Dear NewPipe community and other beloved creatures, You might have already noticed this: Searching “NewPipe” via Google will yield plenty information about the project, but a link to the official website is missing. This is because Google submitted to a DMCA takedown notice from a French record label, “Because Music”. The notice demands removing our homepage newpipe.net from their search listings along with a set of other domains completely unrelated to our project. The DMCA takedown notice was published in the Lumen database by Google themselves. While worse things could have happened as the result of such a takedown request, Google’s unlisting of our homepage creates a variety of problems. Given the fact that Google no longer counts visits to our site, it will lose relevance. As a result, websites for fake clones of NewPipe that mimic our homepage will tend to rank higher in the results. This could ultimately cause users to fall for such scams. The team is currently discussing what to do about the situation. We are considering taking legal action. If you are a lawyer and have experience with this and would like to help us, please contact us via email (team(at)newpipe.net). Regards, Schabi

  • BasicTraveler@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    You can reach out to the EFF. They took an interest in youtube-dl. However you have a major hurdle to overcome:

    RIAA argues that since youtube-dl could be used to download music owned by RIAA-member labels, no one should be able to use the tool, even for completely lawful purposes.

    This is an egregious abuse of the notice-and-takedown system, which is intended to resolve disputes over allegedly infringing material online. Again, youtube-dl doesn’t use RIAA-member labels’ music in any way. The makers of youtube-dl simply shared information with the public about how to perform a certain task—one with many completely lawful applications.

    --https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/riaa-abuses-dmca-take-down-popular-tool-downloading-online-video

    IANAL but probably shouldn’t have video on the site showing it downloading copyrighted music. I think that’s the crux here.

    https://www.eff.org/about/contact

    Good luck, but I think you kinda shot yourself in the foot.

    EDIT: if you read the complaint, it’s not for hosting content, it’s Anticircumvention. 17 U.S.C. Sec. 1201 (a)(2)

    (2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that—

    (A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

    (B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or

    © is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

    • CapgrasDelusion@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      probably shouldn’t have video on the site showing it downloading copyrighted music

      This is an extremely good point. Show it downloading something in the public domain if anything at all. Not Selina Gomez “official.” Same as what Kodi had to do with add-ons. Even if it can be used to infringe, separate the main instance from that. It’s not necessary to win the DMCA fight, but it’s an unnecessary target.

  • taurentipper@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I thought the DMCA was used for people or organizations that uploaded or shared infringing material? Isn’t Newpipe just playing whats freely available on youtube/peertube/soundcloud etc? I could be wrong of course but this seems like an abuse, good luck I hope you can fight this!

  • Blazze@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    This should be a pretty cut and dry false takedown. Newpipe doesn’t host any content.

  • Gutotito@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Do not DMCA takedown requests require swearing an affidavit? If that’s false, then it’s perjury, isn’t it?

  • EvilMonkeySlayer@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I didn’t even know this existed. As a result I’ve just installed it on my phone. Great way to Streisand effect it I guess.

  • CreativeTensors@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    With how things are going, who’s to say that a year from now google catching you running an ad-blocker at all won’t cause them to ban your entire google account?

    • skulblaka@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Because, frankly, my Google account is full of 17 years and counting of excellent user data. They have my past trends but if they expect to keep mining me for data in the future then they better let me keep using my adblockers. Go ahead, ban me, I’ll call yer fuckin’ bluff mate. I’ll be off the grid faster than they can say “please deactivate ublock”. I only still use Google because it’s convenient and because I have so much of my life and history tied up in it, but every day that I use it I think about how I shouldn’t. If they want to burn that bridge, it’ll be highly effective and I’ll never come back.

      And I think a lot of people are in the same boat these days. Of course you’ll always have your “normies”, your simple majority who while they may hate the ads don’t even know what an ad blocker is and will just put up with whatever Google does in order to get their youtubes. But if you piss off a nerd we have options. We’ll build our own social network empire, with blackjack and hookers. We’ll jump ship to a search engine that gives a damn about the user. We’ll host our own email domains. We’ll build newer, better ad blockers, that Google can’t even detect.

      If Google truly wants to fuck around like that they may well just find out, just like reddit is doing.