There Are All Sorts Of Problems With Ruling That YouTube Ripping Tool May Violate Copyright Law
from the that-extension-infringes? dept
There are a number of different tools out there that let you download YouTube videos. These tools are incredibly useful for a number of reasons and should be seen as obviously legal in the same manner that home video recording devices were declared legal by the Supreme Court, because they have substantial non-infringing uses. But, of course, we’re in the digital age, and everything that should be obviously settled law is up for grabs again, because “Internet.”
In this case, a company named Yout offered a service for downloading YouTube video and audio, and the RIAA (because, they’re the RIAA) couldn’t allow that to happen. Home taping is killing music, y’know. Rather than going directly after Yout, the RIAA sent angry letters to lots of different companies that Yout relied on to exist. It got Yout’s website delisted from Google, had its payment processor cut the company off, etc. Yout was annoyed by this and filed a lawsuit against the RIAA.
The crux of the lawsuit is “Hey, we don’t infringe on anything,” asking for declaratory judgment. But it also seeks to go after the RIAA for DMCA 512(f) (false takedown notices) abuse and defamation (for the claims it made in the takedown notices it sent). All of these were going to be a longshot, and so it probably isn’t a huge surprise that the ruling was a complete loser for Yout (first posted to TorrentFreak).
But, in reading through the ruling there are things to be concerned about, beyond just the ridiculousness of saying that a digital VCR isn’t protected in the same way that a physical one absolutely is.
In arguing for declaratory judgment of non-infringement, Yout argues that it’s not violating DMCA 1201 (the problematic anti-circumvention provisions) because YouTube doesn’t really employ any technological protection measures that Yout has to circumvent. The judge disagrees, basically saying that even though it’s easy to download videos from YouTube, it still takes steps and is not just a feature that YouTube provides.
The steps outlined constitute an extraordinary use of the YouTube platform, which is self-evident from the fact that the steps access downloadable files through a side door, the Developer Tools menu, and that users must obtain instructions hosted on non-YouTube platforms to explain how to access the file storage location and their files. As explained in the previous section, the ordinary YouTube player page provides no download button and appears to direct users to stream content. I reasonably infer, then, that an ordinary user is not accessing downloadable files in the ordinary course.
That alone is basically an attack on the nature of the open internet. There are tons of features that original websites don’t provide, but which can be easily added to any website via add-ons, extensions, or just a bit of simple programs. But, the judge here is basically saying that not providing a feature in the form of a button directly means that there’s a technological protection measure, and bypassing it could be seen as infringing.
Yikes!
Of course, part of DMCA 1201 is not just having a technological protection measure in place, but an effective one. Here, it seems like there’s an argument that it’s not a strong one. It is not at all a strong protection measure, because basically the only protection measure is “not including a download button.” But, the court sees it otherwise. Yout points out that YouTube makes basically no effort to block anyone from downloading videos, showing that it doesn’t encrypt the files, and the court responds that it doesn’t need to encrypt the files, because other technological protections exist, like passwords and validation keys. But, uh, YouTube doesn’t use either of those either. So the whole thing is weird.
As I have already explained, the definition of “circumvent a technological measure” in the DMCA indicates that scrambling and encryption are prima facie examples of technological measures, but it does not follow that scrambling and encryption constitute an exhaustive list. Courts in the Second Circuit and beyond have held that a wide range of technological measures not expressly incorporated in statute are “effective,” including password protection and validation keys.
So again, the impression we’re left with is the idea that if a website doesn’t directly expose a feature, any third party service that provides that feature may be circumventing a TPM and violating DMCA 1201? That can’t be the way the law works.
Here, the court then says (and I only wish I were kidding) that modifying a URL is bypassing a TPM. Let me repeat that: modifying a URL can be infringing circumvention under 1201. That’s… ridiculous.
Moreover, Yout’s technology clearly “bypasses” YouTube’s technological measures because it affirmatively acts to “modify[]” the Request URL (a.k.a. signature value), causing an end user to access content that is otherwise unavailable. … As explained, without modifying the signature value, there is no access to the allegedly freelyavailable downloadable files. Accordingly, I cannot agree with Yout that there is “nothing to circumvent.”
