax case) established that time-shifting can be fair use and that producing a tool with a substantial non-infringing use does not incur secondary liability. The difference here is that unlike viewers of a TV broadcast, viewers of YouTube are subject to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that gives teeth to website TOS. So a tool can incur secondary liability for TOS violation even if it does not incur secondary liability for copyright infringement.

Re:Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

[yuna49]

Stevens decision in the Betamax case applies only to time-shifting of advertiser-supported content carried by television stations. He specifically excluded pay-TV services like the then-new HBO. Stevens found that the fair-use defense applied because time-shifting via VCRs expanded the audience for the advertising. Downloading content from YouTube with the advertising included intact might qualify under the Betamax decision, but that would require a new court proceeding.

Re:Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

[AthanasiusKircher]

Stevens decision in the Betamax case applies only to time-shifting of advertiser-supported content carried by television stations. He specifically excluded pay-TV services like the then-new HBO.

Well -- Here's a link to the decision. I'm assuming you're referencing Stevens's summary of the District Court decision, where he includes: "This case involves only the home recording for home use of television programs broadcast free over the airwaves. No issue is raised concerning cable or pay television, or the sharing or trading of tapes."

Note that "no issue X is raised" does NOT mean the same as "this case does not apply to X." Perhaps there's a subsequent case dealing with cable TV or whatever, but this one doesn't deal with it. It does NOT mean that this reasoning couldn't apply, only that the question was not raised here. Also, typically appellate courts do not consider matters which were not brought before lower courts. So the reasonable way to read this sentence is, "The lower court only considered over-the-air broadcasts, so that's all we're considering here." There's no judgment about whether the legal argument would or would not apply more broadly.

Stevens found that the fair-use defense applied because time-shifting via VCRs expanded the audience for the advertising.

Really? Where? I see only a few references to this sort of thing. Stevens notes in summarizing the function of VCRs that:

The pause button, when depressed, deactivates the recorder until it is released, thus enabling a viewer to omit a commercial advertisement from the recording, provided, of course, that the viewer is present when the program is recorded. The fast-forward control enables the viewer of a previously recorded program to run the tape rapidly when a segment he or she does not desire to see is being played back on the television screen.

I skimmed the rest of his decision, and I didn't see any place where he remarked on these capabilities as significant to the copyright issue. There are a couple footnotes on point. Footnote 28 mentions that TV is often (though not exclusively) enabled through advertiser revenue, rather than through fees paid directly from consumers. In footnote 36, Stevens notes that the District Court rejected arguments from advertisers:

In a separate section, the District Court rejected plaintiffs' suggestion that the commercial attractiveness of television broadcasts would be diminished because Betamax owners would use the pause button or fast-forward control to avoid viewing advertisements...

The District Court apparently held that for people to skip commercials during taping, they had to view the program anyway, so they viewed the commercials as much as anyone else. And for those who fast-forwarded, well... advertisers realize that people might get up to make a sandwich or whatever during commercials anyway.

Justice Blackmun's dissent does mention the issue, but only as a potential one, not a proven one:

Moreover, advertisers may be willing to pay for only "live" viewing audiences, if they believe VTR viewers will delete commercials or if rating services are unable to measure VTR use; if this is the case, VTR recording could reduce the license fees the Studios are able to charge even for first-run showings.

Again, none of this really justifies your argument. Maybe there's a subsequent ruling that explicitly says this logic does NOT apply to cable TV or pay TV or that advertisements are required to be taped -- but there's nothing in the actual Betamax case ruling that seems to say that.

Re:Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

[AthanasiusKircher]

Also, I would note that there are explicitly contradictory signals from pay-TV services at this time. From a 1985 newspaper article:

"We know that many of our viewers subscribe to our service so that they can tape uncut movies," said Peter Chernin, executive vice president of programming for Showtime.

To accommodate those viewers... Showtime will begin in August a weekly, late-night double feature "of the best films we're offering that week. We'll run them probably at 2 a.m. to allow subscribers to set their VCRs and tape the movies while they sleep," Chernin said.

Later in the article, an executive from HBO is also quoted as agreeing that "We know that a lot of movies are taped from HBO and we are not immune to the desires of our consumers." He therefore explicitly rejected an early form of DRM which could attempt to decrease home taping quality.

So, not only did Stevens NOT reject pay-TV taping or taping without advertisements, the people who were actually running pay-TV stations at the time were explicitly encouraging it! (After all, they wanted the revenue to go to them, rather than to the video rental companies.)

