> generating a slew of copystrikes to justify their retainer fee.
Considering how they were able to change social media to favor the copyright owners, I'm betting whoever is paying them feels the fees are justified.
"Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always."
-Provisional IRA after almost assassinating Thatcher in a bombing
(genuinely contribute to discussion by arguing against my own biases, call me a moron instead of downvoting)
Copyright lawyers working for the highest profile abuser of copyrights absolutely know the very basics of copyright law and are therefore acting in bad faith.
Now there's no doubt that piracy violates copyright law. We can debate whether or not that's a good thing, whether the laws in question are just, etc., until the end of time. But it's not a foregone conclusion that piracy has any negative economic impact on copyright holders.
Do you really want a world where this scumbags should go after everything that "makes it easy" to do illegal activities?
The software also a long list of legitimate uses, as was demonstrated by the various prominent users that spoke up.
I can use the camera on my phone to record a copyrighted movie, and thus circumventing the DRM, or just use a device like this: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-USB3HDCAP-Video-Capture-... (analog VGA is probably preferred here, for lack of HDCP support).
And that is only necessary if we're talking about some modern DRM that makes your OS work against you, so you can't directly capture with OBS or something.
We're gonna ban all of those now?
Copyright law seems to be one of the only areas in which the fact that someone Could use a tool to commit a crime seems to be grounds for criminalizing the tool and not the act.
Personally, I do programming for psych research students & faculty at an undergrad institution.
It's not like working at a startup—or having money as your first, last, and only moral compass—is a prerequisite to post here.
Sure maybe you could argue that Facebook and Google don't make the world a better place. Maybe a bunch of other FAANG companies.
But not everyone here works for one of those. I don't, and I'd say my work probably improves society in a certain sense (depending on whether web development/UX design/usability work does that).
I don't work in food delivery, but I'd say getting a pizza from point A to B is a hell of a lot more productive than being a lawyer for the RIAA.
I'm sure it's the usual case of a large enough salary helps you to forgot what a piece of shit you are.
Of course they don't do only that, they also have to spend their time crafting abusive contracts and extensions in detriment of artists and in favour of big recording companies.
It's a concept that's somehow always stuck with me whenever I hear about people who seem convinced everyone else is wrong.
[1]: https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/spookrijders.html
If asked, a majority might say that (though IMHO nowhere near 99%). Their actions indicate otherwise, however, and a person's beliefs are better judged by their actions than by their words.
Amoral Nihilistic Pirates would be a great name for a band.
Just sayin'.
As a matter of fact, the financial services sector thrives with such people
At least one way they could rationalize their actions is by taking an outlandish but not uncommon view of property rights: that no one would bother to create anything without being able to profit from ownership of it, and the more they can profit the more they'll create.
There's also the even more outlandish view that whatever the market does is good for society by definition, so if the market pays you to do something you can assume it's beneficial to society.
Here is a bit of a discussion about it by seemingly knowledgeable people:
https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/57421/is-youtube-dl-...
> > the source code expressly suggests its use to copy and/or distribute the following copyrighted works owned by our member companies: > > Icona Pop – I Love It (feat. Charli XCX) [Official Video], owned by Warner Music Group Justin Timberlake – Tunnel Vision (Explicit), owned by Sony Music Group Taylor Swift – Shake it Off, owned/exclusively licensed by Universal Music Group
> Complainants are "confused" about actual infringement (which is prohibited by copyright law), and creating a method for infringing copyright. Under DMCA and US copyright law, copying is infringing, programming is not infringing. The complaint does not clearly allege unauthorized copying of another person's intellectual property, and their complaint is based on the theory that certain programming actions constitute copyright infringement. I don't actually think they are confused, I think they are testing the boundaries.
EFF represented youtube-dl to get the repository reinstated, and their lawyers instead tried to prove that YouTube doesn't have DRM, and that the test cases provided were neither suggesting other people to infringe, nor infringing themselves (falling under fair use). The full response is here: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/11/2020-11-1...
This should be the conclusion. Since they have won nothing with such whole noise. Only increase more the OSS wave.
https://twitter.com/andrzejdyjak/status/1324360905237372929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25013756
