Last October the RIAA infuriated many players in the open source community by targeting YouTube-ripping tool youtube-dl in a DMCA takedown notice filed at GitHub .

What followed was a broad backlash against the RIAA, the likes of which hadn’t been seen for many years. The music industry group’s claims of DMCA violations due to the software allegedly bypassing technological protection measures were met with intense criticism, including from the EFF.

In a surprise move several weeks later, GitHub reinstated the youtube-dl repository after concluding that the code doesn’t violate the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions. In addition, GitHub sought to boost its standing with developers by placing $1m into a takedown defense fund.

“We are taking a stand for developers and have reinstated the youtube-dl repo. Section 1201 of the DMCA is broken and needs to be fixed. Developers should have the freedom to tinker. That’s how you get great tools like youtube-dl,” GitHub CEO Nat Friedman explained .

Dust Settles But The Fix Was Incomplete, Dev Says

When the RIAA took down GitHub, its DMCA notice affected many developers who had forked the youtube-dl code. Many repositories were listed in the RIAA’s complaint so those were disabled too, replaced with the familiar GitHub page indicating they had been removed for alleged copyright infringement.

However, despite youtube-dl being reinstated, these forks remain down following the RIAA’s complaint and according to one developer, GitHub isn’t responding to calls to reinstate them.

In a DMCA counternotice filed this week, the operator of the ‘spookyahell’ repo describes the situation, noting that his previous requests to have his repository restored are being ignored by GitHub.

In supporting evidence detailing why the repo should be restored, the developer covers earlier ground noting that the RIAA’s notice was “way too broad”, is believed to be “wildly invalid”, failed to correctly interpret the law, and cited anti-circumvention methods that “do not apply.”

The dev also points out that when the RIAA cited a German legal process that determined that youtube-dl is illegal, that should be considered irrelevant to the United States since European law has “no place in a DMCA takedown”. The RIAA, for its part, insists that the relevant German law is “materially identical to Title 17 U.S.C. §1201 of the United States Code.”

This Dev is Clearly Irritated

While the developer appears to accept that GitHub eventually stood up to the RIAA, he isn’t entirely convinced of the coding platform’s overall support.

“[I]t seems like GitHub is still kinda ‘the bitch of the RIAA’ because they side with RIAA rather than developers who wish to reinstate the repos (unchanged) which according to the EFF would be perfectly legal,” his notice reads.

“The issues that raised from this takedown have lead to a major statement from github and change of already in-place policies and it seems they had to re-convince the developers that they actually support developers. The action they are taking with the actual forks however is unconvincing of their so-called principals [sic].”

The dev continues by stating that in addition to restoring the original project, GitHub should’ve reinstated all the forks as well, while notifying the RIAA that its claims were wrong. However, there are some important issues that the counternotice doesn’t address.

While youtube-dl was indeed reinstated, that didn’t take place before the original code was tweaked. Its functionality doesn’t appear to have been degraded but an examination of the code reveals that before it was put back, modifications took place to remove references to copyright works, including a song by Taylor Swift.

If we work on the premise that GitHub believed that these changes were enough to ease youtube-dl back onto the non-infringing side of the fence, then any original forks would still relate to the unmodified code, meaning that the RIAA’s original takedown notice would carry more weight.

This probably explains why GitHub hasn’t reinstated this developer’s repository on request, despite the filing of a counternotice.

Technically speaking, GitHub still has a number of days left before it needs to reinstate the fork under the DMCA, pending the filing of a lawsuit by the RIAA. However, since the music group has had since October to take action against youtube-dl itself, that doesn’t seem likely.

To learn more about how Github views the situation, TorrentFreak contacted CEO Nat Friedman for additional information, including whether youtube-dl forks will be restored automatically or if devs need to file an official DMCA counternotice. Friedman did not immediately respond to our request for comment but it seems likely that devs will have to let their original forks go and fork the modified project instead.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The music industry is convinced. Downloading music from public streaming services, YouTube in particular, is the greatest piracy threat to the industry.

The RIAA and several key music labels are doing everything in their power to counter this menace. They’ve sued several YouTube download sites, removed streamripper URLs from search engines, and most recently they targeted the open-source tool youtube-dl as well.

The last move was a step too far for many. It immediately triggered outrage among developers and the public at large . The opposition reached new heights this week when GitHub and EFF drew a clear line in the sand. No further.

