YouTube Downloader Legality Question

It's not about the artists.

Let's even go so far as to negate money entirely. We can go to your bread example.

If I give someone a piece of bread with a condition like "You have to eat it here and if you leave the room you can't take the bread with you" that's the condition. I have the right to mark up conditions if I'm giving you something.

That's how TOS works. They provide a service as you abide by their terms.

 

We're just going to keep going round and round, lol. As I said, they expect it to be copied. And, actually, you hit something there..it isn't about the artists, it's about the pockets of the execs...which is exactly why the industry has been smothered both financially and artistically. By the way, 99.99% of the population would tell you where to shove your bread and how far up Tight restrictions and threats just lead to more of the same issue the companies are crying about, if you want the cold, hard truth. It's been proved time and time again.

 

Yeah definitely, i.e. the often talentless middlemen. I can remember all that 'home taping is killing music' nonsense you'd often find on the inside sleeves of LPs. Usually accompanied by a cheesy picture of 'Jolly Roger' flag. Home taping didn't kill music though did it? I think that was the New Romantics LOL.

 

The fact is: The user doesn't have to download anything. The browser already does that. Encrypted or not, that's not the point. (And, I do have the right to know what encrypted content arrives to my system. But, I do believe you don't believe we got any rights. So, let's not argue on this one. )

The point is: Data is already downloaded. I can simply load content, disconnect from the Internet and replay the content.

Whether or not Google knows that, it's not the point either. They will never know. It's something they will have to live with, if they want to "offer" such service.

It seems Google itself is breaking their own TOS, by providing a browser... The browser does cache content for faster and later view (offline).

 

You have the right to know what's on your system.

I think the anti-download thing is because they don't want it redistributed. They provide the content on their servers so they get to make the rules.

 

Next battle in court: RIAA/MPAA vs IE/FF/Opera/Chrome/ and so on, lol. If they could get away with it, you know they'd do it. That's how rotten and greedy these people are. They don't represent and protect their "clients", they protect themselves.

 

Well this isn't helping me make up my mind. The RIAA probably already have some web tracker that's watching this so they can jump on me if I do this. Ok, probably not but my friend did get fined for download Nacho Libre, lol.

I'm more concerned with the morality than legality. Can someone please post the YouTube ToS where it says you can't download? Wouldn't they go after the YouTube Downloader creators if if was illegal?

 

Lol, nobody can help you with morals. That's an individual thing. My morals are perfectly fine with me downloading something free, given to me freely by the provider. Movies off of a P2P website are an entirely different matter, and the MPAA is even more hardcore about it than the RIAA.

P.S, the chances of you getting in trouble over copying something from Youtube is all but 0. Uploading is the issue, and almost exclusively where they get you on P2P as well.

 

This is the part to retain from Youtube TOS, regarding your specific issue:

Source: -https://www.youtube.com/t/terms

So, you can access content, once offline, using the cached content. No issues with that.

What you do from that moment on, it's your own concern. How will anyone discover you converted a file already downloaded/cached by your browser to an MP3/other to listen to/watch offline and whenever you want?

It's a moral issue, and that's up to you to decide whether or not these $ companies deserve it. I sure believe they don't. And, no, this doesn't affect bands and/or musicians. It's actually free publicity.

 

Exactly. The labels are still pushing their 50's business model. Basically they aren't selling music, they're selling plastic discs. The musicians to them are just human capital. I've always pictured a record boss as someone with Brylcreem in his hair, a black pencil-thin moustache and a front tooth capped in gold riding around in a red '55 Eldorado convertible.

Don't know if you've ever read this before, but it's a pretty interesting look at it from a musician's point of view. Here's a follow-up to the first article. Although it was written back in 2002, it still seems pretty relevant since the music industry is 50 years behind the times.

 

Yeah, hell, even some "mainstream" artists will tell you to your face that they make next to nothing off their music sales, and they'll tell you in the same breath that their label fees are the biggest part of that. Money to the artist comes from touring and merchandising. The RIAA hoopla is nothing but a giant scam, and the government has just enough dimwits to go along with it.

 

In law school we were taught in real estate class that rights were essentially a bundle of sticks. Each stick represented a separate right. For instance, one stick may represent the right to possess, another may represent the right to sub-lease, etc. If a person acquires a piece of real estate with clear title they have fee simple ownership (or all the sticks of the bundle). If a person rents month to month they have just a few of the sticks. Even though the "bundle of sticks" analogy is mainly used in real estate it can also be used to some degree in other types of property and contract law.

The problem usually lies in the difference between what is express and what is implied. Sometimes a writing may lay out an agreement (terms of use) but without all the implications of both parties contained within the four corners of the writing. One issue I see with the online viewing and listening of copyright property, such as videos and music, is that the video and music is (from what I understand) downloaded and stored in the browser cache. The browser is not usually owned by the computer user but is licensed to the user. But the song/video is making itself available to be stored in another place (the browser) apart from the online site which can complicate the rights retained by the song/video owner.

 

In the case of IE, most probably. However, I wouldn't have thought that this was necessarily the case with an open source browser.

 

That's a tough area. If you read enough open source policies, you're always free to not only read the source code, but screw around with it as well (otherwise "forks" would have never existed, and neither would half of the Linux distros). That to any sensible person means it's not "owned" by anyone. Now, you can't make a carbon copy of Firefox yourself and claim it as yours without changing a single thing, but otherwise yeah, nobody "owns" it.

 

If I remember correctly, don't Ubuntu (Canonical Ltd) claim that whereas with Microsoft you don't actually own Windows, but merely pay a licence to use it, you do in fact own your copy of Ubuntu? I don't know if this is legally correct though.

 

I have no idea, but, when you bring restricted repositories/software into the mix, I have my doubts. Generally, to me at least, anything under Creative Common/GNU is "open season", and can be toyed with, looked at and changed. I don't know how you could possibly claim "ownership" under such agreements.

 

Ownership is so vague at this point who even knows lol

 

Concerning Ubuntu, that did occur to me about restricted software.

Which is what the 'free' in freeware originally meant, I believe.

 

I'm definitely not hiring you as a lawyer!

 

There isn't just one CC or GPL licenses. There are subtypes, and some will give less permissions. For example, there's a Lesser GPL. I'm assuming this one offers less rights than the GPL.

 

If you're the owner of a corporation, based on the discussions I've had with him lately, he'd be the go to guy for you

 

Right, but overall if it's published under the CC or GPL. it's almost always safe to say that the freedom to do whatever you want is there.

 

You're probably right. I'm trying to find more info about GNU Lesser General Public License, and so far I've found that this one is actually less restrictive than GPL, as it allows software developers to link to other non-GPL software, regardless of being free software or proprietary software.

The "Lesser" word is tricky. lol

-edit-

But, in what comes to CC, I don't know about software, but when applied to websites, for example, depending on the CC subtype, you will have more or less rights to distribute, etc the content. You may actually be forbidden to reproduce the content, as well.

 

So are 99.99% of licenses and agreements These things are made up by lawyers with dollar signs for eyes and masters of the arcane language of law.

 

Not only we need, sometimes, a magnifier to read them, we also need something to decrypt them.

Here's a CC license. -http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

In that license I created for my "website", one can copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided three conditions are met.