[jeroenhd]

All of this because they don't want you to download Guizmo - Dans ma ruche (https://ssyoutube.com/en691rT/)

Not the first time they've spammed DMCA takedowns either: https://lumendatabase.org/faceted_search?sender_name=Because...

In comically French fashion, their complaints also include the same message in French just in case someone in Mountain View is more fluent in French than in English. I wonder if this is just a bunch of amateurs hired by the French label or if they actually pay legal professionals to spam these.

[Jenk]

> Dear ssyoutube.com User: As you may have heard, our industry has been under strenuous attacks by certain GB copyright holders. Because of these attacks, it has become financially impractical for ssyoutube.com to continue to provide services in the Great Britain. Accordingly, ssyoutube.com will be terminating its services in the Great Britain as of November 3, 2022. We thank you for your past loyalty and patronage and wish you health and safety during the present health crisis and beyond. Very truly yours, ssyoutube.com

Well that's just awesome.

[nine_k]

Next step would be for the copyright-enforcement industry to sue VPN providers, claiming that they are making excessive profits by letting users sidestep the geofences, and so they must share some of the profits.

[ajsnigrutin]

> geofences

Geofences are a great way to start copyright reform. Bobby from Zambezia downloaded your new X-heroes movie, and you're complaining about piracy losses? How can you claim losses, if you're geofencing your content and don't want Bobby's money?!

[Jenk]

I think having exclusive distribution rights within geographies is one such usecase for geofencing. This is why Netflix et al may have content available in some zones but not others.

[Zach_the_Lizard]

There are all kinds of different legal rights owing to differences in copyright law, contract law, court cases, the medium in question, etc. such that even if one rights holder gave out worldwide distribution rights, inevitably some local difference will require geofencing.

Example: a famous {musician, artist, author, etc.} dies. His heirs dispute who owns the rights to his work.

Courts in Country A give Heir A exclusive rights, but Country B gives Heir B those same rights. Other countries give both of them part ownership.

Worse, a backup drummer / ghostwriter / etc. gets some rights by law in Country C due to a quirk in their local laws.

Now a hypothetical Netflix has to negotiate with different parties in different countries.

This is a mess all on its own.

Add on decades of trading around rights on a per-country basis (or even per time period, per medium, etc.) as part of deals, and it's intractable.

At one point I worked on software to record this kind of thing. It certainly was eye opening, to say the least. Needing to capture legal disputes was an important feature...

[ajsnigrutin]

Well yeah, but you can't claim piracy-related losses, if people in those regions are unable to buy the stuff you're not selling to them.

[EchoReflection]

The Internet is too global/ubiquitous (except in evil shitty countries like North Korea, China) to make dividing content availability by region realistic in the long run.

[Jenk]

Given the amount of money and effort going into these constraints today, one must concede that simply isn't true. There will always be an effort to constrain distribution of media because that is how the moguls keep rich.

[dp-hackernews]

It didn't work for DVD regions, so why on earth should it work for geo IP's???

The mind boggles!

[msla]

Imagine an immaculately-formatted legal brief, complete with citations, that consists entirely of the phrase "fuck you" repeated indefinitely.

That's all the reasoning they need.

[klyrs]

Offer a mail-order service for a billion dollars! Then, you're losing a billion dollars for every download.

[deelly]

Issue is that geofencing sometimes a direct results of different laws in different countries.

[tommica]

Well, Bobby should have thought of that before he so nastily stole from a massive corporation! Why would it be their fault, they didn't want Bobby to watch the movie, because let's face it, Bobby's a bit of an ass.

[qwery]

It is always amusing to see free marketeers complaining about getting free marketed.

[cykros]

Just like the fact that Hollywood got its start because the film studios moved out west to get out of the reach of Edison's lawyers when it came to his patents on film technology.

It's hypocritical turtles all the way down.

[TeMPOraL]

The hunted becomes the hunter. The victim becomes the oppressor. The hero lives long enough to see themselves turn into a villain. Etc.

[Symmetry]

A transferable monopoly given to artists as a reward for their creation is very capitalist, but I'm not sure you could call that "free market".

[nine_k]

> someone in Mountain View is more fluent in French than in English

No, I think this is for a case of any dispute of terms and particular formulations. The French version, I suppose, is the authoritative original, and a judge or an arbitrator might call for a certified translator to make exact sense of the letter's demands.

[GordonFremen]

Right, but the DMCA is an American law. It's irrelevant in France.

[p-e-w]

The only countries where American law is irrelevant are Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.

Go anywhere else, and on closer examination you'll find that American law is in fact very relevant, with local governments often bending over backwards to accommodate US legal provisions. Copyright, financial regulation, and international travel are some of the areas where this is usually apparent, but far from the only ones.