After some modifications, youtube-dl’s repository was reinstated . This was great news for the developers, users, and many stream-ripping sites that rely on the tool. But the decision and the reasoning behind it are much, much bigger than that.

In isolation, the youtube-dl code is a relatively small problem for the music industry. Similar tools will always be available. While the RIAA liked the message that was sent by the removal, they perhaps didn’t foresee that a refusal to take down the same code would be much worse.

‘YouTube Downloading Tools are Not Illegal’

Both GitHub and the EFF have made it very clear that YouTube downloading tools are not by definition illegal. On the contrary.

“Youtube-dl is a lot like the videocassette recorders of decades past: a flexible tool for saving personal copies of video that’s already accessible to the public,” the digital rights group wrote in a recent post on the topic.

GitHub also stressed that youtube-dl is a “ socially beneficial tool ” which can help researchers, journalists, and the public at large.

These comments, which are only a tiny selection of the broader message, are a potential game-changer. The backing from GitHub is particularly notable, as the company is owned by Microsoft, which in its own right is one of the largest copyright holders in the world.

That said, the legality of YouTube download tools is not impacted directly by the public commentary. Eventually, this is something that courts will have to decide over. In the US, there is no clear jurisprudence on this specific issue but that may change in the near future.

The RIAA’s main argument is that these tools violate DMCA section 1201, which prohibits the circumvention of technical protection measures. In YouTube’s case, the RIAA cites the “rolling cipher” protection that YouTube uses to make downloading from the site somewhat more complicated.

Rolling Cipher Encryption?

The question is whether this “rolling cipher” is indeed a protection measure under the DMCA. That’s up to a court to decide, but we have previously shown that anyone with a browser can easily download from YouTube without extra tools.

The RIAA’s position is strengthened by a 2017 order from a court in Germany , that was also cited in the GitHub takedown notice. There, the court ruled that the “rolling cipher” is a technical measure within the meaning of Germany’s Copyright Act.

However, not everyone believes that the court was correct here. EFF stated that, contrary to the court’s ruling, there is no encryption involved. YouTube’s video streams are visible to everyone who uses a regular web browser. The ‘rolling cipher’ simply refers to a changing signature, readable by Javascript, that’s used for some videos.

“The 2017 decision of the Hamburg Regional Court in Germany that RIAA references, which refers to YouTube’s “signature” mechanism, was wrongly decided and is not binding nor even persuasive under U.S. law,” EFF wrote.

GitHub also believes that the German court made an error. Following EFF’s lead, the company concluded that youtube-dl was not circumventing a technical protection measure. “We concluded that the allegations did not establish a violation of the law,” GitHub said.

Stream-Ripper Battle Continues in Court

These are strong statements that will eventually have to be tested before a judge and that may happen sooner rather than later. There are currently two major US lawsuits where the legality of YouTube rippers could be decided. While EFF and GitHub are not part of those cases, their input will likely prove a factor.

One of the lawsuits was filed by Jonathan Nader, the operator of the stream-ripper ‘Yout’, who sued the RIAA last month. Nader decided to be one step ahead of the music industry by demanding a declaratory judgment that his website doesn’t violate Section 1201 of the DMCA .

TorrentFreak reached out to Nader, who said he prefers not to comment on the ongoing litigation. Especially since the RIAA has yet to formally reply.

However, the photo he shared with us reveals that he’s happy with EFF’s stance on the matter.

Nader’s lawsuit touches on the ‘rolling cipher’ argument as well, and he denies that anything is being decrypted or bypassed.

Another lawsuit where the same issue may be brought up was filed by several of the largest music labels two years ago, with support from the RIAA. They sued the YouTube ripping sites FLVTO.biz, 2conv.com , and their Russian operator Tofig Kurbanov.

Both sides are currently still fighting over whether a US court has jurisdiction. Kurbanov’s legal team recently petitioned the US Supreme Court to hear that matter.

If the court decides that the site operator has to defend himself, he is surrounded by a legal team that is confident that they can defeat the copyright and anti-circumvention allegations.

‘RIAA Opposed Every Technological Advance’

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Kurbanov’s defense attorney Evan Fray-Witzer equates stream-ripping to the other technological advances that were protested by the music industry over the years.

“It’s important to remember that the RIAA has consistently opposed virtually every technological advance from the 1970s forward including the advent of cassette tapes, compact discs, and MP3s. For 50 years they have been yelling that the sky is falling and yet – despite this hysteria – music continues not only to survive but to flourish.”

