RIAA Obtains Subpoenas Targeting 40 YouTube-Ripping Platforms and Pirate Sites

Author: Cantbekhan

Score: 269

Comments: 185

Date: 2020-10-29 11:18:19

Web Link

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black_puppydog wrote at 2020-10-29 16:23:49:

I read an interview with Gottfrid Warg (pirate bay co-founder) some years back. Can't find it now...

What stuck with me was his disappointment that the wider torrent community simply relied on the pirate bay always making a return. There was no real effort to go beyond resilient hosting. No producing facts by superior technology. It was just a bunch of copy-cats playing whac-a-mole with the copyright industry. To paraphrase: "I went to jail for this stuff, and you don't even care enough about it to follow up on it in earnest?" At least that's how it read to me. As I said, it's been a while.

Hosting torrent platforms and such on namecheap, cloudflare (no really!) and all the other mainstream platforms seems like such an _obviously, deeply stupid choice_. There's only very few projects (that I know of) that are really addressing resilient, organized, curated content dissemination, and they're essentially divorced from the pirate scene. Too bad I guess.

fsflover wrote at 2020-10-29 16:35:30:

I prefer torrents inside I2P [0], because otherwise my IP will be shown to everyone. I wonder why there are so few people there. It's of course slow, but it's worth it. There are already quite a few torrent trackers.

[0]

https://geti2p.net

knaik94 wrote at 2020-10-29 17:23:16:

What kind of speeds do you get? Because last time I tried it getting above a few megabits per second was a struggle. When we're talking about even an Ubuntu ISO, it's a couple gigs. It's too slow to want me to keep using it.

fsflover wrote at 2020-10-29 17:44:55:

Indeed, few Mbps is typical for the current number of users. It can take days to download relatively large files. Still, is speed more important than anonymity? Definitely not always, perhaps never.

I hope it gets better with more users, as it happened with Tor.

Eli_P wrote at 2020-10-29 18:32:16:

> I wonder why there are so few people

Maybe because people understand that it's security model is flawed: the peers in the mesh treat all the other peers as not trusted, that's okay; but the network design doesn't seem to take into account potential hostility of the physical medium itself.

Say, your ISP can tarpit packets or shape traffic, or shut down the power or cell tower in your block temporarily, and then measure how the mesh congestion changed. At the same time the mesh relies on building hop chains with TTL of 10 minutes iirc, which I think makes a peer a sitting duck. It is (was) all documented/leaked.

fsflover wrote at 2020-10-29 19:43:03:

AFAIK garlic routing is still harder to crack than Tor:

https://geti2p.net/en/comparison/tor

. The main advantage of Tor is the number of users.

saurik wrote at 2020-10-30 04:35:23:

The network security people I know stopped bothering publishing attacks on I2P's directory service--which was(/is) in fact subject to eclipse attacks--because I2P didn't seem to care to fix the issues. Here's a great paper.

https://sites.cs.ucsb.edu/~chris/research/doc/raid13_i2p.pdf

fsflover wrote at 2020-10-30 15:16:03:

>The network security people I know stopped bothering publishing attacks on I2P's directory service

Maybe those you know stopped, but others didn't:

https://geti2p.net/cs/papers/

.

saurik wrote at 2020-10-30 18:53:34:

Great... are the issues getting fixed? The point I was making about I2P working so poorly that some people have given up trying to help--in addition to specifically noting that eclipse attacks do, in fact, affect the design of I2P--doesn't seem affected by "there exists people who still spend time demonstrating I2P doesn't work well" ;P.

Eli_P wrote at 2020-10-29 21:15:40:

I doubt the number of nodes is important when you can split a large group of them into a few subgroups and analyze them or alter how they interact with each other, then repeat subdivision; because again, them overlay networks are like smaller sandboxes inside the big one.

fsflover wrote at 2020-10-29 21:46:31:

Don’t forget that you have to do all this within 10 minutes, because after that time the network configuration will be totally different.

Eli_P wrote at 2020-10-29 22:59:55:

Yes, _overlay network_'s configuration will be somewhat different, but physically it will be the same. It's like you're rearranging apple bits in a pie to save them; the pie will be sliced and eaten anyways.

fsflover wrote at 2020-10-30 09:18:26:

> the pie will be sliced and eaten anyways.

The difference is how long it takes and how much resources. There is no perfect security. Security is not a "yes/no" thing.

Eli_P wrote at 2020-10-30 17:54:49:

All correct. It's just important to remember who's the attacker:

                Alice -- ISP1 -- 1000 hops -- ISP2 -- Bob

Alice and Bob's identities are protected from each other, but not from the govt because ISPs collect metadata.

giantrobot wrote at 2020-10-29 19:38:01:

> There's only very few projects (that I know of) that are really addressing resilient, organized, curated content dissemination, and they're essentially divorced from the pirate scene. Too bad I guess.

Why would someone trying to build something like PeerTube Or IPFS want to explicitly support piracy? All that does is bring _negative_ pressure down on them and we see in this very discussion, the MAFIAA is more than happy to abuse laws they wrote to bring pressure. Just because someone is interested in or supportive of peer to peer communication doesn't automatically mean they support piracy.

I'm not trying to say piracy is _bad_, it is just illegal. As shitty as those laws might be they're still on the books and people face penalties for breaking them.

fomine3 wrote at 2020-10-30 01:02:01:

I suspect that it's easiest way to get much users.

happy-dude wrote at 2020-10-29 17:18:32:

In a strange twist of irony... This was what copyright was meant to do: promote a diverse body of works while protecting existing ones.

It should come to no surprise that notable torrenting sites have many low-effort imitators. If anyone could copy stuff already out there, why spend the extra effort to innovate?

I'm all for open-source, but I recognize the value of copyright (and how it protects FOSS-licensed material) and healthy competition and innovation.

black_puppydog wrote at 2020-10-29 17:46:19:

"Copycat" in this context didn't mean literally copying TPB (although that did happen and was actually made possible by them dumping their DB at some point IIRC).

Most torrent sites do seem to have an own code base. It's not like they run the same software (or at least they have different themes, I never actually checked).

It is also neither surprising nor bad that the sites still have the same goals/design basics. They all solve the same problem, so they will end up looking similar overall. No problem with that.

What _is_ being criticized here (by me, I don't wanna put words into Warg's mouth since it's an old, probably misremembered interview) is that the way that they deliver that "product" (in this context: the torrent website itself, not the hosted torrents' contents!) in an unimaginative way without taking into account the changing battlefield.

Fully i2p torrent sites? Niche.

Local DHT scraping with an overlay net of torrent index exchange à la yacy or magnetico? Niche.

And apparently: hosting anywhere that is not immediately susceptible to direct US influence, i.e. NOT on namecheap+cloudflare? Still _kind of_ niche. Wtf?

happy-dude wrote at 2020-10-29 18:43:39:

Thanks for the clarification -- I am in agreement with your points.

inetsee wrote at 2020-10-29 16:53:09:

I recently noticed that LibGen has started using Cloudflare as one of its download options. I was somewhat surprised that Cloudflare would allow use like this.

black_puppydog wrote at 2020-10-29 17:12:14:

well if they didn't notice before, they will now, that their engineers can read it on HN :D

zxcvbn4038 wrote at 2020-10-29 13:04:25:

Let them subpoena, ultimately RIAA is a US entity pursuing civil suits under US laws, no one outside the US should really be worried. Within the US these sites and tools like YouTube-dl are arguably fair use and RIAA knows this, so they will be cautious when pursuing any litigation. It is like the trick the police use - carrying a knife for utility (cutting food, cutting wire, etc) is often not illegal, carrying a knife as a weapon often is, so police will often try to trick people into saying they have a knife for defense so they can treat it as a weapon instead of a tool.