Then, as Professor Eric Goldman notes, the judge dismisses the 512(f) claims by saying that 512(f) doesn’t apply to DMCA 1201 claims. As you hopefully remember, 512(f) is the part of the DMCA that is supposed to punish copyright holders for sending false notices. In theory. In practice, courts have basically said that as long as the sender believes the notice is legit, it’s legit, and therefore there is basically never any punishment for sending false notices.
Saying that 512(f) only applies to 512 takedown notices, and not 1201 takedown notices is just yet another example of the inherent one-sidedness of the DMCA. For years, we’ve pointed out how ridiculous 1201 is, in which merely advertising tools that could be used to circumvent a technical protection measure is considered copyright infringement in and of itself — even if there’s no actual underlying infringement. Given how expansive 1201 is in favor of copyright holders, you’d think it only makes sense to say that bogus notices should face whatever tiny penalty might be available under 512(f), but the judge here says “nope.” As Goldman highlights, this will just encourage people to send takedowns where they don’t directly cite 512, knowing that it will protect them from 512(f) responses.
One other oddity that Goldman also highlights: most of the time if we’re thinking about 1201 circumvention, we’re talking about the copyright holder themselves getting upset that someone is routing around the technical barriers that they put up. But this case is different. YouTube created the technical barriers (I mean, it didn’t actually, but that’s what the court is saying it did), but YouTube is not a party to the lawsuit.
So… that raises a fairly disturbing question. Could the RIAA (or any copyright holder) sue someone for a 1201 violation for getting around someone else’s technical protection measures? Because… that would be weird. But parts of this decision suggest that it’s exactly what the judge envisions.
Yes, some may argue that this tool is somehow “bad” and shouldn’t be allowed. I disagree, but I understand where the argument comes from. But, even if you believe that, it seems like a ruling like this could still lead to all sorts of damage for various third party tools and services. The internet, and the World Wide Web were built to be module. It’s quite common for third party services to build tools and overlays and extensions and whatnot to add features to certain websites.
It seems crazy that this ruling seems to suggest that might violate copyright law.
Filed Under: 512f, circumvention, copyright, dmca, dmca 1201, technical protection measures, video recording
Companies: riaa, yout, youtube
Comments on “There Are All Sorts Of Problems With Ruling That YouTube Ripping Tool May Violate Copyright Law”
Wait…
If I go to YouTube with my Developer Tools sidebar enabled, the URL to download the video is sitting right there.
If I write a script on my router to back up all video streams as they arrive on my network, the video is sitting right there.
Is the court arguing that since I’m not what they consider to be an “ordinary user”, I don’t have the right to do those things?
Do they also argue that it’s illegal for me to hang a CD from my rear view mirror or my apple tree, because that’s not what the CD producers designed them for?
Not to mention, my kids and all their friends regularly browse the Internet with developer tools enabled. So while it may not be normal for someone in their 70s to interact with YouTube that way, and need hand-holding through the use of tools built in to every browser to pull off what Yout is doing, I’m pretty sure anyone under the age of 30 is going to be perfectly comfortable pulling up the network monitor in a web browser and seeing what content is available.
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Basically they’re saying that youtube’s web page design dictates what operations are allowed to be done for youtube videos. Trying to expand the scope of allowed operations isn’t allowed.
Re: Re:
That’s not how HTML/JS/CSS works, but nice try.
It is up to the user’s browser to dictate which operations are allowed; which designs are rendered and how they are rendered; and which content is displayed. What comes from the server is suggestions.
Re: Re: Re:
This is coming from the guy who claimed that his modeling software is for children, then has now expanded it to checks notes be integrated into a blockchain for creating NFTs.
Re:
Here, let me give you a better and older analogy;
The VCR. Radio Cassette. MP3.
A youtube “ripper” is nothing more than a way to record what your screen would show you. And predictably the same type of outfit which salaried Jack Valenti now produces sky-is-falling bullshit about how people able to record, in their homes, what was shown on their screen, is an abomination to be struck down by as much legal acumen as can be mustered.
“For I tell you, the youtube rippers are to the american content maker what the Boston Strangler is to a woman alone!”, eh?
Copyright and new tech can’t coexist. And as history shows, the tech always wins.
Re: Re:
“Jack Valenti”
The guy who warned against a new market that turned out to be massively profitable in the long term?
