I had never heard of youtube-dl prior to this whole saga. But I used it for the first time yesterday and it works great.<p>So maybe I should thank the RIAA for clueing me in!
So glad this is updated. yt-dl.org/bug still seems to point to the github DMCA takedown notice. There seems to be an issue on YouTube itself where youtube-dl has been throwing the error:<p>""token" parameter not in video info for unknown reason; please report this issue on <a href="https://yt-dl.org/bug" rel="nofollow">https://yt-dl.org/bug</a>"<p>Considering the current political climate, youtube-dl is going to be my (and many's) literal weapon of choice against disinformation operations. Of course, the conspiracy theorist in me asks, what if that's <i>the reason why</i> youtube videos are suddenly breaking yt-dl? Making a video analysis tool unavailable during one of the most unstable times in history is beyond negligent, it's the kind of mendacity that polarizes and radicalizes people.<p>Surely an innocent mistake, that happened at the precise moment, at the worst possible time, affecting the one thing opposition would use, and with complete deniability.<p>"Oops." Indeed.
I am always downloading videos when someone repairs something of my interest or similar. Sometime authors take those videos down shortly after uploading because they think these are boring or have mistakes. I find them extremely valuable regardless of their issues. I use ytdl daily. I hope RIAA gets shut down. They don't work for artists and they are suppressing the culture.
I have permananently blocked youtube on my browser. I use yt-dl to download and watch important videos. It is cumbersome but keeps the addictive tactics employed by yt at bay by increasing friction.
Neat. I compiled and installed the new release.<p>Compiling saves 1000ms of load time.<p><pre><code> $ time python youtube-dl-original --version
2020.11.01.1
real 0m1.474s
user 0m1.356s
sys 0m0.111s
$ time python youtube-dl-compiled --version
2020.11.01.1
real 0m0.380s
user 0m0.328s
sys 0m0.049s
</code></pre>
It might be nice if youtube-dl would be compiled to bytecode before release.
It would be interesting if we could make a youtube-dl that dynamically fetched the latest working version, cached it, and ran it, and the latest working version, or a link thereof, is stored on the blockchain so it can't be deleted.<p>That way the command would "just work", "always work", and it can be switched from one host to another anytime without breaking that.
Reposting comment from thread about youtube-dl's RIAA issue, of 8 days ago.
It started with:<p>"As a technical aside (to the main topic of this HN thread), I had written a blog post some years ago, describing some uses of youtube-dl, and some commentary giving an overview of what its source does:"<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24876617" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24876617</a>
So I guess this means development will continue even without Github? Good to know. All they need to do is put up an issue tracker/PR tracker, and then a git link to the repo where people can push feature branches to, and there is no need for github at all. Plenty of free issue trackers they can self host, and self hosting git is fairly simple.
I think the youtube-dl folks need to talk to a lawyer quickly.<p>Like many products, youtube-dl can be used for legal and illegal purposes (just like a baseball bat can be). However, it was foolish to include links in their documentation to works where infringing uses are more likely. They should have pointed to the MANY works released under CC-BY or CC-BY-SA. Here's one I posted: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC1g8FmFcUU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC1g8FmFcUU</a><p>If this is a real DMCA takedown, then GitHub doesn't really have a choice, GitHub <i>must</i> take it down. youtube-dl should immediately file a DMCA counter-claim. A lawyer can help with this.<p>I think it's clear that youtube-dl has many non-infringing uses. I've posted many videos on Youtube where I own the copyright, & I really hope that people use youtube-dl to download and see those videos. But youtube-dl needs to do a better job making it obvious that it has many clearly legal uses.