Santosh83 wrote at 2020-10-29 13:23:25:

RIAA does liaise with its counterparts in several other major countries. Ultimately IP owners in all countries want to extract the last drop of profit and more. It is a common human tendency and the US is merely a vanguard of what will eventually be a global reality.

jk700 wrote at 2020-10-29 14:54:00:

_> It is a common human tendency and the US is merely a vanguard of what will eventually be a global reality._

No, it's not. The US is the one pushing other countries to implement US-like copyright laws, as it has a huge music and television entertainment industry and exports entertainment and propaganda to other countries. For most countries if they implement everything the US wants it will only hurt them economically, as they would have to pay more for disproportionally imported entertainment, and politically, as with that much control more propaganda will come from the US and generally forcing people to pay more for something is unpopular. Probably the only countries where local entertainment industries can potentially increase profits from such copyright laws are the countries that have huge music and tv entertainment industries to begin with, i.e. huge countries with large middle class. But those are few.

saurik wrote at 2020-10-30 22:59:31:

They are pushing... and succeeding; most of the DMCA issues are actually due to trade agreements and treaties and all signing counties (which are most of them) have to have similar laws.

dbspin wrote at 2020-10-29 13:58:02:

Fortunately such things eb and flow. We're in an era of copyright maximalism, but there are forces pushing strongly against that - from the balkanisation of the internet as authoritarianism spreads, to the ubiquitous prevalence of piracy online and off.

Isamu wrote at 2020-10-29 14:23:35:

When and where has the copyright period rolled back? It’s like a ratchet.

Actually I do know of one: Congress granted an exception to the visually impaired.

gabereiser wrote at 2020-10-29 15:07:37:

Problem comes from where the domain registrar is. I’ve seen FBI take downs of sites that are over seas simply because they use a .com

oriesdan wrote at 2020-10-29 12:13:39:

Here goes all the privacy-friendly ways to watch Youtube.

Well, I guess it's a good thing : now we'll have to campaign to let content creators know how terrible their choice of platform is.

chungus_khan wrote at 2020-10-29 13:01:44:

Only in the eyes of the law. The RIAA can no more stop people from downloading YouTube videos than the DVD CCA could stop people from cracking CSS. Pirates haven't lost yet, only ever been delayed, and rarely by all that much.

This battle has been going on since audio tape recorders and VCRs became a thing, and at some point various industries will have to accept copying as part of reality, and that it is incumbent on them to have a business model that aligns with reality. A farmer doesn't serve a legal notice to the sun because its setting every day hurts productivity.

Santosh83 wrote at 2020-10-29 13:20:31:

No they're winning slowly. Fifteen years back everyone I know could easily download mp3 from various p2p applications. But now the present generation of youngsters seem to think it is Spotify/Amazon or nothing. They haven't even heard of p2p. Similarly Netflix is slowly eating away at torrenting.

The platform owners can and _will_ tighten the noose gradually. End users and hackers have much less power than they like to imagine, especially the latter segment.

Vivtek wrote at 2020-10-29 13:34:05:

But look, this is exactly _because_ Spotify/Amazon/Netflix are responding to reality and providing media at a price point that reflects it.

That's a _desired_ outcome.

blfr wrote at 2020-10-29 14:38:46:

Will they keep providing the media like that once the threat from piracy is gone? Even right now most video platforms only offer the lowest quality to people on platforms free from DRM.

I can easily get a 4k h265 video packed in mkv to play on my Linux laptop. I haven't tested lately but a while back Netflix would serve 720p max.

Spotify has been very cool, going as far as delivering a .deb package and Ubuntu repo for their client. However, Rogan podcast doesn't work on Linux because it includes video. Will it before they go exclusive? Maybe, maybe not. I can easily youtube-dl the latest podcast and watch it on Linux.

kaszanka wrote at 2020-10-29 15:34:14:

> only offer the lowest quality to people on platforms free from DRM

That's not correct, accessing their content at all still requires running malware like Widevine on your computer even on Linux.

TeMPOraL wrote at 2020-10-29 14:11:06:

Not really, because Spotify/Amazon/Netflix aren't giving you media, they only rent it out to you. They can and do retroactively take away access to any piece of content, while keeping the money.

phjesusthatguy3 wrote at 2020-10-29 17:20:49:

They're not renting media to you, they're selling you an access license to something they may or may not have at any given moment. Literally Nothing-as-a-Service.

gamblor956 wrote at 2020-10-29 20:28:28:

Note: it's also the industry adapting to reality.

Spotify, Netflix, etc., are possible today because the copyright owners created streaming licenses that recognize that ephemeral access to content is a different use case than downloading. (Streaming licenses are cheap compared to download licenses; my old employer streamed millions of hours of music from the Big 3 labels for a total annual cost of less than $2500.)

hyperpower wrote at 2020-10-29 13:35:26:

If platforms tighten the noose, you'll see people gravitate back towards p2p.

People stopped torrenting because Netflix and company made it extremely easy and more affordable to consume a wide range of media. Affordable enough that the hassle of torrenting was no longer worth it. If that changes, you'll see a resurgance.

blfr wrote at 2020-10-29 14:50:39:

_If platforms tighten the noose, you'll see people gravitate back towards p2p._

Assuming there's something to go back to. General purpose computing has been limited by the rise of mobile. These devices are both limited by battery and CPU and more constrained in their abilities by tightly controlled operating systems.

And yet surprisingly many young people don't have anything better. Most still have laptops but it's also not a great hardware platform for torrenting.

Internet connections have been moving away from wires to more convenient but less spacious radio. And even wired connections are often degraded by carrier grade NATs.

Now, the very tools for gathering content are under assault. We need to act because a free and open Internet is not one of the laws of physics and corporations are capable opponents.

feanaro wrote at 2020-10-29 14:32:07:

Also, people haven't stopped torrenting at all in many parts of the world.

baq wrote at 2020-10-29 15:20:55:

i feel like we're one streaming service away from people becoming fed up with the whole idea and going back to torrents. having to pay for five subscriptions just to see the one show you want in each every quarter will be too much.

KnobbleMcKnees wrote at 2020-10-29 13:48:08:

But this boils down to convenience not prevention.

It's so, so easy to get access to a million pieces of media through the accounts your parents or siblings already have. Further those services provide specific family plans to make it even easier again.

As gaben said, "Piracy is almost always a service problem".

corobo wrote at 2020-10-29 15:43:21:

Spotify and Netflix offered an easier alternative to piracy. I've heard a few people mentioning there's so many video services to sign up to now that they're back to flying the internet jolly roger having cancelled them all.

If any big exclusive content music services pop up we'll be right back on the pirate bay for everything again

avh02 wrote at 2020-10-29 14:13:12:

ah, with netflix i believe it _was_ going well... but we're getting to a point (with disney+, etc and moving content) where it's fragmenting again to the point where I don't want to pay $50 for 4-6 different services to watch whatever I want.

I think that'll be the return of either torrenting, or the casual pooling of subscription services between people.

Dirlewanger wrote at 2020-10-29 13:42:50:

I thought torrentting was back on the uptick because of the increasing platform fragmentation?

syshum wrote at 2020-10-29 13:32:26:

15 years back you had to buy a $20 CD to get access to 1 song you liked...

Today for $9/mo (or nearly free with Amazon) you can listen to almost any song....

The lowering of costs, and easy access is what is driving lower use of p2p not RIAA lawsuits and more restrictions

shaan7 wrote at 2020-10-29 13:40:29:

Although I get your point, there is an important difference between those two though. Once you've bought the CD you can listen to it forever, that is not true for subscriptions - _that_ is why they are cheaper.

I kinda use a hybrid - I discover new music on free tier of subscription services, and once I identify songs that I love, I buy them from iTunes DRM-free. I'm just afraid that option won't remain there forever.

