Music Piracy Is Back in a Big Way
wired.com
Visits to music piracy websites went up more than 13 percent last year, a new report says. The majority of those visits were to sites that allow users to download the audio from YouTube URLs.
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Why doesn't youtube use DRM the way other Big Tech sites do?
Because it'll stop working on a not-insignificant portion of their userbases devices.
DRM sucks. We don't need more of it.
google sucks too so why aren't they using the thing that sucks?
If that was adequate to explain Youtube's decision-making, the platform would be unrecognizably different for all of the terrible things Youtube didn't do because it would be -- and indeed was -- terrible
Because YouTube isn't the biggest ripping source. That award goes to Spotify.
Spotify rippers are rife these days. I've even made my own.
That isn't piracy. It's time shifting, and it's perfectly legal to do it.
It is piracy if you make it available for others to download. Plus the concept of time shifting doesn't really apply to on-demand media.
It is infringement if you're sharing the files, but if you make a copy for yourself, then it's considered fair use. See: Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.
Internet isn't always available, such as in an airplane or someone might not want to give access to the Internet to their child but wants to give them video or audio on a tablet. They can legally copy the content and watch it later.
There are legal issues with software that is solely designed to bypass drm, but that only applies to the software creator, not the user.
That's my point though. YouTube's audio quality is utter wank, so it's easier to source the music through the likes of Spotify and rip it for piracy. All you need to do at that point is tamper with the watermarking. If you're pulling the OGG Vorbis source files directly, and have access to two Premium accounts, you can rip it twice and diff it to see the areas that need to be modified