youtube-dl is a

free and open source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

download manager A download manager is a software tool that manages the downloading of files from the Internet, which may be built: into a Web browser, or as a, usually more sophisticated program Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to: Bu ...

for video and audio from

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

and over 1,000 other video hosting websites. It is released under the

Unlicense The Unlicense is a public domain equivalent license for software which provides a public domain waiver with a fall-back public-domain-like license, similar to the CC Zero for cultural works. It includes language used in earlier software projects a ...

software license A software license is a legal instrument (usually by way of contract law, with or without printed material) governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both source ...

. As of September 2021, youtube-dl is one of the most starred projects on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

, with over 100,000 stars. According to libraries.io, 308 other packages and 1.43k repositories depend on it. Numerous

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ei ...

s exist of the project.

History

youtube-dl was created in 2006 by Ricardo Garcia. Initially, only YouTube was supported, but as the project grew, it began supporting other video sharing websites. Ricardo Garcia stepped down as maintainer in 2011 and was replaced by Philipp Hagemeister, who later stepped down and was replaced by dstftw. In 2021, dstftw stepped down and was replaced by dirkf.

RIAA takedown request

On October 23, 2020, the

Recording Industry Association of America The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...

(RIAA) issued a takedown notice to

under the

Digital Millennium Copyright Act The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or s ...

(DMCA), requesting the removal of youtube-dl and 17 public

forks In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ei ...

of the project. The RIAA request argued that youtube-dl violates the Section 1201

anti-circumvention Anti-circumvention refers to laws which prohibit the circumvention of technological barriers for using a digital good in certain ways which the rightsholders do not wish to allow. The requirement for anti-circumvention laws was globalized in 1996 ...

provisions of the DMCA, and provisions of

German copyright law German authors' right or ''Deutsches Urheberrecht'' is codified in the ''Gesetz über Urheberrecht und verwandte Schutzrechte'' (also referred to as ''Urhebergesetz'' or ''Urheberrechtsgesetz'' and abbreviated ''UrhG''). An official translation ...

, since it circumvents a "rolling cipher" used by YouTube to generate the URL for the video file itself (which the RIAA has considered to be an effective

technical protection measure Technical may refer to: * Technical (vehicle), an improvised fighting vehicle * Technical analysis, a discipline for forecasting the future direction of prices through the study of past market data * Technical drawing, showing how something is co ...

, since it is "intended to inhibit direct access to the underlying YouTube video files, thereby preventing or inhibiting the downloading, copying, or distribution of the video files"), and that its documentation expressly encouraged its use with copyrighted media by listing

music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...

s by RIAA-represented artists as examples. GitHub initially complied with the request. Users criticized the takedown, noting the legitimate uses for the application, including downloading video content released under open licensing schemes or to create derivative works falling under

fair use Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests ...

(such as for archival and news reporting purposes). Public attention to the takedown resulted in a

Streisand effect Attempts to hide, remove, or censor information often have the unintended consequence of increasing awareness of that information via the Internet. This is called the Streisand effect. It is named after American singer and actress Barbra Streis ...

reminiscent to that of the

DeCSS DeCSS is one of the first free computer programs capable of decrypting content on a commercially produced DVD video disc. Before the release of DeCSS, open source operating systems (such as Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD and Linux) could n ...

takedown. Users reposted the software's source code across the internet in multiple formats. For example, users posted images on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

containing the whole youtube-dl source code encoded in different colors on each pixel. GitHub users also filed pull requests to GitHub's own repository of DMCA takedown notices that included youtube-dl source code. On November 16, 2020, GitHub publicly reinstated the repository, after the

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ci ...

sent GitHub a document contesting that the software was not capable of breaching commercial DRM systems. GitHub also announced that future takedown claims under Section 1201 would be manually scrutinized on a case-by-case basis by legal and technical experts.

Example code

For downloading video or playlist: youtube-dl Path of the output can be specified as: (file name to be included in the path) youtube-dl -o To see list of all available file formats and sizes: youtube-dl -F Youtube-dl_downloading_Big_Buck_Bunny

The video can be downloaded by selecting the format code from the list or typing the format manually: youtube-dl -f Best quality video can be downloaded with -f best option. Also, the quality of audio and video streams can be specified separately and merged with the + operator. A portion of the video can be downloaded with the help of

ffmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of vid ...

References

External links

* * Command-line software Download managers Free software programmed in Python Public-domain software with source code Software using the Unlicense license YouTube {{DEFAULTSORT:youtube-dl

History

RIAA takedown request

Example code

See also

References

External links