Broken_Hippo wrote at 2020-10-29 15:23:49:

CD's do break, and I'll tire of the music on it. Spotify is cheaper than a CD a month and provides a superior service than radio or music TV ever did.

I have absolutely no need to own a piece of music.

I'd start here about Spotify not paying artists enough. But honestly, the music industry - as a whole - has been screwing over artists for decades, at least, so it is pretty much same thing in a different dress. If I'm going to support musicians more directly, I'll head over to Bandcamp while still giving the artist listens on spotify if they have music there.

maxfurman wrote at 2020-10-29 14:00:54:

You said it yourself - now you can pay $1 for 1 song and own it forever. Still a better deal than what we had back in the CD era.

Scoundreller wrote at 2020-10-29 15:47:14:

I don’t think you own it, just a lifetime license (for you and X friends/« devices » sometimes).

Depending on how extensions go, your children and grandchildren may have to re-pay to listen to your collection.

patagurbon wrote at 2020-10-30 03:34:41:

Amazon Music used to sell music DRM free, you could download it and do what you wanted with it. Not sure if that's still the case.

ryandrake wrote at 2020-10-29 14:00:21:

These streaming services are approaching the right price (digital media’s marginal cost is $0), but at the expense of user freedom to backup, time shift, collect, and use offline. Is $9/mo streaming better than $20 CDs? Maybe, maybe not. The higher quality product (DRM-free files you can store) is still free and unencumbered by usage rules.

dredmorbius wrote at 2020-10-29 14:03:22:

My growing sense is that this is less a straight-line progression and more a set of pendulum swings.

The pop music industry has seen at least three disruptions to its controlling gatekeepers since the 1950s (1956-60, ~2000 with Napster, and presently with Spotify and YouTube), but each time a dominant hegenomy re-emerges. I doubt this time will be different, though the brief renaissance will doubtless be appreciated.

Charles Perrow wrote of this in the mid-1980s:

_After the critical period from about 1956 to 1960, when tastes were unfrozen, competition was intense, and demand soared, consolidation appeared. The number of firms stabilized at about forty. New corporate entries appeared, such as MGM and Warner Brothers, sensing, one supposes, the opportunity that vastly expanding sales indicated. Some independents grew large. The eight-firm concentration ratio also stabilized (though not yet the four-firm ratio). The market became sluggish, however, as the early stars died, were forced into retirement because of legal problems, or in the notable case of Elvis Presley, were drafted by an impinging environment. Near the end of this period the majors decided that the new sounds were not a fad and began to buy up the contracts of established artists and successfully picked and promoted new ones, notably The Beach Boys and Bob Dylan. A new generation (e.g., The Beatles) appeared from 1964 to 1969, and sales again soared._

_But now the concentration ratios soared also. From 1962 to 1973, the four-firm ratio went from 25 to 51 percent; the eight-firm ratio from 46 to 81 percent, almost back to the pre-1955 levels. The number of different firms having hits declined from forty-six to only sixteen. Six of the eight giants were diversified conglomerates, some of which led in the earlier period; one was a new independent, the other a product of of mergers._

_How did they do it? The major companies asserted “increasing central control over the creative process”[352] through deliberate creation and extensive promotion of new groups, long-range contracts for groups, and reduced autonomy for producers. In addition, legal and illegal promotion costs (drug payola to disc jockeys, for example) rose in the competitive race and now exceeded the resources of small independents. Finally, the majors “have also moved to regain a controlling position in record distribution by buying chains of retail stores.”[353] The diversity is still greater than it had been in the past, and may remain high, but it is ominous that the majors have all the segments covered. As an executive said, “Columbia Records will have a major entry into whatever new area is broached by the vagaries of public tastes.” But for a concentrated industry, the “vagaries of public tastes” are not economical; it is preferable to stabilize and consolidate them. This would be possible through further control over the creative process and marketing._

Charles Perrow, Complex organizations : a critical essay, 1972, 1985. pp. 186--187.

The dynamics, actors, and economics remind me strongly of the software / high-tech industry, though with much weaker coupling and different lock-in mechanics.

macksd wrote at 2020-10-29 13:21:01:

But if the farmer actually sometimes got money out of legal action, I'd start to fear that the farmer's business model would BE legal action. Or at least the business model of the lawyer that gave the farmer legal advice.

Scoundreller wrote at 2020-10-29 12:17:05:

My cousin lives in a place with shitty internet, and regularly creates a list of YT URLs for later downloading when they go in-town. This is going to devastate them. Especially when they need to repair something or do maintenance where a rando’s video is 100x better than the manufacturer’s instructions and they download all the videos.

I do the same thing before a flight or train ride (Canada has $5-$10/gb wireless pricing) so I can catch up with my favourite subs on-the-move.

officeplant wrote at 2020-10-29 14:55:04:

Newpipe on the F-Droid repo allows for video/audio downloads if they are an android user.

29083011397778 wrote at 2020-10-29 18:49:34:

I would have assumed NewPipe used youtube-dl somehwere along the line, and therefore be affected by this new assault on the youtube-dl library.

officeplant wrote at 2020-10-29 19:11:19:

There Github[0] page is still active so I'm assuming they may have dodged the take downs. I believe they integrated youtube-dl into the application, but because they don't outright mention it on the page they may have dodged attention from the RIAA. This is just a wild guess from me.

[0]

https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe

rocgf wrote at 2020-10-29 12:26:21:

The Youtube app has a download feature for watching videos offline.

tibbydudeza wrote at 2020-10-29 12:33:04:

Only available if you signed up for a premium account.

Buttons840 wrote at 2020-10-29 14:34:37:

Premium also generously allows you to turn off the screen while listening.

Yeah, seeing that recently was a good reminder that my phone is not under my control.

tsimionescu wrote at 2020-10-29 15:37:04:

Hint: if on Android, Firefox will allow you to do that anyway, even allowing you to do other things on your phone with YT playing in the background. And with uBlock, you won't even get ads.

MauranKilom wrote at 2020-10-29 15:47:09:

> Premium also generously allows you to turn off the screen while listening.

As does telling your browser to display the desktop site instead.

rektide wrote at 2020-10-29 15:01:40:

The war on general purpose computing is strong. The RIAA has been at the forefront of restricting & preventing user freedoms since time immemorial.

Only this time, unlike with Betamax[1], they are winning. Backed by anti-circumvention laws like the DMCA section 1201, which makes any lock, no matter how poorly built, a criminal violation to break or even to build or discuss ways of breaking.

[1]

https://consumerist.com/2014/01/17/on-this-day-in-1984-the-s...

fsflover wrote at 2020-10-29 17:53:51:

> The war on general purpose computing is strong.

See also:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24866279

.

Scoundreller wrote at 2020-10-29 12:34:37:

Does it permit it 100% of the time, or do you pay to discover that there’s a bunch of exceptions?

And I guess once you stop paying, it’s all gone?

itsoktocry wrote at 2020-10-29 12:41:11:

>_discover that there’s a bunch of exceptions?_

Periodically the downloaded videos become unavailable offline if you don't have an internet connection to refresh them. Maybe once a month or something. Which means you can't hold on to a video through their service indefinitely.

BlueTemplar wrote at 2020-10-29 13:55:02:

Wait, how does that even work?

strictnein wrote at 2020-10-29 15:02:30:

The downloaded videos likely have time constraint applied to them that can be updated when the app connects to the Internet. I don't think the downloaded videos can be played outside of the app.

Scoundreller wrote at 2020-10-29 15:58:14:

Oh, it’s app only? That would already be a pain. I think they got into a good groove of saving URLs for later downloading. Needing to load each one on a tablet is ruining the automation of them visiting a friend or sitting in a cafe, socializing and downing a few dozen gb via youtube-dl just hitting a list of URLs in the bg.

judge2020 wrote at 2020-10-29 12:59:19:

There are no exceptions except for things like paid TV shows (not clips, actual TV shows and movies you can pay for[0]) - you can download any video and, as said in the sibling comment, it only expires after 30 days of being offline.

0:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9679194?hl=en

enriquto wrote at 2020-10-29 14:29:11:

I don't understand the concept of "expiration" for an actual file that you have downloaded. How does it work, technically?

judge2020 wrote at 2020-10-29 15:01:56:

The download expires in the app. You don’t get a download button on YouTube.com with premium.

enriquto wrote at 2020-10-30 09:33:35:

So the app deletes the file after expiration. But what if you copy the file elsewhere?

altrunox wrote at 2020-10-29 13:01:03:

The "normal" app yes, but there is another one called Youtube Go, which you can download and save the video on your phone, IDK if it´s avaliable worldwide.

ComodoHacker wrote at 2020-10-29 13:37:57:

It's available to everyone with a Google account, but not for all videos.

Udo wrote at 2020-10-29 15:05:57:

While I do appreciate that feature, it's also very spotty. More than once I downloaded something only to later find that it won't play when I'm offline on a plane. Also, whenever Youtube decides to ban or suspend a video, it automatically disappears from the downloads area as well. Plus, this requires a mobile device, which is not necessarily where you may want to watch these things.

itsoktocry wrote at 2020-10-29 12:38:53:

>_Canada has $5-$10/gb wireless pricing_

Well, if you are counting overage charges I guess.

My (national) provider has an all-in, bring-your-own-device plan with 9GB of data (recently with a 2GB bonus, for a total of 11GB) for under $60/month. I'm sure the competitors are similar. So, while not perfect, it's not as onerous as you describe.

znpy wrote at 2020-10-29 12:43:48:

Here in .it I have 30gb/month in LTE for 5.99€/month (fixed price).

itsoktocry wrote at 2020-10-29 12:50:10:

Yeah, Canada is definitely behind the times. Some of that can be attributed to our vast land area making infrastructure buildout expensive, but some of it is also due to our telecoms having a government supported monopoly. It's getting better though, at least in my opinion. I'm paying less today than I was just a few years ago, for far more data.

Scoundreller wrote at 2020-10-29 14:21:57:

I mean, $60/11gb = $5.45/gb, and you’re already on a higher priced plan where prices are lower.

I know providers like to think that SMS or voice calls are a big extra, but 95%+ of mine these days are over data.

Hello71 wrote at 2020-10-29 13:06:17:

Even ignoring the fact that your plan as described falls within the specified range ($60/month/11 GB = $5.45/month/GB), I have never heard of plans or overage charges this cheap from any of the three major Canadian wireless providers. Last year, the three major providers simultaneously increased the price of the well-publicized $60/10 GB offer by at least $5/month. I'm not aware of any standard plans offering more for less, although you may be able to bargain for less. You may also be able to find slightly cheaper rates with a smaller provider, but despite offering nominally nation-wide coverage, the practical coverage usually ends up being substantially poorer.

Regarding overage charges, I would be genuinely shocked if anybody, including a minor provider, has overage under $10/GB, seeing as by your own admission, even your standard rate exceeds $5/GB. Rogers overages are $70/GB, Bell is $110-120/GB, Telus is a whopping $130/GB. If overage charges are under the normal rate, then that's not an overage, that's pay-as-you-go.

itsoktocry wrote at 2020-10-29 13:42:27:

>_Even ignoring the fact that your plan as described falls within the specified range ($60/month/11 GB = $5.45/month/GB)_

Are you talking about data only, or full phone service? Perhaps our calculations look different.

These plans includes: unlimited voice calling, texting, long distance, voicemail, call display, 5 hours of _unlimited_ data per month (great for using a hotspot) _and_ that amount of data.

The basic phone plan is about $30, so you're actually paying about $3 per GB. Overage is an admittedly ridiculous $15/GB.

This is Fido, owned by Rogers, obviously a major carrier. The standard plans aren't quite as good ($75 for 10GB), but there's always some kind of promotion going on. It's not wonderful when you see what some other countries are paying, but we're in a far better place than even a few years ago.

Scoundreller wrote at 2020-10-29 16:18:08:

> The basic phone plan is about $30

Yeah, in France a basic SIM phone plan with 50mb data is something thrown in for free as a part of their internet/cable/DVRs which is $30/mo (incl tax) for the first year and then $65, but it’s so competitive that you just need to call in or switch.

Text/calls are increasingly over data. You’re getting terrible value for $30 for what is 100mb.

https://www.free.fr/freebox/offres-freebox-mobile/

irjustin wrote at 2020-10-29 12:38:00:

Maybe Starlink one day?

itsoktocry wrote at 2020-10-29 12:43:40:

Starlink might solve the issue of providing internet to far-flung places, which is great. But I'm skeptical they'll be able to massively undercut all of the telecom providers. Building, launching and maintaining a satellite constellation isn't cheap; it's still a question as to whether the economics will work at all.

StavrosK wrote at 2020-10-29 12:57:48:

Presumably the costs amortize pretty well, though.

autumn_unlaces wrote at 2020-10-29 14:27:08:

The announced pricing for the current "beta" is $99/month plus $500 upfront for the hardware.

Scoundreller wrote at 2020-10-29 16:40:56:

If it can offer anything near the speeds advertised without the BS of incumbents, I could see a massive amount of demand.

I figure 5% of consumers « served » by both cable and xDSL can’t get good service, and then they have virtually every rural customer that’s anything more than a low-data user. And I’d expect them to capture that one day with a « light » plan. It’s a massive market.

fomine3 wrote at 2020-10-30 01:53:50:

They should work for rural areas breadband but theoretically they can't replace cities fiber/LTE due to its massive capacity.

itsoktocry wrote at 2020-10-29 18:05:24:

>_The announced pricing for the current "beta" is $99/month plus $500 upfront for the hardware._

Yes, that's the price they charge. What are the costs of providing the service?

autumn_unlaces wrote at 2020-10-30 18:48:53:

When you said undercut their competitors I assumed you meant undercutting the price consumers pay so I told you the price they are currently offering. I do not know that their costs are and since SpaceX is a private company I don't think we know how much it is costing them to provide it.

autumn_unlaces wrote at 2020-10-29 14:37:54:

There is invidious which is an alternative front end for YouTube. It doesn't use the YouTube API or require a Google account. You can host your own instance or use one of the public ones[0]. It seems like the download button is broken but I was able to right click save a video.

[0]

https://github.com/iv-org/invidious/wiki/Invidious-Instances

spazx wrote at 2020-10-29 16:13:50:

I'm going to miss NewPipe.

zaphod420 wrote at 2020-10-29 12:16:27:

What are all the platforms people can use? I know there's one called LBRY.

coldpie wrote at 2020-10-29 12:27:46:

I'm not aware of any, and any such platform that is comparably featured would be susceptible to the same problem. This isn't a platform problem, it's a law problem.

tpoacher wrote at 2020-10-29 12:41:16:

There's a few that are used, but Google's shrewd marketing combined with natural selection have done a very good job marking those as the "terrorists and crackpots" youtubes.

And like all self-fulfilling prophecies, those claims are now largely true.

oriesdan wrote at 2020-10-29 12:20:59:

Peertube comes to mind for discoverability. For ensuring content creators revenue, the best way would probably be to host their own website and put videos behind paywall or accept donations, as they see fit.

sbankowi wrote at 2020-10-29 12:28:35:

Seems like a perfect area for patreon to expand into.

Support a user/artist on patreon, get access to their vids also hosted on patreon.

oriesdan wrote at 2020-10-29 12:36:50:

Indeed. Or even make sure to integrate Patreon (or other donation applications) to any privacy-friendly video application.

I have a Twitch account just to have a paid subscription for the Critical Role channel, despite the fact that I never open Twitch and download their videos from Youtube using youtube-dl. It kind of feels ridiculous (especially knowing Twitch will put me in metrics of "their users").

