Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Quisque sed felis. Aliquam sit amet felis.
|
This is the category for Education. Refresh this list to see the latest articles.
|
From Wikinews, the free news source you can write. Sister projects
|
(previous page) ()(previous page) ()
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Glenn Crowe is running for the NDP in the Ontario provincial election, in the Bramalea-Gore-Malton riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.
Crowe did not reply to various questions asked.
Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.
Dog Training The Dog Whisperer Way
by
chickie maxwell
Dog owners around the world are finding great success with methods from famous trainer Cesar Millan. Whether people are looking to teach young pups the right way or correct problems with their difficult canines, Cesar’s dog training offers a controlled, systematic approach that dogs of any breed can benefit from learning. At CesarsWay.com, dog owners can ask questions of Cesar or vets Dr. Sherry Weaver and Dr. Kristy Conn. Owners can also check out Cesar’s exclusive tips, magazine features and archives of his National Geographic Channel television show, The Dog Whisperer.
Cesar Millan — The Dog Whisperer Rises to Popularity
Cesar first began working with dogs as a young boy on his grandfather’s farm in Mexico. After moving to the United States at the age of 21, Cesar began working in a dog grooming store, where he focused on the most aggressive dogs. He later created both the Pacific Point Canine Academy and Dog Psychology Center, for which he began to gain recognition and a popular following.
After being profiled by the Los Angeles Times, Cesar began working with the National Geographic Channel on his television show, The Dog Whisperer. The show, which premiered in 2004, portrays Cesar’s work in dog rehabilitation and is now broadcast in more than 80 countries. His book, Cesar’s Way, came out during the show’s second season and quickly became a widely-acclaimed bestseller.
Cesar’s Revolutionary Approaches to Training Dogs
Cesar holds unique philosophies when it comes to dog training. His work focuses on a dog’s primary needs, which he lists as exercise, discipline and affection. Under Cesar’s school of thought, a dog’s most important need is exercise. When owners ensure that their dogs receive regular, vigorous exercise, the dog’s energy level is filled and the dog is less likely to act out.
A dog’s second need is discipline and Cesar emphasizes that owners must get clear on this principle. Owners should set clear boundaries on a dog’s behavior, in particular by watching for signs of bad behavior before it arises. Cesar advises owners to watch a dog’s facial expressions and movements closely in order to predict when a dog might be getting ready to act out.
Finally, Cesar focuses on a dog’s need for affection. Because many owners tend to give their dogs affection when the canines are anxious or nervous, these behaviors are unintentionally reinforced. Instead, Cesar notes that owners should focus on giving dogs affection when the animals already have a balanced level of energy. This promotes calm behavior and positive energy for the dog.
Cesar also stresses that owners must recognize the impact of their own attitudes on their dogs. While filling the dog’s three basic needs, an owner should also take note of his or her own emotions and physical behaviors. In order to project a calm but assertive energy to the dog, an owner should keep his or her voice level, posture strong and emotions balanced.
The Success of Cesar Millan
Throughout his years of dog training, Cesar has accumulated numerous success stories of dogs that have overcome their fears and behavioral problems with his direction. Some of the most popular stories with viewers are profiled on his website, such as that of Luna the Lab Mix. Before Cesar worked with Luna, she was a frightened dog that hid constantly and had extreme anxiety. However, after spending time at the Dog Psychology Center socializing with other dogs, Luna is now more sociable and curious about the world. Luna’s improved behavior has helped her to live a fuller life and to enjoy her surroundings.
Another popular story is that of K9 Gavin the Labrador Retriever. After working for years with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in Florida, Gavin developed an aversion to loud noises such as thunder and fireworks. Gavin’s handler says that with Cesar’s help, Gavin will now ignore loud noises completely or simply sit down for a brief minute before going on with his business.
Get Special Discounts from Cesar
To find more tips and advice from Cesar, dog owners can visit his website and subscribe to Cesar’s Way magazine for up to 51 percent off. A free newsletter is also available, where owners can receive Cesar’s latest advice, special offers and announcements.
Visit Cesar Today!