“A youtube “ripper” is nothing more than a way to record what your screen would show you”
i.e. the same as taping music off the radio in the 80s. Which, weirdly, a generation of people did during a time that was the most profitable that the recording industry ever had. Which was challenged by the time when people could buy a 99c song instead of a $20 album of filler, not necessarily by the Napster era that allowed people to work out the best songs on the album.
There’s different viewpoints here, but generally speaking, the people ripping off YouTube and the people who recorded songs on cassette are the same. Similar with movies – Valenti says that movies would be killed by recording on VHS, my huge VHS/DVD/Blu collection inspired by the recording I made when I couldn’t buy anything legally says otherwise.
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I think it’s that you have to use the tools provided by the operator of the service and only those tools.
So as long as you’re accessing YouTube via Chrome, you should be in the clear.
Re: Re:
That would mean you couldn’t use most websites because most websites aren’t hosted by companies with their own web browser. And you couldn’t use Safari or Firefox to visit YouTube.
'Standing'? Never heard of it
Well that’s one way to make copyright extortionists the country over need to change their pants from sheer ecstatic joy.
Re: Creative Commons
Some Youtube videos use creative commons license, for people can recycle that content.
The other absurdity is that the RIAA is attacking a tool used to get YouTube videos. If it’s members do not like their content being downloadable, they can take it elsewhere.
Re:
The absurdity is that they started by trying to set up a YouTube competing service, Vevo, shut it down to host everything on YouTube because it was more profitable, then still complain that YouTube doesn’t pay them, enough.
They took it elsewhere, then went to YT because they made more money…
I still fail to see a difference between the right to record OTA broadcasts and the ability to download the video stream sent to your house by Youtube. On their claim is that it requires outside “help” in order to download the video sent by Youtube, the same could be said is required to record a broadcast signal.
Unless they seem to think that anyone and their grandma was more qualified to create their own VHS recorder and cassette tapes at home – WITHOUT technical construction manuals – than your average teen is able to click a button on their browser and read some text in HTML.
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You don’t even need to read some text. If you have the network monitor open in your browser when you load a YouTube video, you can literally load and save the video from the browser interface, using built-in contextual and menu bar menu items.
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“I still fail to see a difference between the right to record OTA broadcasts and the ability to download the video stream sent to your house by Youtube”
I think the difference is information. If you recorded an OTA radio or TV stream, they could speculate but they didn’t know exact numbers. With digital, they know exactly how many people did it without paying a fee, and it hurts their minds.
It’s not a problem if you realise that most people didn’t pay directly for the content they consume in their lives, but if you fall into the trap of thinking that one download = one purchase at full retail price, it’s painful. Self-inflicted fictional pain, but painful.
Expect it dose. Not on every video, but when there it’s right next to the share button. Granted that is a premium feature, so who knows if the judge counts that is a normal user case.
Did he seriously just say that if I open a web brower, say Chrome, and it opens to “https://www.google.com” … and I highlight the “google” and modifiy it to say “duckduckgo” … I have circumvented googles TPM. Becuase there was no button on the back to go to that URL (at that time)?
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To expound upon this more:
This is like saying: If my friends give me their street address, and I go visit them… I can’t then go visit the random people (or even knock on their door) two houses down. Because My friends did not give me that address, or show me the way to their house.
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It’s worse than that!
Some features of your browser are more legal than other features.
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Wait until this judge hears about browser caches, even. I suppose ISPs will at least be giddy about all the resulting wasted bandwidth reloading files that could have been local after the first load.
The implications of this ignorance could be far-reaching.
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Not quite but it’s basically that stupid in that it’s claiming that if the address was something like youtube.com/example01 changing that to youtube.com/example02 by changing the number in your address bar and hitting enter would count as ‘bypassing’ the site’s technological measures.
Re: Re:
Which would apply to changing the URL’s timestamp feature for YouTube videos, now wouldn’t it? It still points to the same video, but modified. Don’t want to see some nerd’s advertisement for Dollar Shave club while trying to watch a tutorial? Well don’t skip to 120s from the video’s description helpfully telling you where the ad ends… because you just changed the URL. And it doesn’t matter if that’s a feature YouTube directly puts on the site.
If ignorance of the law is no defense, why should ignorance of basic aspects of everyday technology be acceptable in those making judgements? It’s okay for courts to know nothing, but defendants have to know every law and precedent. How broken.