BlueTemplar wrote at 2020-10-29 13:58:01:

Patreon is going to face the same issue then.

peterwwillis wrote at 2020-10-29 14:25:34:

Do you have Docker? Then you can use an open source web UI rather than run the command-line tool.

    cat > youtube-dl-webui.Dockerfile <<EOF
  FROM d0u9/youtube-dl-webui
  RUN pip3 install --upgrade youtube_dl
  EOF
  
  cat > conf.json <<EOCONF
  { "general": {"download_dir": "/tmp/ytdui/download","db_path": "/tmp/ytdui/webui.db","log_size": 10},
    "server": {"host": "0.0.0.0","port": 5000} }
  EOCONF
  
  docker build \
        -f youtube-dl-webui.Dockerfile \
        -t youtube-dl-webui:latest \
        .
  
  mkdir ytdui && chmod 777 ytdui
  docker run \
        --rm -it \
        --name youtube_dl_webui \
        -p 5000:5000 \
        -e FLASK_DEBUG=1 \
        -e CONF_FILE=/conf.json \
        -v `pwd`/conf.json:/conf.json \
        -v `pwd`/ytdui:/tmp/ytdui \
        youtube-dl-webui:latest
  
  firefox http://localhost:5000/

That's the simplest one to get running I think (

https://github.com/d0u9/youtube-dl-webui

). Another is in PHP (

https://github.com/timendum/Youtube-dl-WebUI

).

submeta wrote at 2020-10-29 13:47:14:

The RIAA behaves like the powerful in ancient times. But your gut feeling knows exactly when someone is wrong. Just because they refer to some law does not mean their actions are rigt. See „Ius primae noctis“

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_du_seigneur

pfortuny wrote at 2020-10-29 15:02:37:

That is a myth (the Ius primae noctis) despite what Braveheart may say.

On the other hand, a little history shows how many things can be lawful (even "patriotic"!) and extremely inhuman (aberrant, whatever). Not so long ago.

yencabulator wrote at 2020-10-30 20:58:16:

> Not so long ago.

How about right now? See Guantanamo Bay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp

leetcrew wrote at 2020-10-29 14:14:26:

the wiki page you linked says this probably didn't exist, at least not as a formal right.

eyeball wrote at 2020-10-29 12:42:19:

Someone doesn’t like the idea of people being able to save unapproved content before it is scrubbed.

ghthor wrote at 2020-10-29 14:00:13:

That's what I really think this is about as well.

sieabahlpark wrote at 2020-10-30 15:33:58:

It's hollywood after all. Obviously this is to keep information from spreading. It's just convenient to put it under "copyright law"

Buttons840 wrote at 2020-10-29 15:04:35:

Has anyone ever experimented with reversing the analog loop with machine learning?

Generating the training data would be easy. Play audio files through a speaker and record the speaker with a microphone. Then you have the original and the analog recording. Train the machine to reverse the process. Now you can grab high quality audio from any source. Same could be done for video, but would require a more elaborate setup.

Kind of off topic, but I hate the idea of not being able to own any actual copies of media in the future.

Also, I've made it part of my moral code, nearly a religion of mine, to see all advertisements as a reminder I maybe should be doing something else. Since this is my rant, I'll add that to the pile.

TheDong wrote at 2020-10-29 16:12:20:

> Generating the training data would be easy. Play audio files through a speaker and record the speaker with a microphone. Then you have the original and the analog recording. Train the machine to reverse the process. Now you can grab high quality audio from any source.

Machine learning isn't this magic thing that can defeat math. The digital to analog process is lossy, and you're asking machine learning to reverse that lossy process. This is very similar to saying "If I train my machine learning model that 10 + 10 = 20, and 3 * 40 = 120, if I ask it x + y = 42 it should be able to tell me x and y". It's obviously impossible, mathematically so.

You could train it to reduce some predictable sources of analog interference, sure, but you absolutely can't "grab high quality audio from any source".

Well, actually, there is an exception! For data you train on, assuming you train the neural net enough, it will eventually encode a fingerprint of input audio and an output of the original digital training data, at which point your neural net has encoded copyrighted training data... effectively it's a form of compression (or maybe just obfuscation) now, and contains copyrighted material. Oops.

Disregarding the fact that this process would be mathematically impossible, let's say you do produce this program. So, does it circumvent copyright law? Does it actually improve anything?

No, it turns out what you have is even more obviously a circumvention device than youtube-dl or anything else. Under the DMCAA, the neural network would be an illegal copyright circumvention device, and all the audio it produces would not be legal copies, and could not legally be owned. I'll reference "what color are your bits"[0], since it's an excellent description of one of the problems here. You're proposing a technical solution, but there is no technical solution here, it's a legal problem. Whether you torrent an album or whether you reverse an analog source through magic, either way the bits are colored with copyright infringement.

[0]:

https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23

macspoofing wrote at 2020-10-29 16:34:20:

Great write-up.

>you're proposing a technical solution, but there is no technical solution here, it's a legal problem.

Yep. P2P community tried to play this game and lost every single time. The Bitcoin and crypto-currency are trying to play this game as well when the advocates propose that bitcoin is a technical workaround to things like AML regulations - and they will lose as well.

letitbeirie wrote at 2020-10-29 17:04:56:

> what you have is even more obviously a circumvention device

The device itself is just an "audio enhancer" - it could just as easily be used to spruce up the sound on old vinyl (pre-vinyl even) as it could to defeat copyright law.

The real issue with using it as OP intends is it's wholly unnecessary: the value in tools like youtube-dl is being asynchronous - you get the audio file without listening to the entire song first. OP's suggestion involving a speaker and a microphone is intrinsically synchronous, and it's a lot more work for lower quality than e.g. using Audacity to record the lossless digital audio off your sound bus.

entropicdrifter wrote at 2020-10-29 15:33:05:

It makes far more sense to grab a line-out feed rather than using a speaker and a microphone. Otherwise the positioning of the microphone and the exact voice coils of the speaker and microphone would all have a dramatic effect on the EQ curve of the audio, to say nothing of stereo or the ensuing phase issues that crop up when recording audio in real life

contravariant wrote at 2020-10-29 19:15:26:

Why even use the line-out? You can just plug it into a recording audio driver.

Video is harder, mostly because of the bandwidth.

entropicdrifter wrote at 2020-10-29 20:28:35:

Line-out guarantees that even if there's DRM in the streaming decoder, you're getting the actual audio stripped of all DRM.

It has the simple elegance of writing your DRM protected audio to a CD and then ripping that to MP3, which is a process most non-audio nerds already understand from the DRM iTunes days.

That said, I agree that you could get a slightly more accurate sound with a virtual audio pipe than if you use a DAC/ADC combo, even if modern jitter is negligible

tremon wrote at 2020-10-29 16:01:03:

But as long as the EQ effect of the speaker/microphone setup is constant, an AI should have no problem learning how to restore the original.

TylerE wrote at 2020-10-29 16:26:11:

Not in the real world where audio bandwidth is limited.

contravariant wrote at 2020-10-29 19:16:15:

That's one big if.

entropicdrifter wrote at 2020-10-29 20:25:53:

Seriously, the tone can change from just a couple millimeters of difference in microphone or speaker positioning, not to mention the possible variations in room sound due to furniture or other object placement.

TedDoesntTalk wrote at 2020-10-29 15:35:12:

> to see all advertisements

I suggest to also click on all possible advertisements then not purchase anything (just ignore whatever tab was opened by your click).

If millions of people did this daily, it would break the web advertising model very fast since advertisers pay per click.

