Thread by @doctorow

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.

pluralistic.net/2020/10/24/120…

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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:

pluralistic.net/2021/08/01/bal…

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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.

pluralistic.net/2020/10/28/tru…

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DMCA1201 is a pure hazard. For decades, manufacturers have weaponized it to prohibit otherwise legal uses of their products: if a product is designed so that a use requires removing DRM, then using it that way becomes illegal.

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That's true even if no copyright infringement takes place - it's true even if the DRM gets in the way of a copyright holder selling their own work to their audience.

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That's how Apple uses it, with the Iphone and the App Store: Ios devices are designed to reject programs unless they are delivered via the App Store, which takes a 15-30% cut from software authors, who hold the copyright to those programs.

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So Apple can use copyright law to stop a software author from selling a program to a software user, that the user wants to run on a device they own, unless the author gives Apple 15-30% of the price. This doesn't protect copyright - it protects Apple's business model.

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If the software author were to supply a tool that jailbroke their customer's Iphone so the customer could install the program they just bought, that would violate the criminal provisions of DMCA1201, with a $500k fine and 5 years in prison for a first offense.

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This is "felony contempt of business model" (in the memorable phrasing of @saurik), and it's everywhere - it's how car and tractor manufacturers ban independent repair - and how Keurig locks you into using its coffee pods (and how HP locks you into using its ink carts).

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DMCA1201 is a dumpster-fire and it should have been repealed a long time ago. @EFF has a long-running lawsuit to overturn it on constitutional grounds:

eff.org/press/releases…

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But even in a crowded field of abusive corporate DMCA theories, the RIAA's attack on youtube-dl was a new low. Youtube-dl doesn't bypass any DRM! It just de-obfuscates a hidden URL. The idea that finding a hidden URL is the same as bypassing DRM is legally laughable.

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Nevertheless, Github responded to the initial demand by removing youtube-dl. But the good news is that once EFF lawyers worked with Github's counsel to assure them that the RIAA's theory was bunk, Github restored youtube-dl.

pluralistic.net/2020/11/16/pil…

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Github also pledged $1m to a legal defense fund for bogus DMCA1201 claims, and this week, they rolled it out, and it's just AMAZING.

venturebeat.com/2021/07/27/git…

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The fund doesn't just make money available to pay software authors' legal fees - it also establishes a partnership with Stanford law school, which means that programmers will have a much larger pool of legal talent to draw on.

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And those law students will graduate with real-world experience of fighting bogus DMCA1201 claims.

This is a fantastic outcome, and it has historical precedent.

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Back in 2005, Stanford's Center for Media and Social Impact produced a groundbreaking "Documentary Filmmakers' Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use," which demystified the farcical world of copyright clearances for docs.

cmsimpact.org/code/documenta…

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Documentary filmmakers had been forced into a cramped and legally incoherent practice of paying for - or avoiding - even the most incidental uses of copyrighted works, because their insurers demanded written permission for every use.

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The CMSI statement - and access to a huge pool of law students who'd work on cases - prompted the Media/Professional insurance company to offer fair-use friendly policies to filmmakers, and completely changed how doc makers related to fair use.

web.archive.org/web/2007022509…

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It's not just elite law-schools like Stanford's that can make this kind of difference. Back when @wseltzer was teaching at Brooklyn Law, she and her law students ran a successful clinic that overturned bullshit patents wielded by trolls against local startups.

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And as @derekslater pointed out in his seminal #noimnotgoingtolawschool essay, this kind of clinic work is crucial to equity for law students.

docs.google.com/document/d/12R…

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Without clinic work, law students graduate without actually knowing how to practice law (!), and must go into harness for large firms that can get away with horrific abuses as a result (law school debts are massive).

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These kind of clinics don't just provide an invaluable community service that checks corporate abuse - it also equips new lawyers to resist the workplace abuses of Big Law.

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There's no better subject for a tech-law clinic than fighting DMCA1201 abuse - because that's the law that is most often invoked to shut down #CompetitiveCompatibility (AKA #comcom/#adversarialInteroperability).

eff.org/deeplinks/2019…

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Without comcom, we will live in a high-tech society whose devices and systems are designed to configure US, rather than the other way around. Every one of us will eventually have a need, a disability, or a desire to do something that a product wasn't designed for.

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If we let companies pursue felony contempt of business model as a strategy, those needs will be forever subordinated to the corporate priorities of tech giants. That's not a pretty future.

arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01…

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ETA: The clinic at Brooklyn Law was created by @jaskin and is still in business!

twitter.com/BLIPClinic

Sorry to Wendy and Jonathan for misremembering this detail.