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We are filing suit against the RIAA (twitter.com/youtdotcom)
38 points by youtdotcom on Oct 26, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 10 comments


Uh oh. On the face of it, this seems like an extraordinarily bad idea for Yout.

From their "About Us" page, they seem like another "stream ripping" website:

https://yout.com/about/

The RIAA has a successful track record of shutting stream ripping websites down.


Based on the "Betamax" supreme court ruling on case "Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc." in the United States, it is. This is the same ruling that protects many DVR's such as Tivo, and many more which are used all over the U.S. and in many parts of the world.

I guess nobody told them that DVRs like Tivo aren't sold in the US anymore or that Betamax hasn't been governing law for over 2 decades. Betamax was fair use because it was the only option for viewing a lot of broadcast content due to the limited broadcast windows and rarity of TV shows sold on cassette tape at the time.

But every form of media content today is available on-demand, so the time-shifting logic doesn't apply. And a lot of the content is also made available (for a price) for connectivity-shifted access, so the "download for the plane ride" argument doesn't work either.

I would wish them luck, but quite honestly they're just going to waste courtroom space that could go to a case that actually needs it.


>a lot of the content is also made available (for a price) for connectivity-shifted access

But not no-connectivity access. Not everyone has connectivity all the time.

Also people with bad connectivity who don't want to watch a spinning buffering circle every minute.


But not no-connectivity access.

No, that is exactly what I mean by "connectivity shifted": you have access at one point in time to download the content for consumption later, such as when you don't have connectivity at all.

Movies, TV shows, even music are all now available for "connectivity shifted" access. It simply costs money to do so.

If you have "no connectivity" then youtube-dl and similar tools are useless to you, because then you have no ability to use them. In such case, you should use purely offline means of accessing content such as Bluray, CDs, etc.


As far as I'm aware, Youtube doesn't have "connectivity-shifted" access.


> But not no-connectivity access. Not everyone has connectivity all the time.

And that not even considering countries where mobile data is quite expensive. It's slightly getting better in Canada, but it was ridiculous how much per GB it was before the last year or two.


At least someone is sticking up to RIAA. I hope more join the case. As a lawyer, I see plenty of bullshit cases filed that waste a lot more space than this.


Never heard about them, but visting and the first thing I see is "Yout PRO", that made me leave the site instantly.


The RIAA acting dishonestly, perhaps disingenuously? I'm shocked, I tell you!


Good luck




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