Re:Computer Fraud and Abuse Act

[tepples]

OSes and browsers should be sued too then because they need to download a cache file of the video before playing it

You assume that a contract whose letter is inconsistent won't be interpreted according to the intent of the parties. A judge is a human being, not an automaton.

also I can look up for that file, move it

Which violates the terms presented to you at the bottom of the video playback page.

"Visit Advertiser's Site" link

[tepples]

Even if the advertisement is prepended to the downloaded stream, how can a video download tool preserve the unskippability and "Visit Advertiser's Site" link?

Re:"Visit Advertiser's Site" link

[Chalnoth]

More importantly, how can the video download tool record when a user views or responds to the ad?

Striking similarity

[tepples]

Who can prove that my string is not just my creation

The "striking similarity" doctrine in copyright case law creates a presumption of copying, shifting the burden of proof of provenance to the alleged infringer.

The real reason why Google is concerned about this

[David_Hart]

It's actually quite simple, Google is concerned about lost AD revenue.

If users can download videos and play them locally then they lose out on the AD revenue from the ADs that are injected into the video sequence. If Google can figure out a way to make this more difficult or time consuming to do, then it's less likely that everyday users will download content vs streaming it.

LOL

[NoZart]

I ACCIDENTALLY download youtube videos every now and then because i forgot to close jdownloader. Can't say google is doing much to prevent ripping their vids

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:Don't Download?

[tepples]

in order to stream or watch, ONE MUST DOWNLOAD THE FUCKING DATA.

Watching doesn't require storing the data longer than one web browser session, which is what these tools do.

Re:Don't Download?

[tepples]

For the same reason that most people let the web browser automatically delete cached copies of web pages that they view as part of the browser's cache maintenance.

Re:Don't Download?

[WallyL]

How long is a web browser session? Do people actually ever close those, except to reboot?

Re:Don't Download?

[AK Marc]

You seem confused on the definition of "download".

Re:The real reason why Google is concerned about t

[wonkey_monkey]

Oh, that's okay then. I never see any ads anyway so I can download as much as I want!

Napster killed record stores

[tepples]

Supposed illegitimate activities on the internet didn't close brick and mortar stores.

Except when Napster killed record stores. A pawn shop employee pinpointed the time when used CD prices plummeted as the fourth quarter of 1999, which happens to be when Napster took off.

Re:Napster killed record stores

[tepples]

used CD prices plummeted as the fourth quarter of 1999, which happens to be when Napster took off

Correlation does not equate causation.

Are you implying that both had a common cause or that it was coincidence?

Mail order lacks its own showroom

[tepples]

Amazon's disadvantage for physical goods is that it lacks its own showroom. When buying apparel online, you don't get to feel the fabric or try on the fit. When buying a laptop online, you don't get to try the keyboard or screen, and you can't feel its size and weight without constructing your own similarly sized and weighing model out of (say) cardboard. Or what am I missing?

Re:Mail order lacks its own showroom

[110010001000]

You are right, except Amazons "showrooms" are the brick and mortar stores. People go to Best Buy to look at TVs or computers and then buy it from Amazon. Increasingly I am buying from aliexpress.com and have it shipped directly from China. Also I think some people just buy stuff from Amazon and try it out and if they don't like it they ship it back.

Re:Mail order lacks its own showroom

[AK Marc]

The B&M know this, and like it. Best Buy would be out of business next week if Amazon closed. Amazon is free advertisement for Best Buy. Get someone interested in an item. They'll look at it online. They'll get excited. They'll go to a local store. And then, they can buy it there (price matched, or just a little more than Amazon), and have it Right Now, or they can go home. Order it, and wait. Best Buy survives on the goods checkers who just walk out with the item. You may not do it, but millions do.

How long the user stores the video

[tepples]

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

A download that the user intentionally stores longer than the user agreed to store it. In the case of a streaming site like YouTube, one might assume this is for longer than the video's duration.

Re:How long the user stores the video

[Archangel Michael]

That is still a semantic argument. How long is too long?....

"You've held your stream too long, we're sending ED209 for corporate enforcement of our policies. Please stop what you're watching. You have 30 seconds to comply"

Re:How long the user stores the video

[LVSlushdat]

I love how copyright fanbois love to use that word "agree".. I, for one, have NEVER *once* "agreed" to ANY TOS/EULA.. The corps seem to think 50 pages of gobbledeegook that only a lawyer could possibly understand that you click a box saying you "agree" to whatEVER is in that 50 pages is a contract.. Ummm.. No, its NOT.. When I bought my house, I must have signed my name a hundred times on what was indisputably a CONTRACT.. Never signed my name to any TOS or EULA. and never will.... Go fuck yourself, corporations...