I don’t know what would replace it, but maybe something better than what we have now. Maybe not.

jaflo wrote at 2020-10-29 15:55:50:

You might be interested in AdNauseam, a browser extension that automates this:

https://adnauseam.io/

procombo wrote at 2020-10-29 16:34:48:

As someone deeply integrated into the ad serving world, I'd like to remind you that adnauseam traffic is very easy to filter out as noise. Nobody is paying for that traffic.

cwkoss wrote at 2020-10-29 18:23:28:

If someone using adnauseam accidentally clicks an ad (for real), can the ad network count the real click while ignoring the fake ones, or does it poison that users full dataset?

What percentage of adnauseam use do you think is filtered? Is it a full 100%?

procombo wrote at 2020-10-29 19:32:32:

Any ad network not considering that traffic as fraudulent will shortly go out of business. That's why I say it declaratively.

CompuHacker wrote at 2020-10-29 18:14:25:

How could it be made to work better?

procombo wrote at 2020-10-29 19:38:31:

Don't provide outlier data. What is your goal?

bayindirh wrote at 2020-10-29 15:23:44:

Since the losses in the analog conversion process cannot be determined exactly, the model is bound to add some noise to the converted audio. Video has more spatial data to guess the color and motion so it's easier in practice.

The unconverted sound may be crisper and has more details but, there's no guarantee that they're the original details so, it won't be the original recording itself.

Buttons840 wrote at 2020-10-29 15:29:27:

Light pollution adds noise to telescopes too. From a sky where you can barely see 4 stars you can pull detailed colored images of deep space objects.

Perhaps you have to play the media a few dozen times and do the media equivalent of frame stacking to see through the noise.

It's also quite possible no ML would be needed. I don't think frame stacking uses ML.

I wouldn't be surprised if you could play a song on repeat from the other side of your house and extract a very good copy of it, so long as you knew exactly when the song began and looped. You might only need to know the length of the song, not even when it began.

It might not be practical, but it would be a cool blog post.

bayindirh wrote at 2020-10-29 15:39:31:

It's not the same thing. A CMOS sensor, especially a cooled, astro-class CMOS sensor is much more sensitive than eye.

The random noise in photography is emitted from the sensor itself and has a distinct profile. This profile can be extracted with certain procedures and can be used as a single pass NR process with very high quality results (Darktable's Profiled NR does this if the camera's profile is generated/bundled). Also Subtractive NR does something similar. After the exposure, a closed curtain exposure is taken with same shutter value and that image is subtracted from the first image. Since it's a per-sensor process, its quality is very high too.

Light pollution is also somewhat similar. It's a specific wavelength, emitted from ground to sky (so its gradient can be known) and can be filtered out relatively easily with stacking and other RAW processing (assuming your image has enough bit-depth and headroom in both highlights and shadows). There are also new filters which directly filter this kind of pollution IIRC.

Stacking does something similar. Pixels with high consistency is kept, low consistency is discarded so you get a clean image. Sorry, I don't know its exact math since I don't have a tracker and don't take many astro photos.

However, in an analog recording you have incomplete information and you want to put it back via ML, which is basically a _very educated guess_ in this case. A well tuned and trained ML model would probably put back sensible or semi-sensible details back but, it cannot guess and re-generate the missing parts with 100% accuracy.

So at the end of the day, in photography, you have the ability to get the complete information (via stacking or subtractive NR or by cooling the sensor a great deal) however, in an analog recording, you don't have the complete information. Especially if you record it via a speaker to microphone path (since they're not ideal reproducers).

We may go to the sounding characteristics of analog audio pipelines and vinyls from there but, that's another rabbit hole I'd rather not dive now.

Buttons840 wrote at 2020-10-29 17:14:13:

That is a thoughtful and useful reply. Thank you.

From what you say, stacking can remove both random noise from the sensor and predictable noise such as light pollution. What other kinds of noise are there? It sounds like our noise removal ability is pretty good.

I am not an expert though. I do know we can't image the Apollo landing sites no matter how good our stacking software is. Our sensors aren't good (big) enough. I don't have an understand of why that is though.

An analog loop would have hard limitations, just like a telescope. I'm not sure how much noise stacking could clean up. At this point I'm more curious than thinking it's a good solution.

jobigoud wrote at 2020-10-30 08:43:02:

You can use a virtual audio cable to simply record anything that would go to your speakers, it's free.

benologist wrote at 2020-10-29 13:38:48:

For months now I have been using youtube-dl to preserve all the concerts and workout videos I like on YouTube because I don't expect this content to remain available and unencumbered. My original plan was to store just the IDs on GitHub so I could recreate the video libraries without backing up the video files, but already some of the concerts have been removed. I expect the exercise videos will be hidden behind a subscription at some point since they provide utility.

zineketter wrote at 2020-10-29 11:45:00:

Archive link (if your workplace has blocked this for piracy):

https://web.archive.org/web/20201029112247/https://torrentfr...

Scoundreller wrote at 2020-10-29 11:58:49:

I mean, it’s torrentfreak, I think they’ll be alright with it if we quoted their whole article?

Edit: they’re CC BY NC 3.0

https://torrentfreak.com/copyright/

I think HN qualifies as non-commercial, and I’m definitely not profiting off my post, so here it is:

The RIAA is ramping up the pressure on a wide range of platforms allegedly involved in music piracy. Two DMCA subpoenas obtained against Cloudflare and Namecheap require the companies to hand over all information they hold on more than 40 torrent sites, streaming portals and YouTube-ripping services. Also included in the mix are several file-hosting platforms.

Even erring on the side of caution with conservative estimates, there are at least hundreds of piracy-related sites on the Internet today that the RIAA would like to shut down.

To have any chance of doing that, however, early work has to be done to collect various pieces of information. This can include the owners of the platforms’ domains, the IP addresses of their servers and where that hardware is physically hosted, plus any other specifics that may help to build a case or back site operators into a corner.

As reported on a number of occasions here on TorrentFreak, one of the tools in the box of the RIAA and other rightsholders is the DMCA subpoena. Easily obtained from US courts without any oversight needed from a judge, DMCA subpoenas can be served on various companies, requiring them to hand over information on their allegedly-infringing clients.

RIAA Obtains DMCA Subpoenas Targeting More Than 40 Domains

When it comes to gaining access to information on sites and their operators, DMCA subpoenas aimed at Cloudflare are a popular choice. The company not only has access to the customer information handed over as part of the account creation and maintenance process but in some instances can also identify the true server locations/IP address of ‘pirate’ site servers.

The same can be said of domain registrar companies such as Namecheap. Information on who bought the domain, when and how, plus how it has been used since can yield valuable information for many anti-piracy investigations. The RIAA recently decided to take advantage of both possibilities.

Following two separate applications at a California court, the music industry group obtained DMCA subpoenas requiring both Cloudflare and Namecheap to hand over information on a large number of their allegedly-infringing customers. The Cloudflare subpoena contains 35 domains and the Namecheap subpoena 15 domains. However, due to a considerable overlap, when combined they target 41 domains.

Targeting YouTube-Rippers Including the Giant Y2Mate.com

Since the RIAA appears to have slowly but surely declared war on YouTube-ripping platforms and tools, it will come as no surprise that the subpoenas partially continue along that theme.

Y2Mate.com, an insanely popular YouTube-ripping platform with more than 113 million visits per month according to SimilarWeb, features in both subpoenas. A notable element here is that the RIAA went through this exact process with both Cloudflare and Namecheap last May but is now back for a second bite of the cherry.

One of the irritants here is that despite RIAA pressure, Y2Mate appears to have almost doubled its traffic, from 62 million visits per month last year to the current extraordinary levels. Like YouTube-DL recently, Y2Mate was also accused by the RIAA of circumventing YouTube’s “rolling cipher”.

Next up is Notube.net, which bills itself simply as a YouTube converter. Back in April the site was enjoying around 24 million visits per month, traffic that has now steadied to around 16 million according to SimilarWeb. YouTubeConverter.io, which claims to offer a similar service, has around three million visitors while Ontiva.com and ListentoYouTube.online are relative minnows with around 350K visits each.