Article Source:
Dog Training The Dog Whisperer Way
| This article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation, one of its projects, or people related to it. Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. |
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
On November 16, code-sharing and hosting service GitHub re-enabled the public access to youtube-dl repository, a software which can download videos from the internet via the command-line. This move comes after Mitchell Stoltz, a Senior Staff Attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), sent a letter to GitHub on the behalf of youtube-dl’s maintainers. The repository was previously blocked on October 23, after GitHub received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take-down notice from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Started in July 2008, youtube-dl is a free/libré open source software written in Python which can download videos from various websites. Citing alleged violation of 17 U.S. Code § 1201 Circumvention of copyright protection systems, RIAA’s takedown notice had alleged youtube-dl was intended to circumvent the technological protection measures of streaming services and to redistribute music videos without authorisation. youtube-dl’s source code had a number of unit tests to check if the software works in different circumstances or not. Some of the test cases included URLs of some copyrighted songs.
In the letter to GitHub, EFF’s attorney Stoltz said “This file contains series of automated tests that verify the functionality of youtube-dl for streaming various types of video. The youtube-dl source code does not, of course, contain copies of these songs or any others […] the unit tests do not cause a permanent download or distribution of the songs they reference; they merely stream a few seconds of each song to verify the operation of youtube-dl. Streaming a small portion of a song in a non-permanent fashion to test the operation of an independently created software program is a fair use.” The letter stressed “youtube-dl does not decrypt video streams that are encrypted with commercial DRM technologies”.
The URLs to copyrighted songs were removed from the source code on November 16, and replaced with a test video that uploaded on YouTube by Philipp Hagemeister, former maintainer of youtube-dl. Philipp Hagemeister had previously spoken about the takedown with Wikinews.
youtube-dl comes with a small JavaScript interpreter where it acts as a web-browser would behave while receiving video data from the server. The script has “extractors” for various websites to handle videos from different sources. “Any software capable of running JavaScript code can derive the URL of the video stream and access the stream, regardless of whether the software has been approved by YouTube”, the letter read. It borrowed an analogy of Doors of Durin from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings for explanation: travelers come upon a door that has writing in a foreign language. When translated, the writing says “say ‘friend’ and enter.” The travelers say “friend” and the door opens. As with the writing on that door, YouTube presents instructions on accessing video streams to everyone who comes asking for it.
Hours after the public access was restored, Sergey M, one of the maintainers of youtube-dl wrote on GitHub, “We would like to thank @github for standing up for youtube-dl and making it possible to continue development without dropping any features. We appreciate [GitHub] for taking potential legal risks in this regard. We would also like to thank [EFF] and personally [Mitch Stoltz] for invaluable legal help. We would also like to heartily thank our main website hoster Uberspace who is currently being sued in Germany for hosting our essentially business card website and who have already spent thousands of Euros in their legal defense.”
Hours after GitHub restored the public access to the repository, Stoltz tweeted “I think of youtube-dl as a successor to the videocassette recorder. The VCR empowered people to take control of their personal use of free-to-air video, but it had to be saved from the copyright cartel. The same goes for youtube-dl. GitHub did the right thing here.”
youtube-dl is used by thousands of people around the world. Multiple Creative Commons-licensed and public domain videos on Wikimedia Commons are uploaded via a tool called video2commons, which relies on youtube-dl to download media. youtube-dl also lets users download videos from LiveLeak — a video-sharing platform for citizen journalism. Videos downloaded using youtube-dl are also used for the purpose of fair use, or for evidence.
When a copyright holder chooses to release their work, be it a photograph, a video, or audio, under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, they allow everyone to freely own, share or modify the work as long as the reusers properly attribute the author of the work. YouTube also hosts many audio and video recordings in the public domain which can be used for any purpose without any restrictions.
In the blog post announcing “youtube-dl is back”, GitHub said, “Although we did initially take the project down, we understand that just because code can be used to access copyrighted works doesn’t mean it can’t also be used to access works in non-infringing ways. We also understood that this project’s code has many legitimate purposes, including changing playback speeds for accessibility, preserving evidence in the fight for human rights, aiding journalists in fact-checking, and downloading Creative Commons-licensed or public domain videos.”
GitHub also announced any new 1201 takedown notices will be “carefully scrutinised by legal experts” to reject “unwarranted claims”, and said it will side with software developers if the claims are ambiguous. The announcement also mentioned GitHub Trust and Safety team would treat developer’s tickets as a “top priority”. GitHub also pledged donation of USD 1 million for developer defense fund “to help protect open source developers on GitHub from unwarranted DMCA Section 1201 takedown claims”.
GitHub had blocked public access to many forks of youtube-dl upon receiving the DMCA notice in October. At that time, Wikinews noted public access was not yet restored for the forked repositories listed in RIAA’s copyright notice and was still displays “Repository unavailable due to DMCA takedown”.