Re:How long the user stores the video

[tepples]

longer than the user agreed to store it

How long is too long?

Longer than is necessary to view the video in ways authorized by the letter and/or spirit of the terms to which the user agreed.

Re:How long the user stores the video

[Archangel Michael]

I saved the file, so I could watch it on an airplane. Or going through a tunnel. Or on the camping trip in the middle of nowhere (besides the why are you going camping then argument) ..

spirit of the terms

All of which are in the "Spirit" of the terms of the examples I just gave (IMHO) . Hedging your response with vagueness doesn't really help move the conversation along. The problem is, that vague terms lead to vague ambiguities that lead to people doing things like downloading a video to watch offline at another time, while maintaining in the "spirit" of the terms ;)

Re:How long the user stores the video

[technosaurus]

I make a point to locally edit the "I agree" text to "I disagree" before checking these ... Right click, inspect element, double click to edit, Modify the terms of the agreement to my liking, take screen shot / save, submit

Re:How long the user stores the video

[AK Marc]

At worst, that becomes a contract violation, which is still not "illegal", but is a possible tort.

Re:How long the user stores the video

[AK Marc]

Caching is not an "intentional" "user" event. It is an automated system or program event. You didn't read his words carefully, he obviously considered caching.

Re:How long the user stores the video

[tepples]

a contract violation, which is still not "illegal"

It may or may not be, depending on what mood the judge is in when applying the CFAA (18 USC 1030(a)(2)(C)).

but is a possible tort.

Which would make providers of downloader tools gui^W liable of tortious interference.

Re:How long the user stores the video

[technosaurus]

IANAL, but AFAIK, there is no legal definition of "illegal download" unless it is downloaded through unauthorized access. There _are_ plenty of versions of illegal copying, but that is done on the servers side via something like send(), sendfile(), read()/write(), etc... so the host (youtube in this case) is the only possible violator unless you set up an intermediary to facilitate easier copying. So long as the users do not further distribute the copy given to them by the host, they are free to do with it as they wish unless they explicitly agreed otherwise.

Re:How long the user stores the video

[Motherfucking Shit]

Longer than is necessary to view the video in ways authorized by the letter and/or spirit of the terms to which the user agreed.

Except I, the user, didn't agree to any terms. I clicked a link to a YouTube video and the video started playing.

Re:How long the user stores the video

[tepples]

So long as the users do not further distribute the copy given to them by the host, they are free to do with it as they wish unless they explicitly agreed otherwise.

Google would argue that by retrieving more than a single HTML document from the YouTube service, users indicate their having "explicitly agreed otherwise." In particular, a user who visits a video playback page on YouTube before then deciding to use a download tool has been given notice of the terms that apply to subsequent accesses.

Re:How long the user stores the video

[tepples]

The video started playing, not downloading to durable storage. The video playback page you visited also contained a link to the terms of service in a place where it is standard practice to place legal notices.

Re:How long the user stores the video

[Motherfucking Shit]

The video started playing, not downloading to durable storage.

If it wound up in my browser cache, it downloaded to durable storage. I'm actually not sure whether YouTube videos end up in the cache or not. I know when I use Comcast's streaming service, it generates hundreds of megs worth of cached video files, so streaming can definitely do so. I only notice those because the browser, set to empty the cache on exit, takes a long time to purge those files. I don't really watch anything large enough on YouTube that I'd notice it being purged.

The video playback page you visited also contained a link to the terms of service in a place where it is standard practice to place legal notices.

I'd like to see that hold up in court, the notion that the presence of a link to the terms of service somewhere on a web page I visited constitutes any agreement or consideration on my part. Assuming you're referring to the page footer, when I load a YouTube link I never even scroll down far enough to see a link there. I just see the video player and some "related videos" in the right-hand gutter.

Re:How long the user stores the video

[tepples]

You appear to have two objections: "What's a download?" and "Notice of terms below the fold is inadequate."

If it wound up in my browser cache, it downloaded to durable storage. [...] the browser, set to empty the cache on exit

Is it durable enough to survive cache purging when you close the browser?

The video playback page you visited also contained a link to the terms of service in a place where it is standard practice to place legal notices.

Assuming you're referring to the page footer, when I load a YouTube link I never even scroll down far enough to see a link there.