Torrent Indexes and File-Hosting Platforms

While the RIAA and the music industry as a whole consider YouTube-ripping sites and tools to be the number one piracy threat, the DMCA subpoenas also include more traditional targets.

Major torrent site 1337x.to makes an appearance in the Cloudflare application which puts the RIAA in good company. As recently reported, anti-piracy group ACE has just obtained a similar subpoena requiring the Tonic domain registry to hand over details relating to the torrent site.

Both of the subpoenas obtained by the RIAA also list TorrentDownloads.me, another popular torrent site. In these instances, the site is accused of participating in the infringement of tracks released by Ed Sheeran, Drake, and One Direction.

Since music files are relatively small and can be squirreled away on file-hosting platforms, it’s no surprise that these also make the list. Anonfiles.com, which currently enjoys more than 7.5 million visits per month, is accused of hosting tracks by The Killers and Beyoncé. Ddownload.com, a site with around five million visitors and most popular in Germany, also makes an appearance along with Hexupload.net and DoUploads.net

An Interesting Addition – A Platform for Buying & Selling Leaked Music

Thesource.to appears to be something of an outlier in the RIAA’s list of targets. While most other platforms clearly offer direct access to music in the form of a download or stream, this platform claims to act as a marketplace for people to buy and sell unreleased music.

“On THE SOURCE legit sellers can sell real exclusive unreleased music and serious buyers can purchase them. Everything in a secure and verified environment. You are a serious seller and you are sick of having to be online 24/7 hours and doing everything manually? Then we can make your life easier,” its advertising reads.

“You are a serious buyer and you are sick of having to wait for every seller or middleman for hours or even for days? Then we can also make your life easier. THE SOURCE has game-changing systems which both serve sellers and buyers, just for example the integrated automated Satoshi system.”

The site is paid-entry, currently for the sum of $10, but according to the RIAA’s subpoena application, someone posted the track Warlords by Childish Gambino there. The listed URL tends to suggest that someone was only offering to sell their “vault” but nevertheless, the subpoena was granted.

The full list of all domains targeted in both subpoenas can be viewed below. Any domain marked with an asterisk appears in both subpoenas. The subpoenas themselves are also available for download.

Domains Targeted in Cloudflare Subpoena

1337x.to

pluspremieres.to

thesource.to

ddownload.com

hiphopde.com*

ontiva.com*

anonfiles.com

audioz.download

dirrtyremix.es

discografiaspormega.com

douploads.net

ghanamotion.com

hd24bit.com

hexupload.net

intmusic.net

iplusfree.org

listentoyoutube.online

mp3global.org

musiconworldoffmx.com

muzobzor.ru

naijaonpoint.com*

newalbumreleases.net

ngleakers.co*

rlsbb.ru

rnbxclusive.vip

sanet.ws

songslover.cam*

torrentdownloads.me*

xclusivejams.nl

zoop.su

notube.net

alegemuzica.top

topmusic.uno*

y2mate.com*

youtubeconverter.io*

Domains Targeted in Namecheap Subpoena

getrockmusic.net

hiphopde.com*

hiphoptrendsnow.com

ontiva.com*

songslover.com*

stannova.com

toryextra.com

vevosongs.com

ddownload.com

torrentdownloads.me*

ngleakers.co*

naijaonpoint.com*

topmusic.uno*

y2mate.com*

youtubeconverter.io*

The DMCA subpoenas can be found here and here (pdf)

https://torrentfreak.com/images/4-20-mc-80172-RIAA-v-Nameche...

https://torrentfreak.com/images/4-20-mc-80174-RIAA-v-Cloudfl...

Aachen wrote at 2020-10-29 13:46:53:

Blocking a topical news site because you don't like the topic... that's an interesting workplace. Perhaps they don't want you reading the news during work time, but it sounds like TF is blocked for you for false reasons.

eythian wrote at 2020-10-29 14:12:40:

The company doesn't explicitly block them, they use a product that does the blocking that includes torrentfreak in its "piracy" category.

Aachen wrote at 2020-10-30 15:07:10:

But it isn't piracy, it's a news site.

nobleach wrote at 2020-10-29 14:48:18:

This is typical of Bluecoat and the like.

varispeed wrote at 2020-10-29 11:59:03:

There is hope that one of the fresh billionaires takes an axe at the RIAA and other abusive organisations and brings hope to all artists that are being exploited by labels, lawyers and organisations like RIAA.

breakingcups wrote at 2020-10-29 12:11:56:

Oh yes please, benevolent billionaires, please fix our world!

quickthrower2 wrote at 2020-10-29 13:05:42:

Tres commas!

brokenmachine wrote at 2020-10-30 04:29:59:

Made me literally laugh out loud, thanks for that!

vehemenz wrote at 2020-10-29 12:21:55:

If tech billionaires were leaders, maybe. Instead they spend small fractions of their wealth on silly projects and charities that benefit their tax bills. The rest of the time they are collecting wine and antique furniture for house #6.

ben_w wrote at 2020-10-29 13:23:07:

I think you gave it backwards; mere tens of millions is enough to collect wine and antiques for your sixth house, while almost all “billionaires” are in that category purely by virtue of their leading control of large corporations.

(I’m sure there are other examples, perhaps inheritances, but the only non-leadership billionaire I can think of in any field off the top of my head is Rowling).

vehemenz wrote at 2020-10-29 15:31:12:

That is my point. A billionaire should be done with material hobbies while they are a still millionaire.

wizzwizz4 wrote at 2020-10-29 15:03:37:

There's a difference between a ruler and a leader.

Cthulhu_ wrote at 2020-10-29 13:24:40:

Rich people should not lead a country or be able to influence it (beyond their one vote). They are far removed from the other 99% of the population.

zwily wrote at 2020-10-29 13:15:56:

Don’t forget building rockets to go to

Mars.

vehemenz wrote at 2020-10-29 15:28:10:

Which is great, unless your entire country is swallowed up by social and educational problems that enable a corrupt, fascist government, or if deforestation and despeciation continues at its current pace. The technological gains from rockets, solar panels, and electric cars won't matter then. Figure those things out, and then a trip to Mars won't look like a sci-fi futurist's vanity project.

ben_w wrote at 2020-10-29 16:01:20:

Most of those things require a lot more than even a hundred-billionaire can fix.

Hell, even just “make successful electric car brand” is more than I was expecting when I first heard about Tesla, and even if they do as well as their current market cap implies, they’re _still_ not going to solve climate change _by themselves_ — and that’s one of several causes of the current mass extinction.

TeMPOraL wrote at 2020-10-29 14:15:59:

That's literally one of the two high-prominence rich people who does something useful with their money (other being Gates and his charity efforts).

pr0zac wrote at 2020-10-29 14:52:37:

As much as I dislike him and dislike the idea of the privatization of space, Bezos is also funding a rocket company with his billions, Blue Origin.

benologist wrote at 2020-10-29 14:16:24:

Buying your neighbor's surrounding houses for privacy...

itsoktocry wrote at 2020-10-29 12:46:25:

>_hope to all artists that are being exploited by labels_

The article mentions targetted tracks by Beyonce and The Killers. Are these artists speaking out against the RIAA, or are they onboard? If it's the latter, it will be hard to fix.

raverbashing wrote at 2020-10-29 12:55:38:

Correct

A lot of artists are totally in favour of internet censorship if it means they will make more money.