During the period when GitHub had disabled public access for the repository, Sergey M had been developing youtube-dl and hosting it on GitLab, another code-sharing and hosting site. However, since GitHub has restored public access of youtube-dl, Sergey M has made the GitLab repository private.
After this, Wikinews reached out to Richard Stallman, the founder of Free Software Foundation, who has been highly critical of DRM (digital rights management, the subject of the DMCA) for many years now, to discuss the harms of DRM and DMCA 1201.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Thousands of residents are evacuating coastal areas of far north Queensland (QLD), set to be lashed by Cyclone Larry tomorrow morning. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology warns that the “very destructive core of Severe Tropical Cyclone Larry, with extreme gusts up to 280 km/hr (174 mph) should cross the coast between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. AEST on Monday (Sunday, 2100 to 2300 UTC). Destructive winds are expected to commence along the coast between Ingham and Port Douglas. Gales are already being experienced along the exposed coast in the warning area.”
Tropical Cyclone Larry, currently building off far north Queensland, is expected to intensify before crossing the coast. Queensland tropical cyclone warning centre spokesman Bruce Gunn says people should treat warnings very seriously. “This is the worst cyclone we have had for many, many years,” he said.
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) says the cyclone poses a “very serious threat to life and property” and will now post warnings on the hour on its website.
The BOM also warns coastal residents between Cairns and Townsville of dangerous storm tide when the cyclone crosses the coast. The bureau says the sea is likely to steadily rise up to a level which will be significantly above the normal tide, with damaging waves, strong currents and flooding of low-lying areas extending some way inland. People living in those areas should be prepared to evacuate if advised by authorities.
Mandatory evacuations have been enforced in low-lying seafront areas, including in the Johnstone and Cardwell shires south of Cairns, which are expected to bear the force of Larry and its four metre storm surge.
Disaster coordination centres have been activated in Cairns and Townsville. “There have been mandatory evacuations of coastal shires south of Cairns … and emergency shelters set up for people who feel at risk with nowhere to go,” said a Cairns City Council Disaster Coordination Centre spokesman. “It’s most likely thousands of people are evacuating to avoid the high tide.”
Premier Peter Beattie has issued a disaster declaration. Local governments now have the power to enforce mandatory evacuations. Queensland Education Department announced that schools in the hardest hit areas will be closed tomorrow, while flights to Townsville and Cairns have been cancelled.
State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers are doorknocking and advising residents to leave. Bruce Gunn from the Queensland cyclone warning centre says the cyclone will coincide with a high tide. “We are talking seawater a couple of metres above the high-tide mark, possibly more than that, with waves on top, so this is a very serious situation we are talking about,” he said.
Mr Gunn told the ABC that severe weather will be experienced several hours before the cyclone reaches the coast. “While we are saying the coastal crossing will be between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. AEST, the few hours leading up to that will be rather bumpy — not very nice to experience,” he said.
Saturday, April 30, 2005
The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) has announced a recall of foods containing banned dyes which increase the risk of cancer. The food products were sold at the Tesco, Waitrose, and Somerfield supermarkets.
A Bristol company called “Barts Spices” found the illegal Para Red substance in their Barts Ground Paprika, which was sold in 48g and 46g jars with a “Co-op” label. The batch codes on the affected products are 5032 and 5089 (expiration Dec 2007), and 5075 (expiration February 2007).
Tesco also found that their 130g package of BBQ rice cakes (expiration November and December 2005) contained both Para Red and Sudan I.
“It would be very prudent to assume that it could be a genotoxic carcinogen,” FSA scientific advisers told reporters.
“As a company committed to supplying only the very finest quality food ingredients, we took the immediate decision to withdraw our ground paprika spice from all outlets selling the product and advertised a product recall in the national press,” a Barts Spices spokesman said in a statement.
Sudan I is only authorized for industrial use to colorize petroleum products, such as shoe polish. Para Red and Sudan I are banned under the British Colours in Food Regulations of 1995.
Britain last went through a major food recall in February, when Worcester Sauce was found to contain chili powder dyed with Sudan 1.
