[vlc-devel] ATTN: removal of website playlist parsers

[Derk-Jan Hartman]

On 15 apr 2009, at 17:28, Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote:
> 	Hello,
>
> Conveniently, nobody bothered to comment on my several complaints
> surrounding the inclusion of playlist parsers for various websites.
> I assume that means I am right, and those may be construed as  
> copyright
> violations.

Lets make it more explicit. A copyright is a right given to the  
creator of a work. You are either violating those rights, or you are  
violating the terms of the license under which the copyrightholder has  
made his work available. When a VLC user rips a website, HE is  
violating the copyrights of the author and not VLC media players  
developers, though we are facilitating it of course.

In my opinion the more important aspect here, is that we might  
potentially be breaching the terms of usage of the websites. This case  
is much like the Hulu and Boxee problems atm.

Things I note:
1: There is no copyright notice for the videos themselves. Youtube  
claims copyright on every webpage, but of course that does not concern  
the videos themselves.
2: There is a Terms of Service for youtube.
3: We assist our users in violating it (translated from dutch): "You  
are not permitted to access the content posted by the users in any  
other way than using the videoplayback-pages of the Website itself,  
the YouTube-player or any other means explicitly approved by  
Youtube." [also includes Youtube's own content] and probably we  
violate several other terms of service.
4: As far as I can see, you enter an automatic agreement upon the  
Terms of Service by using the website or any of the Youtube services.  
These kinds of agreements are highly dubious in many countries around  
the world.
5: Deeplinking content in order to bypass ads is illegal in France.  
However, that requires republishing of that content. VLC does not  
republish, its users might, but it's an extra step, and a complicated  
step for most of our users.

Youtube doesn't seem terribly concerned with the copyright/licenses of  
the works of their website users btw.... Really a shame.
Since in order to use the URL in vlc, you will have likely visited the  
website, I don't see any particular concerns. Because of that, and  
because  we work on a "per video" base, instead of a "collection" (the  
way boxee is using hulu basically), the ads are not terribly affected  
and due to the website visit, the user "should" [though no one reads  
that of course] be aware of the terms of service. If Youtube wants to  
do something here, their sole reason is to prevent "piracy" of the  
content and then they would "ban" VLC from the website. But unless VLC  
suddenly takes off as a youtube ripper, I doubt that is realistic.

Still, I would love to see some more attention to source and author of  
the video. Perhaps via OSD or something. Another possibility is to  
launch the website we are scraping when playback starts. It would be  
annoying, but it would guard us a tad more from any possible legal  
action.

DJ

> Hence, I'm going to remove all LUA parsers but the CUE file one before
> 1.0 goes out. If you have a proof that a given parser is not in breach
> of copyright for the corresponding website, please explain why/how.