Going forward, could YouTube cure this by adding a notice above the fold to all logged-out video views and periodically to logged-in views? "Use of the YouTube service is subject to the YouTube Terms of Service. Read the Terms"

Re:How long the user stores the video

[Motherfucking Shit]

Is it durable enough to survive cache purging when you close the browser?

For the average reasonable person, the files would likely persist across browser sessions. The browser purging its cache on exit is not default behavior, I had to dig around and enable that myself. Joe Sixpack's computer might store the cache files into tomorrow, or next week, or the next time his computer-savvy nephew comes to visit.

Going forward, could YouTube cure this by adding a notice above the fold to all logged-out video views and periodically to logged-in views? "Use of the YouTube service is subject to the YouTube Terms of Service. Read the Terms"

My issue isn't so much with where the notice is located, it's that (IMHO, IANAL) merely transmitting that notice doesn't bind the end user to a contract. YouTube could place a link to their terms at the top of the page in 100 point font, but if the user isn't required to affirm anything, I don't see an agreement being enforceable. The user could have their browser configured in a manner such that the notice doesn't display for them, no matter where the site intends for it to appear.

As an analogy, Slashdot offers an option to disable seeing other users' signatures. My sig is snarky, but suppose I intend it seriously and I have an army of lawyers working for me. Do you think you should be bound to the terms of my signature if you see it? What if you have signatures disabled on Slashdot and you don't see it? I could easily argue that I put it there, so it's your own fault you didn't read it. You could easily argue that you never saw it. I could argue that if you suppressed it, it's because you went out of your way to use a non-default configuration to bypass my legal notice. The whole thing quickly becomes asinine, as you never really agreed to anything, and I can't possibly prove that you did.

I can think of two scenarios where an agreement could potentially be enforced.

One, when any logged-out user clicks a link to a YouTube video, an interstitial dialog could appear. "To view the video you requested, you must agree with the following terms: [insert 30 pages of legalese]" with a checkbox for "I Agree." If you don't affirm your agreement, you don't get to watch the video. A user whose browser can't properly render and handle the interstitial isn't allowed to access the content.

Two, YouTube could simply require registration and logging in before being able to watch any videos. If you aren't logged in, you can't see shit. I don't have a YouTube account but I'm guessing part of their user registration process already includes the 30 pages of legalese and the "I Agree" checkbox. This way everyone who watches a video is likely to have agreed to the terms at some point, even if they didn't actually read them.

I recall they tried requiring a login in order to view comments, back when they were pushing Google+ like crazy, but they quickly abandoned that tactic. Most people don't want to bother signing up and logging in just to view stuff.

By the way, this is one of the more fruitful discussions I've had on Slashdot in a long time, thanks for that.

Re:Don't be evil...Yeah, right!

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

It's not so much that Google is trying to be evil, as that they are trying to get you to do everything on the Internet.

YouTube download link

[short]

Which YouTube video has that "download link"? I have never seen that. Does the link require Flash? Using HTML5 only.

Re:YouTube download link

[budgenator]

I have an add-on for mozilla that places a download link on every Youtube video page!

Re:YouTube download link

[jrincayc]

The only download link I could find was for videos that I upload myself, in the Video Manager there is a dropdown menu that includes "Download MP4".

Re:YouTube download link

[djinn6]

The uploader can release videos under the creative commons license which would have a link.

Re:YouTube download link

[short]

And I was asking for an example of such a YouTube video as I haven't found any.

Re:YouTube download link

[djinn6]

A quick search finds this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeTlXtEOplA

Re:YouTube download link

[short]

I do not see any download link there in Firefox. And neither in Chromium. Only in Icecat I can right-mouse-button click and save that video (as WebM), some other videos I cannot save that way in Icecat. Where the download link should be? it is not in the "... More" button.

Re:YouTube download link

[djinn6]

"Show more" -> "Remix this video" -> save video as yours -> download from video manager

You can also Google it if you need more details. There are video tutorials on YouTube as well.

Re:This poor Nathan guy...

[Coisiche]

I think the defense of "it's not our problem if users of our product, designed specifically to do X, irresponsibly use it to do X" doesn't have a great track record of success.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The six-week Chrome/Firefox update cycle

[tepples]

assuming no reboot or browser restart

Then let me slightly weaken my previous statement: Unlike tools such as youtube-dl, web browsers do not write a copy of all segments of an MPEG-DASH stream to a file intended to persist longer than the time between security updates to your web browser.

Re: Fair Use?

[__aaclcg7560]

Why's that? Fair use is on solid legal ground. You can't sue someone merely for taking short segments of a video and adding commentary.

