Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #youtubedl
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Last Oct, the @RIAA launched a bizarre campaign of legal bullying against #youtubedl, a free/open library that lets people save Youtube (and other) videos for a variety of purposes, including critical analysis, offline viewing, archiving and remixing.
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If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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The RIAA attacked youtube-dl under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (#DMCA1201) a 1998 law that indiscriminately bans helping people remove DRM, even if no copyright infringement takes place.
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The @RIAA threw an October Surprise late last month when it sent a takedown demand to @github over #Youtubedl, a general purpose, lawful tool that allowed people to download Youtube videos.
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The RIAA's position on this was downright bizarre. First, it asserted that the kind of obfuscation that Youtube uses to hide the download URLs for its videos were a form of DRM, illegal to bypass under Section 1201 of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
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Second, it asserted that it had the right to demand the removal of this tool because some RIAA members' works were available on Youtube, so bypassing Youtube's access controls gives the RIAA standing to shut the tool down.
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Late last week, the @RIAA sent a legal threat to @Github, claiming that the popular (and absolutely lawful) tool #youtubedl (which allows users to download Youtube videos for offline viewing, editing and archiving) violated Section 1201 of the #DMCA.
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Even by the heavy-handed standards of the RIAA - a monopolist's "association" dominated by only three members - this was extraordinary. The law in question derives much of its efficacy from its vagueness, which chills software developers from risking its severe penalties.
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#DMCA1201 is an "anti-circumvention" law, banning the distribution of tools that bypass "effective means of access control" for copyrighted work, with a $500k fine and a 5-year sentence for a first violation.
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In 1998, Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act into law. At the time, most of the attention was on Section 512 - AKA "notice and takedown," which absolves platforms from liability for users' infringement provided they respond quickly to removal demands.
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Over the years, this has been horrifically abused, with everyone from post-Soviet dictators to sexual predators to cults and literal Nazis using spurious copyright claims to censor their critics, often without consequence.
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But the real ticking time-bomb in the DMCA is Section 1201, the "anti-circumvention" rule, which makes it a felony (punishing by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine) to help people tamper with "access controls" that restrict copyrighted works.
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