The Asian Expat Experience: Why It Is More Favorable To Retire In China Or Indonesia
by
Cedric Loiselle
Retirement is an inevitable part of being a professional. It is a mandate of the law. Anyone who is turning 60 is obliged to voluntarily give up his post or reduce his work hours so he can live his life in pension. Some people may find it unnecessary. But there are several logical reasons for encouraging someone to retire. For one, it is meant to restore balance in the work place. It is impossible to achieve efficiency or preserve the business if it were left to the hands of aging people. When they pass on, who will take over? Second, younger folks are more adaptable to current situations and are, in a way, more efficient. Third, older employees are obviously less dynamic and compliant. And this is not something that would fit well with a developing business. Hence, it would be more practical to usher them into the retirement process by the time they hit that age of maturity.
Adults have a long way to go before they reach that age of discernment. But for those who are at the verge, there is that question of where they will spend the rest of their days in. Some retire in their own communities, surrounded by friends and family, while others choose tropical countries and retire in Indonesia or some part of Asia. Now, this exodus to one of the birthplaces of civilization is no surprise given the way this continent is growing in influence. China, for example, is currently known as one of the main drivers of the world economy. And Singapore, Hongkong and India stand right next to it when it comes to participation. Then, there are archipelagos like the Philippines, Malaysia and Japan that offer quality of life at lower costs. With these in place, it’s no wonder why most Americans and Europeans choose to retire in China or India. If you are not yet convinced of the viability of wanting to retire in China or Indonesia, here are a few more advantages you might want to take note of: a. Asia actually hosts a number of world-renowned, high-end medical facilities that equal to American options. There is Fortis Hospital in Bangalore, Gleneagles Hospital in Singapore and Prince Court Hospital Center in Kuala Lumpur. If you wish to get some plastic surgery done, you could also explore Thailand’s many affordable clinics. Facelifts in the country are 70% cheaper than those conducted in the United States. And the procedures and treatment are pretty much the same. They also have plenty of retirement homes in the area and an overwhelming quantity of health care professionals, from nurses to aides and therapists. Hence, you can always expect to receive quality services even if you don’t spend much. b. Conversion of Euros and American dollars usually equate to higher values in any Asian currency. That means you can get more for less in whatever country you live in this area and experience a comfortable life, even with your meager $20,000 a year pension (note: this is the smallest median amount for American recipients). In India, the cost of living per month is around 20,000 to 50,000 rupees. With this amount, you can own a car, rent a house and go on holidays. When exchanged for American money, this only amounts to $360 to $900. With a payment of 1,700 per month, that means you can even set aside some money for savings. c. Asia offers a culture that is generally accepting and respectful towards older folks. If you retire in Indonesia or the Philippines, you are bound to be treated like a king rather than a patient. Most Asian people are family-oriented. So you can always look forward to being treated well by the younger generation. This is not something you can anticipate in American soil since everyone lives independently. And if you have no family, there is hardly a chance you’d get the kind of care you would want at your age.
For more information about
Retire in China
and
Retire in Indonesia
visit our website bestplacesretire.com.
Article Source:
The Asian Expat Experience: Why It Is More Favorable To Retire In China Or Indonesia
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
More than 400 senior managers within the United Kingdom’s BBC, which employs around 28,500 people, have been told that they face a real-terms pay cut as bonuses and pay rises are scrapped this financial year.
Tuesday’s announcement said that bonuses will not now be paid and pay rates will stay fixed until 2010. The BBC’s executive management board, including Director-General Mark Thompson, his deputy Mark Byford and the Director of BBC Vision Jana Bennett did not take their bonuses for 2009 and have already had their pay frozen. Senior staff will have their bonus plan abandoned whilst junior staff have been told to expect any pay increases to be modest.
The BBC is under budget constraints after receiving a licence fee settlement below the amount management felt it required. Coupled with the effects of the credit crunch, the BBC is believed to need to find £1.7bn in savings between now and 2013 but has seen a further £450m shortfall develop. Initial plans to sell important BBC buildings have been put on hold since the falls in the property market in 2008. The planned pay freeze could save £20 million but risks angering unions who are seeking a general increase of £1,800 per person. Gerry Morrissey of BECTU, the broadcasting union, has already mentioned the possibility of industrial action. He told Sky News, “We have never been in favour of bonuses being paid so believe this should happen every year, and the money go towards eradicating low pay.”
The Press Association quotes Mark Thompson as telling staff “A strategic contingency exercise, led by a senior group of managers, has been looking at what additional funds are needed should we need to put aside additional funds to cover our current estimate of the financial risks we face… We need to be in as strong a position as possible if we are to deliver distinctive content and meet our key strategic projects, such as moving to the new Broadcasting House, moving network production to the nations and funding our broadband future.”