[zirgs]

This is the problem with the so-called "multipolar world". There aren't any other democratic poles. So - if you're a dissident or a whistleblower and you're too high-profile - you have nowhwere to go.

Snowden has to live in Russia, because pretty much all Western countries would put him on the first plane to the USA if he ever tried to enter.

My country extradites even our own citizens to the USA.

[soraminazuki]

Snowden was stranded in Russia because his passport was revoked while he was headed towards South America.

[zirgs]

He got lucky. South America isn't safe for him either. Look what happened to Assange. The Ecuadorian government changed and they kicked him out of the embassy soon after that. He wasted all those years there for nothing.

[sealeck]

And then you get countries like France where they refuse to extradite probable child sex offenders.

[dang]

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[abwizz]

everybody is a "probable child sex offender", so there is no ground to extradite.

[ChuckNorris89]

Pretty much yeah. The US is quite strong at throwing its weight around its areas of influence to enforce laws favorable to their corporations, otherwise they put you on the naughty list (US Special 301 report) and you could start seeing trade restrictions come your way. It's how they managed to get RARBG taken down all they way in Bulgaria.

[katbyte]

Is that actually why RARBG was taken down? Because their notice did not mention that. The only reasons I’ve heard have been deaths, health issues/Covid, and the war in Ukraine

[ChuckNorris89]

Sure, but the truth is they had no choice but to shut down after their life was made ever increasingly harder running a torrent website in a country where authorities were passing stricter anti-piracy laws and started going harder after pirates, after the US and the big movie and games studios started putting pressure on Bulgaria. Same thing happened in Romania a couple of years earlier where the original domain of the Filelist torrent tracker was seized. Are you ok with loosing sleep over the risk of going to prison or going bankrupt fighting trillion dollar movie studios in court for your famous torrent tracker side-project?

Check US Special 301 report, Romania and Bulgaria were on the US naughty list, and had travel warnings issued for them, despite being safer countries than the US and also important NATO members in the region, with the reason given in that report that US entertainment piracy is rampant in the region lol.

The big US movie studios cand leverage the US gov influence to put pressure on other countries to crack down on piracy. That's how strong they are. I remember the good ol' days in Romania when piracy was absolutely rampant that you would see ads in the city about ordering CDs and DVDs with quality pirated content through the mail, then we joined NATO, then suddenly anti-piracy laws became way stricter. You gotta play by Uncle Sams's rules if you join his playpen.

[DropInIn]

Reciprocity is the term in play

[DropInIn]

Folks.... It's literally called a Reciprocity Agreement.... Most developed nations have them with each other... It's how we can make sure murderers and other criminals can't just run across borders to escape justice....

[vasco]

Biggest army in the world, also the only reason most of europe has freedom today and not a german dictatorship is the US in WW2. This is something europeans forget when complaining about "outsized" US influence but then also don't invest in defense and keep being safe just by the grace of the US. This comes with a price.

PS: I'm from europe

[calcifer]

> the only reason most of europe has freedom today and not a german dictatorship is the US in WW2

That thought is the result of decades of successful US propaganda. The people who actually lived through WW2 in Europe thought different. This poll [1] asked: "In your opinion, which nation contributed the most to Hitler's defeat?"

[1] https://www.les-crises.fr/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/sondage...

[vasco]

So you agree that somehow the US has a stranglehold on Europe if they were able to make the continent believe what you say is a lie. Maybe you don't think it comes from WW2 or them having the biggest army, but then what is your explanation? Europe bends over just because?

The USA has military bases all over Europe with people and missiles. That started with WW2. How would they not have huge influence on what we do? No european country has a random military base in Ohio or whatever.

[bavell]

How many people were asked in each poll and were they all French? Genuinely curious.

[palata]

Can you really not think of a single instance where US interventionism was not welcome?

[vasco]

Of course I can. I don't like US intervention. But I don't have to pretend there's not an obvious reason why they intervene and why europe "let's them".

[bombolo]

the red army didn't invade Berlin in your alternate universe?

Also USA funded terrorism, mafia, in italy… not something to brag about.

[vasco]

How many military bases does Russia have in Germany and the rest of europe? How much control does Russia have on europe in terms of enforcing laws, extraditing citizens vs the US?

Do you really not see the difference? I don't like the fact that the US has this presence or influence in europe, but it is factual. Why you think stating a fact is braging, I'm not sure.