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“if I open a web brower, say Chrome, and it opens to “https://www.google.com” … and I highlight the “google” and modifiy it to say “duckduckgo” … I have circumvented googles TPM.”
Unironically that is exactly what he said, yes.
Worse, your exact example is also almost exactly the type of case copyright and patent trolls repeatedly take to court and force hapless defendants to waste plenty of money and effort to defend themselves against.
Soon curl and wget will be illegal.
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And then various Linux package managers also become illegal, as they use those to download packages.
Re: Re:
…same as the copyright cult tried to make bittorrent illegal, I guess.
The rent-seeking conniving weasels beholden to imaginary property have tried to render every new technology which allowed for storage and recording illegal, all the way down to the self-playing piano.
And the printing press before that – though that particular case was carried out by their spiritual predecessors in the catholic church who similarly believed that anyone not “licensed” to read their book aloud should be allowed to.
Copyright was never the answer to getting creators right of attribution and commercial rights. That is only the occasional side effect of systematic rent-seeking based on ideas. An industry whose business model is so unique in any other branch of business it would have plumbers charge every time someone flushed and car manufacturers bill car owners for every mile driven.
Re: Re: Re:
(1) ‘… similarly believed that anyone not “licensed” to read their book aloud should be allowed to.’ Curse of the negatives ? “… similarly believed that anyone not “licensed” to read their book aloud should NOT be allowed to”
(2) “… it would have plumbers charge every time someone flushed and car manufacturers bill car owners for every mile driven.” Just give it a little more time after the “smart meter” softening up operation
Re: Re: Re:2
1) Yes, i failed double negatives there.
2) Funny you should say that. Have I mentioned how new BMW owners can’t activate their seat heating without first committing to a paid subscription? The Internet Of Things is already showing signs of becoming the land of eternal rent-seeking. And that’s competing in douchebaggery with the often lackadaisical security which makes the smart device in your home nothing but a convenient stepping stone for hackers to deploy from.
And as John Deere so avidly demonstrated, just because you bought the damn thing doesn’t mean you own it.
This is how intellectual property works in the information age. Just to put it into comparison with the comparatively tame attempts by the catholic church and french royalty to put the printing press and unemployed citizens knitting lace in their homes out of business in times past.
At some point there’ll be a backlash, once people in general finally get fed up with every new world-changing innovation in information technology crippled by copyright and patent trolls.
Re: Re: Re:3
Car mechanics have issues repairing cars, especially when the repairs require reprogramming parts. Watch the whole video if you want to see why replacing a fuel pump relay can cost a couple of thousand dollars. Computers in vehicles are a means of robbing owners of their money under the pretext of the cost of repairs.
Re: Re: Re:4
“Computers in vehicles are a means of robbing owners of their money under the pretext of the cost of repairs.”
Computers in any thing not in need of a computer serve that purpose. The whole idea of the Internet Of Things is predicated on manufacturers being able to gouge consumers persistently.
Today a decent fridge will last you 20 years, easily. The IoT-fridge will have to be upgraded or replaced in 5 as the mounted chips grow too old to adopt the new security patches or kernels.
This is incredibly superior to the current trick of some manufacturers to use cheaper and more brittle materials than required for key components with a predictable rate of failure not too far beyond the terms of warranty.
The other thing is the RIAA seems to think everything on YouTube, or what gets downloaded from YouTube, is all music, and all under their… uh, “jurisdiction”.
So I can face copyright charges if I point a gun at a teller to bypass the normal system for getting money?
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If you survive the multiple gunshot wounds you will inevitably get, yes.
Re: Re:
To quote the nice Jan 5 rioter lady…
I’m white they won’t do anything to me.
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Idea for charge-stacking, #1132.
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Hmm that kind of logic would also lead to: Inventing, create things, or writing your own software is illegal. You should be licensing it from others.
so many levels of madness.
Sounds like what the judge is saying–in restaurant menu parlance–is, “No substitutions!”