According to Fray-Witzer, this latest attack on stream-ripping is equally misguided and will eventually fail.

“Users have lots of legitimate uses for stream-ripping that have nothing to do with music. And, even when you’re talking about music, users have a legitimate right to time-shift, just as the courts found that people could record TV shows with their VCRs so that they could watch them at a different time,” he says.

The Yout.com and Kurbanov’s cases are not the first stream-ripper lawsuits. A few years ago, the record labels already sued YouTube-MP3 . That site eventually settled the case privately and shut down. While the RIAA celebrated this as a major win, this outcome has little effect on the current cases.

“So far, the RIAA’s successes in court have been the result of defendants who lack the ability to fight back and to prove that these tools do not actually violate copyright law. Hopefully, that’s about to change,” Fray-Witzer notes.

“Stream-ripping sites and software are simply tools – tools with lots of legitimate uses, as the EFF has recognized,” the attorney adds.

DMCA Section 1201 Exceptions

It’s clear that the YouTube downloaders find themselves supported by the recent backing from GitHub and the EFF, but the moral support is just part of the story. In addition, both are also calling on the Copyright Office to broaden the DMCA Section 1201 exceptions .

“We are also advocating specifically on the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA to promote developers’ freedom to build socially beneficial tools like youtube-dl,” GitHub said this week, announcing their plan to get involved in the Copyright Office’s triannual review process.

Right now, US law makes it illegal for most developers to use or distribute code that bypasses technical protection measures, even if that technology or code can also be used for non-infringing or legal means.

Time will tell how these and other issues will develop over time but it’s clear that the RIAA’s takedown notice to GitHub was a wake-up call. Now we just have to see who and what it awakened.

TorrentFreak also reached out to the RIAA to hear their comments on these recent events but the group hasn’t responded. It’s not a stretch to conclude that they are not happy with GitHub’s reversal, to say the least.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Enlarge / A sign featuring the YouTube logo, outside the YouTube Space studios in London on June 4, 2019. (credit: Olly Curtis | Future | Getty Images )

GitHub has reversed its decision to boot YouTube-dl, a popular tool for archiving YouTube videos, from its platform. The company restored repositories this week after "additional information" convinced it that an archiving tool is not in and of itself a copyright violation—no matter what the music industry says.

The repositories in question got shut down in late October, before coming back yesterday. "We share developers' frustration with this takedown—especially since this project has many legitimate purposes," GitHub explained in a corporate blog post . "Our actions were driven by processes required to comply with laws like the DMCA that put platforms like GitHub and developers in a difficult spot. And our reinstatement, based on new information that showed the project was not circumventing a technical protection measure (TPM), was inline with our values of putting developers first."

The initial takedown occurred after the Recording Industry Association of America filed a claim with Microsoft-owned GitHub arguing that the code in those repositories was inherently illegal under US copyright law. At a high level, the law in question basically makes it illegal to crack or bypass DRM in any way, except for a handful of enumerated exemptions .

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Last month, the RIAA pulled the popular open source tool youtube-mp3 from GitHub.

The music group sent a takedown notice arguing that the software violated section 1201 of the DMCA, which prevents people from bypassing technical protection measures.

This enforcement action wasn’t well-received by the developer community . This included GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, who was ‘annoyed’ and personally offered his help to get the repository reinstated. This wasn’t a false promise, as youtube-dl returned today.

GitHub Reinstates Youtube-dl

“We are taking a stand for developers and have reinstated the youtube-dl repo. Section 1201 of the DMCA is broken and needs to be fixed. Developers should have the freedom to tinker. That’s how you get great tools like youtube-dl,” Friedman says .

GitHub has reinstated the repository after some changes were made. These changes include referrals to copyrighted music, which RIAA pointed out in its claim. However, the software still allows people to download files, including music tracks, from YouTube.

After a careful look at the “circumvention” allegations, GitHub now concludes that they are not valid. The company explains that it “received additional information” that allowed it “to reverse” the takedown.

No DMCA Anti-Circumvention Violations

“[O]ur reinstatement, based on new information that showed the project was not circumventing a technical protection measure (TPM), was inline with our values of putting developers first,” GitHub notes.

This new information comes from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which responded to the RIAA’s takedown request on behalf of the youtube-dl developers. The EFF’s letter explains in detail how the software works and stresses that there is no advanced decryption involved, as we highlighted earlier .