The problem is most YouTube content creators don't understand the concept of fair use. They want a broad definition to cover anything and everything when "solid legal ground" applies only to a narrow definition.

You haven't cited these lawsuits you mentioned, but if their whole basis is just taking short segments and adding commentary or parody, the plaintiffs will lose, pure and simple.

Check out this YouTube video by Eli of Failed Normal. He discusses the consequences of fair use, including the lawsuits playing out. Starting six minutes in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSSzDreoUR8

Is it worth all the fuss?

[walterbyrd]

Seems to be that most movies make almost all of revenue within the first year. By that time, there may be a tiny trickle of income from DVD rentals, or online streaming services, but that is about it.

By the time a movie, or a song, or a book, is over eight years old; I doubt it's bringing in anything.

Actually, I think about the revenue, from a movie, may come from the opening weekend.

So why the huge hissy fit about old movies on youtube?

Re:Is it worth all the fuss?

[SecurityGuy]

Ad revenue. If you watch a movie on youtube, they can get paid to show you ads. If you copy the movie to your computer, they can't.

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:Every user of Youtube downloads the video

[mark-t]

They do download it but do not necessary store the entire thing at any time. A stream buffer size may be fixed in length, and no more than that amount of data is ever seen on disk at a given time. As content is played from the buffer, more content can be downloaded by the receiver, using a ring buffer strategy. This is generally accepted as the difference between streaming and downloading even though there is no difference in the bits that are bring sent, and no way for the sender to necessarily tell the difference unless the recipient somehow communicates that information to the sender.

What will the judge say when they try to read the

[Joe_Dragon]

What will the judge say when they try to read the 50 page TOS line by line in court to a jury?

Look through your favorites...

[ZorinLynx]

There's a good chance that many of your favorite YouTube videos have been deleted over the years. Downloading is the only sure way to save YouTube videos you like.

The Internet in general is a temporary place. We need to be able to save content we like.

tit for tat

[AndyKron]

If people would quit DMCA'ing videos I wouldn't have to download them.

time shifting

[sixsixtysix]

b-b-b-but time shifting is legal. certainly "recording" it to your hard drive to watch later falls under that protection.

Re:VCR WARS are coming

[tepples]

Free-to-air TV isn't subject to an explicit TOS or the CFAA.

YouTube has an offline feature

[tepples]

I saved the file, so I could watch it on an airplane. Or going through a tunnel. Or on the camping trip in the middle of nowhere (besides the why are you going camping then argument) ..

Some versions of the YouTube app have an offline feature that loads the entirety of select videos and allows playback within the next 48 hours.

Re:YouTube has an offline feature

[Archangel Michael]

And this differs how again, except semantics? Can I move it from Laptop (where I have 10GB download) to my phone/tablet which ... doesn't?

Re:YouTube has an offline feature

[Chalnoth]

I think a big part of it is ad revenue. You can't collect ad revenue for downloaded videos. They can manage this somewhat by offering downloads within their app which they control. It would make sense to me if this were also a part of the reason for the time limit.

But if you download with a third-party app or service, there's essentially no way for YouTube to determine whether or not an ad was viewed, even if the service were to somehow retain an ad in the download.

And for YouTube Red, even though there are no ads, YouTube needs to record how many times various videos are viewed in order to determine its royalty payouts. Downloading with a third-party ad prevents collecting the data needed for such payments.

CFAA gives teeth to "suggestions"

[tepples]

Websites' terms of service often bring these "suggestions" under the purview of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and foreign counterparts.

Thanks Youtube

[DarkLordBelial]

Wow. I'd never heard of Tube Ninja and had no idea it was so easy to take offline versions of videos - that's super useful! Thanks youtube for bringing it to my attention.

Fair Use

[BrendaEM]

Meet our new VCR.
http://eightiesclub.tripod.com...

Re:VCR WARS are coming

[mrchaotica]

Free-to-air TV isn't subject to an explicit TOS

Neither is anything spewed at me from a web server.

You think I agreed to TOS? Fine: show me my signature on a piece of paper saying so. Otherwise, fuck off because I could just as well claim that by serving bytes to my machine you agreed to my TOS that nullifies yours, assigns all your copyrights to me, and declares me Lord and Master of the Universe. What, you say you never agreed to that? Well, it was right there in the "X-mrchaotica's-TOS" HTTP header! If you didn't like it, you should have configured your server not to respond!

