[sjy]

The logic behind the DMCA complaint is that youtube-dl is “marketed … for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a [copyrighted] work” [1], not that it “allows you to download potentially copyrighted material from youtube.”

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201

[sudosysgen]

But it wasn't. This was just a unit test.

[arvindamirtaa]

A unit test is an example of how the program is intended to run. It's the intention.

[salawat]

The hell it isn't. A unit test is a bench test for one particular functional unit. It's a check function. If you accept that tests as carrying intent, then I demand every weapons researcher or biologist to be arrested this instant. Clearly they are only out to murder people. That is patently ludicrous.

[542354234235]

> If you accept that tests as carrying intent, then I demand every weapons researcher or biologist to be arrested this instant. Clearly they are only out to murder people.

Well, what do you think weapons are for? I’m not saying arrest them but that isn’t really a great example, considering the sole purpose of weapons is to kill or destroy. Using weapons for anything other than killing or destroying is basically a secondary usage.

[ldarby]

One of the tests in question extracts the m4a audio file of a Taylor Swift song [0] that has nearly 3 billion views and shows me 2 ads before playing. That's a lot of revenue for UMG, who I guess are a bit unhappy with this mechanism that youtube-dl provides of listening to it without having to watch the ads.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWlot6h_JM

[xdrosenheim]

So it's only a problem if the video has a lot of views and ads? If that's the case, we should ban all Pi-holes, too, as they _can_ be used to block ads. What if I have YouTube Premium, then I don't see ads, so am I allowed to download via youtube-dl?

[ldarby]

> So it's only a problem if the video has a lot of views and ads?

Pretty much, yes. No one is going to hire expensive lawyers to enforce copyright on something not generating revenue, although legally they can.

> If that's the case, we should ban all Pi-holes, too

If Pi-hole is anywhere saying or implying "use us to watch $vendor's content without watching their ads" then yes pi-hole is waving a red flag at $vendor who is now motivated to try to ban pi-holes. If there is a legal action they can afford to take they will.

> What if I have YouTube Premium, then I don't see ads, so am I allowed to download via youtube-dl?

No, downloading is a separate "right" from the right to watching without ads. (Downloading is the first step before uploading elsewhere and literally stealing the ad revenue.) But I think there's a legal grey area if you're watching (streaming) with youtube-dl, without saving the file. I'm sure it's against Youtube's TOS though.

[Valmar]

No, it's not.

A unit test is there to allow the developers to test whether the program is producing expected output from certain inputs.

It doesn't demonstrate that it's intended for circumventing copyright.

They just picked examples to use for in test cases.