 Why can't you download this video? In fact, why can't you download any video from YouTube? I've looked all over YouTube, but I've never found a download button My name is Elliot Harmon and I am a senior activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation We're going to talk about that question today, and we're also going to talk about why basically every household appliance you could imagine has a computer built into it now Because weirdly enough, it's the same answer First let's talk about YouTube There's a tool called YouTube DL that lets people download videos from YouTube and other streaming video sites But a couple of weeks ago the recording industry association of America demanded that github take down the entire Repository for YouTube DL making the tool basically inaccessible to the world The RIAA claims that the tool was being used to infringe on its member labels music But let's think about that claim for a second that certainly doesn't apply to every way that anybody was possibly using YouTube DL Take this video for example This video was created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and like basically everything that EFF makes This video is published under a Creative Commons license That license lets you do whatever you want with this video as long as you give us credit You could put it into your video editor and change the colors in it and put that dancing hot dog gift in front of my face You could even burn this video onto a blu-ray and go out on the street and sell it for a profit And there's nothing that EFF could do about it as long as you follow the terms of the license Because we've already given you that permission when we put the Creative Commons license on this video And yet here this video sits Stuck on YouTube with no great way for you to take advantage of those rights YouTube DL filled that gap it created this extremely useful feature that's not available on the main YouTube site EFF didn't ask GitHub to take down YouTube DL to protect our videos and certainly when the RIAA demanded that GitHub take down the repository They weren't doing it on our behalf EFF isn't a member of the RIAA. In fact, they don't like us very much But still they demanded that this tool that you could have used to download our video be taken off of the internet It's not just about Creative Commons videos There are lots of ways that you can use copyrighted material that don't infringe on copyright There's the whole legal doctrine of fair use that outlines ways in which you can use copyrighted work That don't infringe on the original copyright holders rights But the RIAA threw all of that out the window and now nobody can use YouTube DL Regardless of whether they intended to use it for legal purposes or not who died and put them in charge of YouTube To understand what's really going on here You need to know a little bit about DRM and a little bit about section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act DRM stands for Digital Rights Management or Digital Restrictions Management depending who you ask What it really means is a digital lock that keeps you from accessing or modifying a copyrighted work Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA 1201 Says that it's illegal to bypass DRM Even if you're doing it for completely lawful purposes even if you're bypassing DRM for example for the purposes of downloading a Creative Commons licensed video that you have the rights to you Copyright holders have argued that you're still breaking DMCA 1201 by bypassing that digital lock In some circumstances the law even bars you from telling other people how to bypass that digital lock or sharing with them a tool To use to bypass that lock and I want to be clear by illegal I don't just mean that it voids you warranty or breaks some kind of terms of service agreement. I mean illegal illegal There's a process that takes place every three years where the Copyright Office grants exceptions to DMCA 1201 This is a very time-consuming process You have to put together a lot of evidence and submit it to the Copyright Office And also it only covers you bypassing DRM for your own purposes It doesn't cover you providing tools to other people for bypassing DRM. Oh and again It only takes place every three years Technology has changed a lot since the DMCA first passed in 1998 Back then when most people thought about DRM They were really thinking about things like the copy protection on DVDs that made it a little harder to rip a movie from a DVD Or the old fair play system that iTunes used to have where you would download a track on iTunes And you can only burn it on to a certain number of CDs People were really thinking about protection for traditional media like movies and music and video games Now when we talk about DRM, we're not just talking about traditional media We're talking about farmers not being able to repair their own tractors Because it's illegal to modify the onboard software on the tractor We're talking about security researchers being barred from studying deadly flaws in medical devices Or journalists not being able to tell the public when an auto manufacturer lied about its emissions tests These are all completely legitimate Completely worthwhile uses of technology that are undermined by that legal protection for DRM All because of those six words a work protected under this title Meaning any copyrighted work So the law doesn't just protect the digital locks on movies and music It protects the digital locks on software since software is copyrightable too since the DMCA passed We've had this explosion in any device you can imagine with a computer built into it We have computerized rice cookers toilets Refrigerators and yes, this is real. We have computerized egg cartons And now we're in a world where it might be illegal to modify the software on your own rice cooker That you bought with legal tender money if that sounds absurd. That's because it is You know, it might be tempting to forgive Congress for this whole mess And say well when they passed the law in 1998 They didn't know that we were soon going to have a world where every kind of product had a computer built into it on the other hand Congress really brought this whole mess on it's really Congress's fault Because they created this extremely powerful incentive for manufacturers to build their products with DRM Suddenly you can control what people can do with your products By putting a computer into that product You can make it illegal for other people to do what they want with your products Congress gave manufacturers a huge amount of control over how people use their products Or even just how people talk about their products Because remember the DMCA doesn't just ban circumventing DRM It might also ban you from telling other people how to circumvent DRM And if you only know one thing about the United States Constitution You should know this Laws in the United States are not supposed to bar what people can say Which brings us back to YouTube DL The makers of YouTube DL weren't infringing on anyone's copyright They were simply providing information to the public About how to perform a certain task And as we've already discussed there are lots of reasons why you would want to perform that task That are completely legal Including for downloading this video and putting a hot dog gif in front of my face But the RIAA demanded that this tool be taken off of the internet That's wrong We're still looking into what happened with YouTube DL And we want to hear from the community on this If you were or are a user of YouTube DL using it for legal purposes For education for archiving for journalism for whatever it is. We want to hear from you Send us an email at info at eff.org and just be sure that you put YouTube DL somewhere in the subject line And the email will get to the right people We won't publish your information without your permission Right now we just really want to collect stories of how people were and are using this tool We're going to keep following this story and you can follow along with us at eff.org slash drm Thanks for watching