Legal Action = Empty Threat

[AnalogDiehard]

Just what is "illegal" about a tool that bypasses YT's ad delivery system? Marketers have tried to penalize such tactics through the courts and have failed. ToS are not a legal contract and are not legally bound.

Video Download?

[Fnord666]

How do you watch a video from YouTube? That's right, you download it with your browser. Should Mozilla expect a takedown notice for Firefox in the near future?

What's next?

[Cyberpunk Reality]

How long before they demand access to your brain, so they can remove the copies of infringing material you keep there?

Re:This poor Nathan guy...

[ogdenk]

Thankfully, that defense works for firearms manufacturers.

One thing people could be doing for music

[Maxo-Texas]

Using a computer to run thru every possible iteration notes and note durations and then copylefting the note sequences into the public domain.

I don't think you should be able to lock up sequences of 12 notes for over 60 years.

Re:VCR WARS are coming

[tepples]

If you didn't like it, you should have configured your server not to respond!

<sarcasm>
Just what we always wanted: more interstitials to capture explicit assent to TOS. It'd be like the infamous Dutch cookie wall.
</sarcasm>

UMG Recordings v. MP3.com

[tepples]

Also there's such a thing as legal pedigree

If I own the CD, and I download an "illegal" copy, who's going to prove that those files are any different from the ones I could make from my own CD?

Vivendi. The relevant U.S. case is UMG Recordings v. MP3.com.

Re:UMG Recordings v. MP3.com

[KozmoStevnNaut]

But how are they going to prove it?

Re:VCR WARS are coming

[mrchaotica]

If you're a site owner and don't want to piss off your readers, then how about simply not trying to fuck them over? You don't need a damn "interstitial" if you don't have bullshit TOS in the first place!

That's fine if you want 0 videos uploaded

[tepples]

Because the authors who provide creative works to the video hosting service do so under the understanding that the video hosting service isn't going to let viewers easily download and keep durable copies of said authors' works. If every video had a download button, there wouldn't be quite as many videos uploaded to the service.

Re:That's fine if you want 0 videos uploaded

[mrchaotica]

Because the authors who provide creative works to the video hosting service do so under the understanding that the video hosting service isn't going to let viewers easily download and keep durable copies of said authors' works

Bullshit. Maybe that's true of stuff from big TV studios like you'd find on Netflix, but it's not even slightly clear that it's true for the majority of the stuff people upload to Youtube.

Excuses to end a browser session

[tepples]

How long is a web browser session? Do people actually ever close those, except to reboot?

Web browser sessions may run into the days or weeks on a personal laptop with working suspend or a single person's desktop, but I imagine that those are an exception overrepresented among Slashdot's demographic.

Except to reboot Some laptop owners have found that suspend doesn't work due to defective device drivers, especially after an operating system upgrade or switch, and they work around it by taking advantage of an SSD's reduced boot time. Except to switch users If your family PC lacks enough RAM to keep desktop sessions running for you, the spouse, and all kids, then you may have to close your browser session and log out to free up enough RAM for another user to use the PC without swap hell. The same is true of PCs at a public library, Internet cafe, or university computer lab.

Re:Every user of Youtube downloads the video

[robinsc]

youtue is heavily promoting the take it offline option.. that ought to count as downloading hen.

Blue-pencil

[tepples]

Under the TOS, users may not "download" a file. But given the sort of ephemeral "downloads" that web browsers automatically do when the user views a video as YouTube intends, a judge could preserve the intent of the provision by interpreting "download" to mean moving a file from cache storage to more permanent storage. See blue-penciling and rectification.

Re:Blue-pencil

[tepples]

Good point; that even appears to simplify things. An external downloader tool is not "the provided functionality of the Service". Thus any downloading outside "the provided functionality of the Service" is prohibited.

Re:This poor Nathan guy...

[AK Marc]

That's different, those are designed to kill. Downloaders are designed to steal. Completely different.

Re:This poor Nathan guy...

[ogdenk]

Infringement != Theft. If you're watching the video, it's already being downloaded to your machine. Youtube doesn't get to dictate what you can do with data already in your possession. It's like outlawing VCR's with record functionality. Which is stupid. If the content is available for free, why should I have to waste bandwidth every time I want to watch it? I don't care if stupid provisions have been added to the CFAA making website TOS's enforceable. I'd just host the project overseas at that point if it were me.

You will never eliminate software like this. Adapt your business model or die.

Re:This poor Nathan guy...

[AK Marc]

Do you have a script that scans all the articles for comments that include "steal" or "theft" so you can post your off-topic rants?