See the recent "surprise" when a FlwMac song became "viral" again on Tiktok since they had been doing all they could to keep it off youtube _even when they had the choice of being paid for it_ Well no crap Sherlock

20 years of losing the battle and RIAA makes a point of reminding people how petty they are

533474 wrote at 2020-10-30 17:07:10:

Why are most posts about piracy? If you put your content in youtube, it is there to be downloaded or archived. The platform might not survive the test of time. Torrent sites and legal/fair-use tools such as youtube-dl help preserve humanity. How many times were you able to obtain an obscure book only found in 2 libraries around the world? Or a music album from a once popular orchestra, nowehere to be found in retail channels? Or a TV episode archived and never to be broadcasted or lost in a hurricane?...We as Americans have the duty to preserve humanity and by humanity I mean our individual rights. Let law enforcement to prosecute those who profit from copyrighted works. But information dissemination? how can society move forward like this?

thrownaway954 wrote at 2020-10-29 13:01:20:

this was inevitable giving the climate switch to streaming services. right now the riaa wants to protect the streaming services at all costs since physical media consumption is decreasing, especially with all the store fronts closing cause of the pandemic.

nogabebop23 wrote at 2020-10-29 13:20:58:

This is a good point; If you're a contrarian (or in my case dinosaur) go back to physical media and back up your own copy for personal use. Our library still brings in physical copies of everything in various formats, which is good because the electronic borrowing rules imposed on libraries are ridiculous.

strictnein wrote at 2020-10-29 15:05:16:

And buy what you can used - you get the physical copy and the RIAA/MPAA gets nothing.

bdcravens wrote at 2020-10-29 15:49:00:

Why is RIAA acting like it's 2002 all of a sudden?

macspoofing wrote at 2020-10-29 16:38:34:

That's a good question. Why is RIAA going after YouTube download software and not Google?

throw_m239339 wrote at 2020-10-29 16:45:17:

Ad backed music streaming has become an unexpected major source of income from music labels. That's also true for indies. I don't make money off youtube directly however my distributor claims videos using my music and I make money off ads on youtube indirectly. The payout isn't big, but it's not insignificant either.

I imagine a lot of major artists make good money off youtube too. They don't if someone just downloads their videos. In times where musicians can't make money off concert, it's even more meaningful. Google does work directly with all these music labels (VEVO and co...).

macspoofing wrote at 2020-10-29 17:24:51:

Do people actually download music from YouTube? I imagine kids could just stream anything they want, anytime they want, legally.

bdcravens wrote at 2020-10-29 19:26:11:

So perhaps they'll go after ad blockers next?

hyko wrote at 2020-10-29 14:28:25:

I guess ultimately the real solution is not to consume what they're producing.

torified wrote at 2020-10-30 05:05:50:

_the site is accused of participating in the infringement of tracks released by Ed Sheeran, Drake, and One Direction._

Done. With pleasure.

kspacewalk2 wrote at 2020-10-29 14:31:01:

If you cease consuming what they're producing in the manner they disagree with, that's kind of their goal.

hyko wrote at 2020-10-29 14:43:17:

Not really, they're a trade association; their core mission is to support the recording industry. Not consuming their output is the opposite of their goal.

jug wrote at 2020-10-29 13:56:46:

I can't imagine there being all too much profit lost from people using youtube-dl to grab and avoid paying for copyrighted material... First, it's a command line tool. Second, even being well versed in those, I have only found the occasional such clips I wanted to ensure I had preserved. A documentary or two to view later etc.

This simply cannot match e.g. the P2P scale...

anaganisk wrote at 2020-10-30 03:37:35:

Im not with RIAA or whatever but there are 10s of websites built on top youtube-dl (they promote it as such), that allow users to rip without knowledge on CLI.

rolph wrote at 2020-10-29 17:53:09:

at some point the video is decrypted and exists on your machine, in memory. if you raid the cache after you force buffering bcz 4K and narrow bandwidth then you cant help but make a copy to your hard drive or other such non volatile.

here is one such approach:

https://www.wikihow.com/Save-Streaming-Video

here is my search string just as a knee jerk, but a deliberately crafted string will pop some real gems.

https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=save%20video%20from%20buf...

enjoy the safari and have pride in any subsequent craftsmanship that comes from it.

noisem4ker wrote at 2020-10-29 23:41:19:

Wait until they require Widevine or some other DRM crap. Then, with the help of your CPU's Trusted Execution Environment, the video will only be decrypted in memory locations you're prevented from accessing.

BiteCode_dev wrote at 2020-10-29 12:49:36:

Well, the download video helper has still escaped it for now. Good news given how useful it is, but for how long?

This is were a decentralized internet would shine, but youtube-dl is already not so friendly to use for the average joe, so I'm not expecting him to be able to browse IFPS any time soon.

Cthulhu_ wrote at 2020-10-29 13:28:35:

But the internet IS decentralized; the RIAA can take down one site, but a dozen will pop up in its place. The RIAA can take down the youtube-dl repo and its clones on Github, but there's thousands of clones on people's local machines.

The internet is not centralized. The RIAA cannot say "this should go" and make it magically disappear. There is no single point of failure / influence on the internet.

Millions of people have the skills to build an easily distributed .zip file with a barebones youtube downloader website. Everybody with an internet connection can set up a webserver that runs it.

And the RIAA will have to go after each individual, one at a time.

They couldn't keep TPB down, at best they managed to annoy it for a little while.

cwkoss wrote at 2020-10-29 18:30:47:

Society would be so much better off if every IP troll lobbying group fell off the face of the planet.

A_No_Name_Mouse wrote at 2020-10-29 17:23:34:

If they're going after individual sites, could a 'workaround' be to keep switching domain names with a suffix like the week number? With a redirect on the main site to the site of the week. It would require new takedown notices every week.

squarefoot wrote at 2020-10-29 22:30:20:

Does it then make the use of 1.1.1.1 any dangerous?

Not that it reveals access to torrent sites, but resolving one of them like 30 times in a week might send some alerts.

donmcronald wrote at 2020-10-29 12:49:15:

Do mid level YouTube channels care about this? I’d like to hear what the upcoming generation of creators think.

stevens37 wrote at 2020-10-29 17:10:04:

Once (~10-15y ago) I was thinking about a OTP based "2 component glue file sharing solution". You take a piece of data (audio,video), generate a real random one time pad then make an XOR delete the original and share the 2 random files using any media or network. Then share also the info that this and that files are the 2 component glue.

torified wrote at 2020-10-30 05:00:13:

What problem does that solve?

You're doubling the transfer size. Why not just encrypt with a random passcode?

I still don't see the point though. For discoverability/longevity you need seeders. If every transfer has a different hash, then that can't happen.

ryanmarsh wrote at 2020-10-29 16:24:17:

Why now?

We're less than a week from a hotly contested election and social media is an absolute battle ground.

Someone with more PR experience please help me understand why now is the most advantageous moment for the RIAA to launch these strikes. I'm not saying it's a bad time necessarily, but this clearly could have been done months (years) ago.

spazx wrote at 2020-10-29 16:15:37:

Of course all this shit happens the same week I bought my first NAS.

coolspot wrote at 2020-10-29 18:36:59:

Hey, BB has shuckable 14TB WD on sale for $189 . Don’t miss.

stevespang wrote at 2020-10-29 13:51:22:

The whole reason if you are going to be on the radar of the RIAA, you need to be located in Russia, like Snowden.

Russia does not extradite and Western lawyers would never show up in a Russian court or they rather conveniently end up floating face down in the Black sea, where many would argue lawyers deserve to end up anyway - - - if you read the press you discover Russians solve their disputes with hitmen, way cheaper than lawyers.

TheButlerian wrote at 2020-10-29 12:42:47:

Are these people actually dumb? You have the economic crisis of a lifetime and you decide to put hold on the free circuses.

twirlock wrote at 2020-10-29 14:54:10:

This is annoying to me because I rarely listen to the trash released under RIAA labels anyway.

shmerl wrote at 2020-10-29 13:55:28:

RIAA is a typical troll, someone who got too much power to censor things.