[ekianjo]

Technically Russia has bled a lot more to defeat Germany than the US but I guess you guys see History thru Call of Duty bullshit propaganda

[bavell]

Technically only because Russia treats it's troops like disposable cannon fodder and early in the war was sending 2 soldiers for every rifle with the instructions for the second guy to pick up the rifle when the first guy dies.

[Joeri]

Germany would have lost to Russia, they were already being beaten back when D-day happened. Europe would have become a communist dictatorship, not a german one.

[0xBDB]

"I want to tell you what, from the Russian point of view, the president and the United States have done for victory in this war," Stalin said. "The most important things in this war are the machines.... The United States is a country of machines. Without the machines we received through Lend-Lease, we would have lost the war." - Stalin

https://www.rferl.org/a/did-us-lend-lease-aid-tip-the-balanc...

[capitainenemo]

Kind of assuming the lawyer or whoever formulated the complaint spoke english... would make sense if there was a translation of a legal request, that the original and the translation be included. In case of errors if nothing else.

[hgsgm]

The client is French. Including a French copy of the message is entirely mundane.

[wkat4242]

The French invented the word chauvinism :) They take their language very seriously likewise. I work for a French company and even though the official language is English you're kind of a second rate citizen if you don't speak it. Or write last names in all caps or quotation marks like <<>> :) They just are that way :P

[palata]

> They take their language very seriously likewise. [...] second rate citizen if you don't speak it.

Try to not speak English in a US company, I guess?

[wkat4242]

I'm not based in France at all though!

[Foobar8568]

And if you ever work in any other countries, you would see the same in different language. Work in a Swiss company? Hope you enjoy German. At one stage, French people has to stop this self deprecating and think elsewhere is much better and only French does this or that. It is not.

[musiciangames]

Not my experience in Swedish company. n=1. It's not just business. Initially I felt awkward in shops, asking directions, etc using English. People just drop into English seamlessly.

[bombolo]

And drop back to swedish without a care for the immigrant coworkerks :)

[sealeck]

Depends on the Swiss company – some speak French!

[fakedang]

We're a Swiss company and we speak everything! English is the main language, but the engineers are mostly Eastern European but French-educated so they speak French. Some of the team is German/Czech/Polish, so they speak some German.

The common policy though is that if someone does not speak the language of the ongoing conversation in the room, everyone switches to English. A policy that I picked up from my Japanese internship days.

[palata]

And some speak Italian!

Small note though: I highly doubt they speak German... that would rather be Swiss-German.

[Glawen]

So in Scotland they speak Scottish-English? Irish-english in Ireland? What's your proficiency in these languages ?

[Glawen]

So much this, try in Germany, you will eventually get ghosted if you don't make the effort of learning German.

[wkat4242]

I don't work in france though.

[pixelpoet]

Space before exclamation or question mark is basically 100% accurate indicator of Francophone writing.

[wging]

I don't think so. I've seen Indians do it too, though they may be more willing to drop it as they learn it's not done in the wider anglophone world.

[martin_a]

My father does that, but he's just bad with interpunction.

[Kuinox]

> Or write last names in all caps or quotation marks like <<>> :)

Things we don't do much anymore in France.

[wkat4242]

Oh really?? In our company it still happens a lot. Especially the all caps last names are standard. Even in many non french countries.

The quotation chevrons I've seen only in some people's output indeed.

[Sunspark]

All caps started becoming more popular in English because a lot of people now have names where the first and last names are interchangeable and it was causing uncertainty.

[eloisius]

I wouldn’t mind this becoming an international standard. Going back and forth between the west and Asia, no one is ever sure upon first look which is my given name and which is my surname because of it being written in a different order across different ID cards, registration forms, etc.

[JodieBenitez]

Only because most text editors suck.

[Glawen]

And half off the websites incorrectly treating é or è encoding, forcing you to omit these when writing your name.

It is incredible how badly foreign languages are supported

[benj111]

If I were to send a document overseas I would make sure to also include my native language.

A) because if there's confusion at my translation, it's possible for them to translate the original to make sense

B) if it goes to my local court, we can discuss what was said in my local language.

[erremerre]

Dont forget writing time with a h separator. We met at 15h45.

[donmcronald]

I'm pretty skeptical of stuff like that. To me, it looks like they proxy the download for you, but that doesn't make sense because there's no way they have the revenue to support that, right?

How does it work? Can someone explain it to me?

[jeroenhd]

You take youtube-dl/yt-dlp, make a frontend for submitting URLs to it, and stick it in on a page absolutely teeming with ads. With enough ads and enough random people searching for "youtube MP3 downloader" you can cover the server expenses and probably make a few bucks per month in the process.

[simlevesque]

Somebody drank too much Ballantine.

[fathyb]

Well that's just normal!