The pay freeze will not affect the Corporation’s highest paid on-air talent, who are on individual contracts.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
A group of 41 paleontologists and researchers reaffirmed the cause of dinosaur extinction. The research team concluded that a giant asteroid killed dinosaurs over 65 million years ago. The asteroid crashed into Yucatán, Mexico creating the Chicxulub crater. Their report was published Friday in the academic journal Science.
In 1980, Louis Alvarez and son, Walter, had published a paper stating that an asteroid had killed the dinosaurs. The Chicxulub crater was also discovered in Mexico at approximately that same time, therefore the theory gained scientific acceptance. More recent explanations of the cause of dinosaur’s extinction included that perhaps volcanic eruptions on Deccan traps or multiple asteroid crashes ended the dinosaurs’ existence.
The team performed chemical analyses of soil and fossil samples, where a high concentration of iridium (which is commonly found in asteroids and meteors) was found, which dated back to the approximate time of the asteroid crash.
The asteroid measured approximately 7.5 miles wide, and hit with an impact of one billion times the force of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The impact would have immediately killed all animals and plant life within the radius of half of a continent. With such an impact, debris would have flown into the air and then fallen back into the atmosphere with the force of a ballistic missile.
The crash of this asteroid into the earth would have also caused the equivalent of the heat of ten noonday suns, which would have burned the skin or feathers of dinosaurs, and created wildfires on any plant life which had survived to that point. The crash would have also triggered massive earthquakes and tsunamis, possibly causing parts of continents to fall into the ocean.
The area of Yucatán which the asteroid struck had also been rich in sulfur, which was blasted out of the earth and into the sky, where it would have mixed with water vapors, creating clouds that rained sulfuric acid, and which would block out the sun for approximately a decade.
Chicxulub crater Image: NASA.
Gravity map of Chicxulub crater Image: NASA.
Impact of the Chicxulub crater Image: NASA.
| This article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation, one of its projects, or people related to it. Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. |
Monday, October 26, 2020
On Friday, code hosting and sharing website GitHub blocked the public access to youtube-dl, a software which can download videos from the internet via the command-line. The blockade came after GitHub received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) take-down notice from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). After stripping the metadata from the notice, GitHub published the take-down notice on their site.
Initially started in July 2008 by Ricardo Garcia, youtube-dl is a script written in Python which can download videos from multiple websites including YouTube, LiveLeak and Vimeo. youtube-dl is a FLOSS software and is under public domain. Currently, the repository on GitHub is locked for viewers other than maintainers of the project.
RIAA’s DMCA notice alleged the script’s purpose of existence was to “circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube” and “reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings owned by our member companies without authorization for such use”.
youtube-dl has multiple unit tests in its source code, which test whether the software works in different circumstances or not. Some of the tests include checking if the script can download Creative Commons licensed videos, videos which did not have square pixels, videos with no age restriction, “offensive to some audiences” per YouTube community and age-restricted videos. One of the tests included the URL of some copyrighted songs. Citing this test, RIAA’s take-down notice claimed “comments in the youtube-dl source code make clear that the source code was designed and is marketed for the purpose of circumventing YouTube’s technological measures”.
RIAA’s notice published by GitHub alleged violation of 17 U.S. Code § 1201 Circumvention of copyright protection systems which says “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title”. RIAA listed a number of forks of youtube-dl and requested GitHub via the notice they all be made inaccessible.
The notice did not list any incident of anyone using youtube-dl to download or share copyrighted material, nor mention any damages that actually occurred. Unremarked by the notice, YouTube allows videos to be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. When a copyright holder chooses to release their work, be it a photograph, a video, or audio, under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, they allow everyone to freely own, share or modify the work as long as the reusers properly attribute the author of the work. YouTube also hosts many audio and video recordings in the public domain which can be used for any purpose without any restrictions.
youtube-dl is used by thousands of people around the world. Multiple Creative Commons-licensed and public domain videos on Wikimedia Commons are uploaded via a tool called video2commons, which relies on youtube-dl to download media. youtube-dl also lets users download videos from LiveLeak — a video-sharing platform for citizen journalism. Videos downloaded using youtube-dl are also used for the purpose of fair use, or for evidence.
youtube-dl comes with a small JavaScript interpreter where it acts as a web-browser would behave while receiving video data from the server. The script has “extractors” for various websites to handle videos from different sources. Whenever something is displayed on the user’s screen, the device has a copy of that content. Web browsers “download” data while surfing the web, though most of it is not persistent on the device. It is possible to download copyrighted photos by using a web-browser. The way the world wide web works, there are no technological prevention measures to prevent recording and sharing of content such as RIAA talks about in the notice. Photos and texts can be downloaded by taking screenshots, videos by screen recording tools, and audio by recording on a tape if not an audio recording software.
