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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.

39 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. TOS vs TOS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    The Ultimate Showdown

    1. Re:TOS vs TOS by maroberts · · Score: 5, Funny

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

      --

      Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
      Karma: Chameleon

    2. Re:TOS vs TOS by bmo · · Score: 2

      And the only winner will be:

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

      --
      BMO

    3. Re:TOS vs TOS by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2

      Whoever wins, we lose!

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  2. Waste of time by Number42 · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    1. Re:Waste of time by mysidia · · Score: 2

      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.

    2. Re:Waste of time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Waste of time by stealth_finger · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      Wanna buy a shirt?
      https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
    4. Re:Waste of time by mrchaotica · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    5. Re:Waste of time by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 2

      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.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    6. Re:Waste of time by Pascoea · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

    7. Re:Waste of time by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    8. Re:Waste of time by lgw · · Score: 2

      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.
       

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  3. On a tangent by PmanAce · · Score: 2

    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?

    --
    Tired of my customary (Score:1)
    1. Re:On a tangent by Khashishi · · Score: 4, Informative

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

  4. There nothing YouTube can do about this... by Eloking · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Elok
    1. Re:There nothing YouTube can do about this... by bmo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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

    2. Re:There nothing YouTube can do about this... by Merk42 · · Score: 2

      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"

    3. Re:There nothing YouTube can do about this... by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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".)

  5. Re:JDownloader by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  6. Sony Betamax principle by neghvar1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...

  7. Does it persist? by tepples · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Does it persist? by mrchaotica · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    2. Re:Does it persist? by mrchaotica · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  8. Re:Fair Use? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  9. Re:Color me Confused by neghvar1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  10. If you look there is tons of stuff. by MouseTheLuckyDog · · Score: 2

    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.

  11. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by tepples · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by yuna49 · · Score: 2

      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.

    2. Re:Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 2
      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.)

  12. "Visit Advertiser's Site" link by tepples · · Score: 2

    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?

  13. Striking similarity by tepples · · Score: 2

    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.

  14. The real reason why Google is concerned about this by David_Hart · · Score: 2

    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.

  15. Re:Ensuring uniqueness by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

    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.

  16. Don't Download? by Khyber · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "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.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  17. Re:Ensuring uniqueness by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

    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.

  18. Pointless arm waving by YouTube legal, really ... by King_TJ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  19. Re:Every user of Youtube downloads the video by mark-t · · Score: 2

    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.

  20. Re:How long the user stores the video by technosaurus · · Score: 2

    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