Same technology, different programs, different legal result
I think it’s a lot more dangerous than this… I could be wrong, as I’m not Yout and I’m no programmer by any means, but I believe Yout’s backend is youtube-dl (a command line tool that RIAA tried to take down from Github and is suing a German web host for hosting its website). And from what I understand, youtube-dl essentially fetches the same thing a browser would access when watching a video on YouTube (and more or less automates the process that Yout describes doing in developer tools). YouTube’s watch page does the same thing youtube-dl does; the only difference between the watch page and youtube-dl is the latter downloads the video to a file, while the former streams the video in a player within the browser. Technologically and functionally, it is doing the same exact thing.
But the judge here is saying that you circumvent a TPM just by doing the same exact thing with a different tool. Using the YouTube watch page to access a YouTube video in Chrome? 100% legal. Using youtube-dl to access the same exact video? Illegal. How does that make sense? It’s like making it legal to drive down a freeway in a Ford vehicle but illegal to drive down the same freeway in a Kia.
According to TorrentFreak’s article, Yout plans to appeal this ruling. I hope it does and wins, because should this ruling stand, section 1201 of the DMCA shifts from merely being an unconstitutional copyright law to an unconstitutional attack on the free and open internet.
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There’s clear legal difference between these two cases:
1) youtube’s watch page is working exactly how google designed their web site to work.
2) youtube-dl on the other hand, does something that youtube’s terms of service are explicitly forbidding, i.e. moving the videos outside of youtube platform
3) The reason for the TOS forbid is because google has only required video authors to give a license to use the videos within the youtube system. Video authors do not need to give any more flexible licenses to google than whatever the upload button paperwork requires. Thus taking videos outside of youtube platform is illegal, because google does not have permission to do it. If google doesn’t have permission to do it, then youtube’s end users don’t have the permission either.
4) there is alternative that users who want to download the videos from youtube, will separately ask for permission from the video authors. Unfortunately, the contact addresses are generally not available for videos, so side-channel permission requests are generally failing in youtube platform.
Re: Re: Breaking TOS is NOT necessarily copyright infringement
A few problems with your attempted distinctions, point for point:
Can’t disagree there.
Yes, YouTube’s terms of service prohibit downloading YouTube videos. But that doesn’t make it an inherent copyright violation, be it infringement or circumventing technical protection measures.
Uh, no. YouTube’s terms of service gives Google a license to the content uploaded to their platform, but that doesn’t mean it’s copyright infringement if a third party (i.e., a user using youtube-dl and ISN’T Google) downloads it. In fact, YouTube has an option that enables you to release your YouTube video under a Creative Commons-Attribution license. Not the default option, I know, but even the CC BY videos designated as such on YouTube don’t have a download button that enables the same functionality as youtube-dl. Using youtube-dl or any other tool to download those videos is permitted under those terms. And if YouTube says its TOS still trumps the terms of the Creative Commons license, then THEY are breaking the license terms. Under the logic of this lawsuit, YouTube is adding a TPM to CC-licnesed videos uploaded to their platform, and CC licensees may NOT add TPMs according to the license terms.
But still, let’s say we’re talking about the larger subset of YouTube videos under the “Standard YouTube License.” Google has a license to the content when people post their videos on YouTube. The TOS covers what they can and cannot do with that content. But whatever rights Google may have doesn’t affect whether or not a third party can download the video without infringing copyright. Remember, breaking YouTube’s terms of service does not automatically make it copyright infringement. At most, it’s a contract violation between Google and the end user who downloaded the content.
This logic assumes the only way you can legally download a YouTube video (assuming you’re not breaking the TOS or the so-called “TPM”) requires permission from the video’s uploader/creator. But there’s many non-infringing reasons to download YouTube videos. Perhpas to download the video to watch later (time-shifting). Or perhaps you have a slow Broadband connection wherever you live, and you want to watch the YouTube video in the highest possible quality without interruption. Or perhaps you want to listen to a YouTube video’s audio on the go without displaying the video. Or perhaps you want to make a fair use of the video’s content. None of those require permission from the creator. And if you wanted to use the content in a way that required permission, there’s no reason why you should have to also ask the video’s creator to send a copy of the video to them. The fact that YouTube doesn’t provide an easy way to contact any user privately is irrelevant to this discussion.
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Re: Re: Re:
I don’t think this is true.
While your list of possible operations might be allowed by the copyright laws, the individual web sites do not need to pass along those allowances.