Multiple users expressed their disappointment on Twitter and Internet Relay Chat. One of the users said “this is yet another example of why we should use git as it was intended, as a distributed network, rather than rely on one single proprietary server”. Git is decentralised version-tracking software which is used by a large number of software companies and projects. It is possible to host one’s own git server for software development. While Microsoft’s GitHub is a centralised git server, development of software using git does not require a GitHub account.
Soon after the public access to the repository was locked, multiple users started sharing the source code via self-hosted git servers, Tor sites and via the Torrent protocol leading to a Streisand effect. Streisand effect is when a measure to censor information causes further spread of that information. The binary files of the software are still available on its website for users to download. Some people came up with esoteric ways to share the source code, by converting the compressed code into photographs and providing shell commands to convert to the source code.
GitHub’s DMCA repository, where the takedown notice was published for public viewing, was subject to contant vandalism from multiple GitHub users. One user submitted a pull request, merging the source code of youtube-dl along with the DMCA repository. This enabled users to view youtube-dl’s source code from within the DMCA repository, provided they know the commit id.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation said on Twitter “Youtube-dl is a legitimate tool with a world of a lawful uses. Demanding its removal from Github is a disappointing and counterproductive move by the RIAA.” Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation, has been highly critical of DRM (digital rights management, the subject of the DMCA) for many years now.
Wikinews reached out to Sergey M?, one of the maintainers of youtube-dl script, however Sergey said he “won’t give any comments at this time”. Later, he shared an update on the IRC channel. Sergey said, “they require complete removal of so called YouTube’s rolling cipher implementation […] GitHub requires in order to reinstate the repo […] under this conditions I could reinstate it in Saturday/Sunday already but this is an unsatisfactory outcome”. He also said, “I can’t guarantee whether [or] not we will bend over them considering the situation with @phihag [Philipp Hagemeister] but we’ll see soon what we can do in order to keep the max we have and mitigate potential legal issues at the same time”.
EFF is yet to respond to Wikinews queries. Wikinews also reached out to Philipp Hagemeister, a former maintainer and contributor of the youtube-dl project to discuss this takedown.
When did you get to know about the takedown notice and what were your initial reactions?
((Philipp Hagemeister)) I saw the takedown notice along with anyone else, on reddit. Since I am no longer involved with the youtube-dl project (except for occasional contributions, my maintainership ended in 2016), I don’t know any details.
((RS)) Does YouTube implement DRM for videos not under Creative Commons license, and if so, how does youtube-dl bypass it? Could you please elaborate the procedure?
((Philipp Hagemeister)) YouTube implements DRM for YouTube Movies. youtube-dl does not support those.
YouTube has multiple non-DRM video delivery protocols. I’m not up to date about specifics; my last dabbling in this was in 2015.
One of these protocols is described here. YouTube uses JavaScript to compute parts of the URLs. youtube-dl executes this JavaScript, just like a web browser.
((WN)) Could you also explain in brief how youtube-dl functions, and how the maintainers had intended it to be used?
((Philipp Hagemeister)) youtube-dl downloads and plays videos and music, just like any other web browser, from over 1000 different services. Its uses are varied: It enables video playback on many devices (e.g. Raspberry Pi) where the video services don’t work properly, it makes high-quality video playable for people with a bad or no Internet connection, it enables disabled users to use tools to play videos, and it is used for archival and research.
((WN)) What do you think of the DMCA notice?
((Philipp Hagemeister)) I think it is not warranted because youtube-dl is entirely legal. As the DMCA notice has no effect for me personally, I’m not really the right person to address it.
((WN)) Why were the copyrighted tests in the source code? Could they be replaced?
((Philipp Hagemeister)) I’m not sure why, but my guess is that users requested support for these videos and thus they were added as test cases. They can be removed trivially, without losing any function of youtube-dl.
((WN)) Are you aware Electronic Frontier Foundation said it was a “disappointing and counterproductive move”? What do you think should be the next steps?
((Philipp Hagemeister)) Yes, and I concur. I’m no longer involved in the project. If I were, I would probably just remove the test cases, block these music videos (RIAA is not worth the trouble for me, that can be done by other projects), and get the project back online.I understand people who think differently.