Ok so this horse has been flogged these past couple days and I’m here to shock it back to life before getting my licks in.
Copy protection doesn’t have to be code, encryptions, or a specific program. It just has to be a mechanism used to prohibit distribution.
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The RIAA are the legal rights owners of the content.
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The YouTube (and other partners) website client is the “copy protection.”
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youtube-dl circumvents these copy protections and downloads the files.
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The RIAA then exercises their rights under the DMCA and issued a takedown notice to the entity that was hosting the main repository of infringing tool, GitHub.
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GitHub, hands tied, comply with the law.
There were allegedly comments in the source code which specifically referred to copyrighted materials.
Nobody forced the youtube-dl developers to write their project in this way.
This is also probably music piracy. It just isn’t as cut and dry as going after youtube-dl.
Interesting that you used the term steal though.
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The issues of morality of downloading content, whether the DMCA is a just law, or whether information should be free are separate and concurrent issues.
The fact is that there is a law, it was violated, and this is the result of violating that law.
I’m also disheartened with some of these responses from the community because if this was a company violating the GPL to produce software, we would be right up that companies business to force them to comply with the GPL.
I think I’ve got all I need from this equine carcass.