

German Student Defies Google C&D with 1 Million Signatures - iProject
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/german-student-defies-google-cease-and-desist-with-1-million-signatures.php

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alan_cx
Back in ye olde days, we had this thing called "radio". In wonderful FM
quality, it would broadcast music. Over a week, just about ever bit of current
music. We old folk also has a device known as a "tape cassette recorder".
(look it up young people) Now, some naughty people worked out that you could
take the output of the radio and connect it to the input of the tape recorder,
and record what was playing on the radio. Wait for the weekly top 40 (or
whatever) show, and 2hrs later, you've got the top 40 singles. With decent
kit, we could get very good quality recordings, and with clever use of the
record levels the DJ, etc could be eliminated. Now, some clever people came up
with the idea of making a radio that also had a tape cassette recorder built
in. This machine had one single use. It made recording off the radio trivial.

So, back to 2012, what is the difference between manufacturers making radio
cassette recorders for the exclusive purpose of ripping audio from the radio,
and what this site does? Youtube basically broadcasts like radio, all be it on
demand, and this site is basically a cassette recorder. Also, does any one
remember being hunted down by their local radio station for pirating?

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jlarocco
I don't think that analogy holds because the "recording" is being done by a
third party service. I think a better analogy would be a business where you
called and requested they record songs X, Y, and Z off of the radio and send
you the cassette. I'm pretty sure a service like that would have been shut
down in "ye olde days".

A tape recorder would be more like using clive and ffmpeg to strip the audio
yourself. As far as I know, clive and similar tools have never been hassled by
YouTube/Google.

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icebraining
Recording by a third-party is exactly what Cablevision does with their "remote
storage digital video recorder (RS-DVR)" service and they won in court:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_DVR#Cablevision_litigat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_DVR#Cablevision_litigation_in_the_U.S).

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wpietri
I'm not seeing anything different than YouTube's initial attitude to
copyright: If it's novel and a lot of people are using it happily, it must be
ok!

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DanBlake
The thing hes leaving out is that this guy is almost definitely making mid 6
figures a month.

The issue comes down to Google hosts a users video for free, with the
expecation that they can serve advertisements to people who watch said video.
By using this service, it strips google of that right while still using its
resources. Google has every right to block services it doesnt like and you
have every right not to use youtube.

This is very similar to the craigslist/padmapper issue in some ways.

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pmorici
Seems like the smart thing to do on Google's part would be to detect when a
service like this is accessing its site and serve and alternate version of the
video with the original audio stream replaced with one that includes an audio
advertisement spliced with a snippet is the original audio.

~~~
Produce
The smart thing to do would be to put a download link next to each video.

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vog
What's the point of these downloading-webservices, anyway? From my (perhaps
naive) point of view, saving a media stream to disk is a better task much
better suited for client software. Nowadays, there are pretty good tools for
many operating systems. In the future those might turn into browser
extensions, or even become a commodity feature in the browsers.

I remember when some websites started to use JavaScript to prevent other from
copying their text (by suppressing the right mouse key, catching Ctrl+C,
etc.).

Today, this reappears as "DRM enforced via Flash" on YouTube and many other
sites. These new types of DRM won't remain in an open web for long, either,
for the same reasons that trying to block Ctrl+C is insane.

So I'm asking myself why this guy put himself into that very weak position in
the first place, by providing a webservice rather than a tool or browser
extension.

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Gring
Here's an example that I encountered a few days ago:

I only had an iPad (something more and more common, keep in mind their growing
popularity) and wanted to download the Song "Alfur ut ur hol" by Björk (which
you can't buy in record stores or the iTunes store - it's a rarity recording
she released when she was 11 - but it's available on Youtube).

While there are youtube-downloading-apps on iOS, none of them were able to
convert the downloaded movies into audio-only files.

Then I found youtube-mp3.org. The site, together with the iCab iOS web browser
(which can download files) did the trick.

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Terretta
The iCab browser for iOS is a gem.

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lkbm
Google fought long and hard to be able to have music from large copyright
holders on YouTube and not have to pay a billion dollars in damages. If you
want to petition someone, you probably need to go to the RIAA, because Google
does not want to lose the status quo and return to an era of illegitimacy for
such a huge property.

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nl
If nothing else, Google will probably win based on the use of "Youtube" (a
trademark) in the domain name.

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moe
When will they learn that they can't win these things.

Perhaps they'll even succeed to shut this one site down. Within weeks there
will be two knockoffs to replace it. And that's not even mentioning the dozen
desktop apps that do the exact same thing.

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WagnerVaz
He may wouldn't be having problem if the data flow was owned by the User.
Perhaps if he manage to make an website that automate the process of: The User
get the video, extract the track and then the User, uploads to his site. While
he's website touch the Youtube, he may have problem.

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halis
Don't be stupid Google, if this guy is doing something this popular, it's
going to continue happening whether you take him down or not. Acquire the
little bastard and then figure out how to make it legal.

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hhjj
A website providing a service to show extracts of another website... What does
that remind me ?

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adgar
"Matesanz and his lawyers argue that, since Youtube-mp3.org does not use
YouTube’s application programming interface, it does not violate YouTube’s
terms of service."

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saalweachter
I wonder if that includes robots.txt.

I don't know how exactly either YouTube or Youtube-mp3.org works, but I'm
guessing that he's scraping YouTube (and not using their API), and I would
expect that in doing so, he's ignoring robots.txt.

I'd be surprised if robots.txt had any legal force whatsoever, but IMO if
someone has a robots.txt and you're ignoring it, you're in the wrong. And if
you're ignoring it and profiting off of ignoring it (as opposed to, say, doing
academic research of some kind and ignoring it _for science_ ), you're a bad
person.

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true_religion
Robots.txt doesn't apply if your program is acting via user commands.

If I tell my browser to 'rip' Youtube.com, its just as fine as if I tell
Youtube-mp3.org to rip a specific video for me. In both cases, technology is
acting as a tool and not an automation.