“Youtube-dl stands in place of a Web browser and performs a similar function with respect to user-uploaded videos. Importantly, youtube-dl does not decrypt video streams that are encrypted with commercial DRM technologies, such as Widevine, that are used by subscription video sites, such as Netflix,” the letter reads.

The letter helped to convince GitHub that it wrongly granted the takedown request. And since other copyright issues pointed out by the RIAA were addressed as well, the company decided to reinstate the repository.

Developers First

In addition, the revolt from the developer community was a clear reminder that developers should come first. As such, GitHub also announced that it will overhaul the way it handles DMCA section 1201 claims. One key change is that content won’t always be removed right away.

This change doesn’t apply to regular DMCA takedown notices but to ‘circumvention’ claims specifically. From now on, these will all be manually reviewed and scrutinized by experts.

“When we see it is possible to modify a project to remove allegedly infringing content, we give the owners a chance to fix problems before we take content down. If not, they can always respond to the notification disabling the repository and offer to make changes, or file a counter notice,” GitHub explains.

$1M in Defense Fund

The developer platform will aid developers financially as well. The company announced that it will put $1 million into a defense fund to help open source developers on GitHub protect themselves from overbroad or unwarranted DMCA Section 1201 takedown requests.

In addition, it will also get more involved in the political side of things. Every three years the US Copyright Office reviews its DMCA anti-circumvention exceptions and GitHub will have its voice heard there as well.

“We are also advocating specifically on the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA to promote developers’ freedom to build socially beneficial tools like youtube-dl,” the company notes.

All in all, it’s safe to say that the RIAA’s takedown attempt has completely backfired. We previously reached out to the music group for comment on related youtube-dl issues, but this request remains unanswered.

The RIAA continues to issue similar DMCA circumvention requests to other companies, including Google. These argue that YouTube rippers violate the DMCA as they bypass YouTube’s “rolling cipher.” At GitHub, those won’t work anymore.

Youtube-dl Devs Are Happy

Sergey, one of the youtube-dl developers, tells us that he is happy with all the support they have received from the EFF, GitHub, as well as the public at large.

“EFF’s help was invaluable. We’d like to thank EFF and Mitch Stoltz personally for their incredible support and dedication. We’d also like to thank GitHub for standing up for youtube-dl and taking potential legal risks by allowing youtube-dl to keep the rolling cipher code,” he says.

“We’re also grateful to all the tremendous amount of support and offers received lately (we physically were not able to respond to everyone) and all youtube-dl users,” Sergey adds.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The music industry has increased its enforcement actions against stream-ripping tools and services in recent years.

The RIAA and other music groups have filed lawsuits, sent cease and desist orders, and issued numerous DMCA takedown notices.

RIAA Takes Down Youtube-DL

Until recently these efforts were hardly noticed by the public at large but late last week something changed. When the RIAA targeted the very popular open-source tool YouTube-DL, many people responded in anger.

Last Friday the RIAA asked the developer platform GitHub to remove the YouTube-DL code and various forks because it allegedly violates the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions.

By enabling the public to download content from YouTube, the tool allegedly bypasses YouTube ‘rolling cipher’ protection. Not just that, the code also included links to copyrighted works to illustrate its use.

Cease and Desist Notices

Following our initial coverage, we learned that the pressure against YouTube-DL had already started weeks earlier in Germany. Law firm Rasch, which works with several major music industry players, sent out cease and desist orders in the hope of taking YouTube-DL offline.

Hosting service Uberspace was one of the recipients. The company hosts the official YouTube-DL site and still does so today. Instead of taking the website down, Uberspace replied to the notice through its own lawyer, who said that the hosting company hasn’t don’t anything wrong.

When the cease and desist notice was filed, yt-dl.org wasn’t even hosting the tool, as all download links pointed to GitHub, the company informs us.

“The software itself wasn’t hosted on our systems anyway so, to be honest, I felt it to be quite ridiculous to involve us in this issue anyway – a lawyer specializing in IT laws should know better,” Jonas from Uberspace says.

Former Maintainer Tageted as Well

The host wasn’t the only entity to be targeted. The German law firm also sent a cease and desist notice to developer Philipp Hagemeister who previously maintained the YouTube-DL repository. He also denies the accusations.