Basically youtube’s design has decided that the operations you mention are not provided by the youtube’s main user interface. Thus it needs breaking TPM to re-enable the features that youtube’s web page has explicitly disabled. According to the paperwork in this article, re-enabling these operations is against the law, given that youtube has explicitly disabled them in their web page.
Technological protection measures means that the freedoms you’re thinking about usage of youtube videos simply do not exist any longer. Web sites are allowed to remove those freedoms if they so choose, and youtube is so powerful that they can get away with removal of those freedoms. It needs another web site like youtube which handles the freedoms differently, and get all users moved to the new site, before you can get your freedom back and enjoy the operations that you listed above.
Re: Re: Re:2
“I don’t think this is true.”
You’ve said that about a great many factual and easily provable ideas, so I don’t think this is a great argument.
I’m not even sure the rest of your comment counts as a coherent argument.
Re: Re:
Number 1) So?
Number 2) And?
Number 3) Not my problem.
Number 4) It’s called youtube-dl.
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So if you write a userscript (such as in Tampermonkey) to run in your browser to allow the download? Illegal?
I suppose this could have some negative implications for text-based browsers depending on how they’re used, and maybe similarly for assistive software.
This is flat out stupid
So this RIAA circumvention claim is basically the 1201 and to pirate version of claiming that using devtools or view source on your browser on an HTML page is hacking to steal people’s SSN.
Having the SSN embedded in the HTML rather than not have it on there at all is the equivalent of having unencrypted videos posted on youtube rather than having the videos behind a paywall (the section on youtube that DOES use actual DRM).
This gives the impression that you can ONLY do actions that the page provides and not your browser, else it is circumvention. Just because simply not having a feature presented on the web page doesn’t mean it is DRM. The web isn’t television.
If I right-click and save an image off of DeviantArt or any other sites that don’t have download buttons and don’t even disable right clicks or select, am I suddenly in violation of section 1201?
Here’s another one: You can select text and copy on most websites, duh, and they 99% do not have a feature on the page that you can click on a button will write that text on your clipboard for you to paste. Because why? First of all, it is unnecessary in most cases. Most of the time, you’ll copy a short amount of text that could be anywhere on the paragraph.
The only time an on-site copy function is provided I’ve seen is a code hosting site GitHub, this is because this is programming, and most code shown on the page are snippets that you’ll copy and paste more often (for testing or to integrate with another code).
You’d know, that HTML and javascript are AN OPEN FORMAT, that almost every major browser that operates HTML and JS have tools that let you see how it functions. This is STANDARD. A DRM is none of that, it requires proprietary software or plugin that you cannot use any unauthorized third-party tools on it.
Re: Another thing
So by limiting users to only features on a page, this also means that sites that are 100% okay with their content being used would have to have all features your browser already have on the page, to be considered “not an effective technical protection measure”. Just imagine how unnecessarily bloated the page would be so that users wanting to use the page not have to worry about 1201.
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If you actually read the paperwork, it had at least one very questionable section: The part which contains range=4344334-3443434 style url specification. It is clear what such url normally says, the url is trying to fetch partial content from a larger file, i.e. just certain bytes from a large file, using very standard range fetch request.
But legal eagles thought about the magic numbers differently. They think it shows that a technological protection measure is clearly employed in this case. This part of the paperwork is technically completely wrong.
While section of the paperwork is technically wrong, I don’t think the error changes the end result of the lawsuit. Even if the error was fixed to something more reasonable, it probably doesn’t reach far enough to change the end result. So we’re still left with bad decision.
They won’t stop until copyright is crashed and burn, I suppose. I’m kind of starting to want that to happen sooner.
Well, you know...
Silly man, don’t you know in the fascist USA corporations always win? Doesn’t matter what the law actually says, corporations rule supreme!
Every time I watch a video, listen to a song, or observe anything else, I am making a recording, or copy, in my brain. The technology to read out and play back those recordings is presently under development. If it’s illegal to make a copy, it’s illegal to observe.
The RIA and the MPAA are parasites
Middlemen that do nothing for the content creators they claim to defend. They need to be disbanded. And beaten.
Interesting how they pass the buck for supposed copyright violations from YouTube (whose systems for dealing with these issues are lacking, including an inability between copyrighted materials and works that may share similarities, but are not those copyright materials), onto sites that are providing a service that ANY youtube user could do or learn to do, including someone who has never used Youtube before.