“They did not understand that I was no longer a maintainer, basically alleged that youtube-dl was an illegal enterprise rather than a legit open-source project, and misunderstood a bunch of other technical stuff,” Hagemeister tells TorrentFreak.

Both Uberspace and Hagemeister don’t want to go into too much detail as this is a pending legal issue. However, both defend their actions in relation to YouTube-DL. And they’re not the only ones who were ticked off by the enforcement actions, as we learned this weekend.

Takedown Backfires as Copies are Everywhere

Soon after the RIAA notice took YouTube-DL offline many developers spoke out in protest. They believe that the music industry group went too far and started to republish copies of the code everywhere.

Over the past several days, we have seen hundreds of new forks and copies appear online. These were also posted to GitHub , where YouTube-DL forks remain easy to find and continue to be uploaded.

The code was also posted in some places one wouldn’t expect. For example, there’s still a copy in GitHub’s DMCA notice repository, which some people find quite amusing. And the list of pull requests can be quite entertaining in themselves.

One of the most creative responses we’ve seen was posted to Twitter by @GalacticFurball who encoded YouTube-DL into images that can be easily shared, encouraging others to share these as well.

“I would also suggest that you save and repost the images, as one single source kind of defeats the point. Maybe start a hashtag trend or something. Make songs, and poetry. Get that data out there.”

This triggered even more creativity, with people finding alternative means to share the code online, all to counter the RIAA’s takedown request.

GitHub’s CEO Offers to Help YouTube-DL

Meanwhile, GitHub’s CEO Nat Friedman wasn’t sitting still either. While the Microsoft-owned developer platform had to respond to the takedown notice, Friedman himself actively reached out to YouTube-DL’s developers to help them get their project reinstated.

The CEO joined YouTube-DL’s IRC channel hoping to connect with the owner of the repository so he can help to get it unsuspended.

“GitHub exists to help developers. We never want to interfere with their work. We want to help the youtube-dl maintainers defeat the DMCA claim so that we can restore the repo,” Friedman told TorrentFreak, explaining his actions.

It’s clear that GitHub exists to help developers. That said, for the company’s CEO to jump in and personally help someone to respond to a DMCA claim, is quite unprecedented. As it turns out, the RIAA’s notice ticked off Friedman as well.

“This one annoyed me,” Friedman says.

“Perhaps because of the importance of tools like youtube-dl for archivists, and our related archive program and funding of the Internet Archive: We are thinking about how GitHub can proactively help developers in more DMCA cases going forward, and take a more active role in reforming/repealing 1201.”

GitHub’s CEO suggested that YouTube-DL won’t be reinstated in its original form. But, the software may be able to return without the rolling cipher circumvention code and the examples of how to download copyrighted material.

RIAA Efforts Backfire

By now it is clear that the RIAA’s takedown notice backfired badly. With the ‘Streisand Effect’ in full swing, there are now probably more copies of YouTube-DL online than there ever were.

However, there is more. Reading between the lines Friedman suggests that the current DMCA rules may be too strong in some cases. For example, tools like YouTube-DL have non-infringing uses, and there can be upsides to circumventing copy protections as well. To archive content, for example.

This issue may eventually become a policy question. Every four years the US Copyright Office grants new exemptions to the DMCA section 1201 anti-circumvention rules, and it wouldn’t surprise if these tools are put on the agenda in the future.

Instead of simply taking down YouTube-DL, the RIAA may have actually poked the bear and increased support for such tools. Not only from developers at home, but also from big players such as GitHub. Putting that cat back in the bag is not going to be easy.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Enlarge (credit: YouTube / Getty / Aurich Lawson )

A popular tool used for archiving YouTube videos, YouTube-dl, is gone from GitHub after the Recording Industry Association of America filed a claim arguing that the code is inherently illegal under copyright law.

GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft, removed 18 projects on Friday that previously hosted versions of YouTube-dl, a Python library that allows for the downloading of YouTube video and audio files. Those repositories now display a message reading, "This repository is currently disabled due to a DMCA takedown notice. We have disabled public access to the repository."

Although the notice is framed as a DMCA issue, the takedown notice from the RIAA, dated Friday, does not make claim that YouTube-dl is an act of copyright infringement. Instead, it alleges that the code itself is a violation of a different section of Us copyright law (as well as German copyright law), because the "clear purpose of this source code is to... circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube, and [to] reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings owned by our member companies without authorization for such use."

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