Also the judge is factually incorrect to state that downloading is not a service YouTube offers (albeit in a worse way than one can do themselves), since the app offers it as a YouTube Premium options. It could be argued that Yoot is offered a competing service that undercuts YouTube by being free, but it’s not a service that YouTube doesn’t offer at all.
The lack of expertise and understanding of technological issues that judges demonstrate regularly shows that the experience required to become a judge seems to preclude the ability to make sound judgements on these matters. Judges make the mistake of viewing themselves as standard users, but their comprehension is deeply substandard for whatever reason. As others have pointed out, web browsers could be viewed as violating copyright by the judge’s flawed and ignorant logic simply for how URLs are handled, as could a variety of servers by type and media playing programs.
Whether or not this is an intentional flaw in the court system, or simply an incredible lack of foresight by its designers (who credibly lack any foresight at all, being more self-interested in maintaining the status quo they knew than providing justice), doesn’t matter much anymore. What matters is this problems extends into matters a lot more serious than copyright (which is admittedly serious), like the the judge’s frankly weird statements and conclusions in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.
Technology literally unimaginable by the already unimaginative designers of the courts is in the hands of everyday people, and the people who understand it best tend to be too young to even have high school diploma, much less have passed the bar and then gone through the necessary steps to be appointed or elected as a judge. The ones who have been alive long enough to do these things apparently seems to be befuddled by ‘smart phones’ (handheld computers on a ridiculous WAN) and the microcomputers they’re an even more miniaturized version of.
Setting even that aside, the judge relies on a poor standard of judgement by not getting a wider view of how these things work. It’s reasonable to conclude that something many people may find obvious, may not be obvious to someone else who considers themselves perfectly average and normal. And thus seeking a range of experts is the bare minimum, but limiting this to expert opinions would still provide the illusion this is a matter of expertise instead of slightly-exceptional ignorance.
Does this mean that if you speak a URL to someone, but get it wrong, you have circumvented a TPM?
If you teach someone how to speak (like a child) are you trafficking in TPM circumvention techniques (which IIRC is a criminal offense)?
Re:
I think they only sue you if you do it 1 million times.
Re: Re:
so does botching it in front of a sufficiently large audience count (is that 1 time, or “number of people who were paying attention” times)?
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Ouch, now what
This is a case that seriously needs a non-profit push to the SCotUS.
For good or bad, there needs to be a line drawn.
Re:
“This is a case that seriously needs a non-profit push to the SCotUS.”
Dead issue.
To clarify, the legal assumption is that every copy of content has intrinsic worth – which is what the ridiculously high standard of statutory damages in copyright infringement is based on. The same ones which had the copyright cult earnestly make claims which would mean the total sum of money lost due to copyright infringement is some 42 times the amount of money which exists in the global economy.
Thus by judicial precedent SCOTUS would have to make a judgment based on the assumption that every copy made is the equivalent of physically stealing a bar of gold from the rightsholder. I’m not sure I’d trust trumpist appointees unable to even grok the first amendment to make the proper call on that.
Saner people realize that by the laws of supply and demand the intrinsic worth of a copy of information comes close to zero. But “saner” people weren’t the ones who recently told half the US population their bodies are the property of the other half.
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I have different take on the issue. It’s not the “worth” or “value” of the property that gives rise to the statutory damages amounts.
Instead, copyright owners have spent significant amount of effort and investment in creation of the copyrighted work. This effort has not yet turned into valuable products, services or plainly money. But these valuable products would not be possible at all without the effort and investment.
Statutory damages are based on effort that was zeroed because someone pirated the material instead of contributing their money to support the creation effort.
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Statutory damages are not based on “effort”, because that sort of thing is desperately difficult to prove.
At best you’d use monetary receipts to prove how much you spent, but courts prefer to avoid that because all that would do is encourage inflating costs.
Even if statutory damages were based on intangible constructs such as “effort”, no one would believe that a single song costs $150k to make. If there was a way to prove that, copyright holders would have presented that proof a long time ago. Why wouldn’t they? It’d be justification for why the maximum penalty of $150k even exists, and it might encourage them ask for it more often.
The reason why copyright owners don’t present that proof is because it doesn’t exist.