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Right now I would download a small video from walkthroug from a game. so I started with

alex@Guilmon:~/Videos$ sudo youtube-dl -U
ERROR: can't find the current version. Please try again later.
alex@Guilmon:~/Videos$

after little bit searching I found this and this too

Is there an alternative? with my current version I am not able to download it

alex@Guilmon:~/Videos$ youtube-dl --version
2020.09.14
alex@Guilmon:~/Videos$
nobody
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3 Answers3

36

The latest version is available on the official website, where you can download the tar.gz file (v2020.09.20). On the homepage, there is a message: "Currently our dev repository is taken down due to DMCA takedown notice by RIAA. Downloads still work as usual."

mlc
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Esli Silva
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    FWIW, the takedown's over the contents of one test; even the RIAA don't (currently) have a case against `youtube-dl` proper. – wizzwizz4 Oct 31 '20 at 20:07
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    So..... I don't live in this world, but I do use the software... Does this mean that I should be tucking my current version away in a repository for future use? – WU-TANG Nov 01 '20 at 03:57
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    @wizzwizz4 that's not correct. The RIAA are claiming that the primary purpose of `youtube-dl` is copyright infringement under the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA (also a ridiculous claim). They include the tests as evidence for the claim. – coagmano Nov 01 '20 at 23:58
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    @FredStark But isn't that _not a DMCA takedown_? – wizzwizz4 Nov 02 '20 at 06:47
  • @wizzwizz4 No.. – Asteroids With Wings Nov 02 '20 at 12:55
  • @FredStark I don't see why the claim is "ridiculous". Only YouTube has the right to distribute and play these videos, and the sole purpose of `youtube-dl` is to circumvent that. It's pretty clear cut. – Asteroids With Wings Nov 02 '20 at 13:07
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    @AsteroidsWithWings the claim is ridiculous because your computer client is already downloading the video data in order to play it *on YouTube*. YouTube-DL, DownThemAll, and other similar tools just capture the video data your computer already receives and stores it in a standard video format as a file on your computer. – TylerH Nov 02 '20 at 14:26
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    @TylerH .... which is not "on YouTube". This isn't hard or complicated. – Asteroids With Wings Nov 02 '20 at 14:44
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    @AsteroidsWithWings despite it's name, YouTube-dl has support for over 1000 different downloader modules. It's not just about the YouTube website, but there are tons of legitimate uses. Moreover, YouTube itself is full of videos licensed under CC licenses or public domain, which you are entitled to rip. – Andrea Lazzarotto Nov 02 '20 at 19:11
  • @AndreaLazzarotto Doesn't really matter, until they remove the YouTube component. Nobody should be surprised about this kind of situation; it's pretty much been common knowledge for some twenty years? Disagreeing with the law doesn't count. – Asteroids With Wings Nov 02 '20 at 19:43
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    @AsteroidsWithWings There _is_ no “on YouTube”. There's a [user agent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_agent). By your logic, the “video pop-out” features of many extensions (included stock in recent versions of Firefox) are illegal, but that's absurd; if the law _really does_ work that way, I quit. – wizzwizz4 Nov 02 '20 at 20:52
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    @AsteroidsWithWings there's very little caselaw for the anti-circumvention provisions, so it's not as clear cut as saying "It's the law". There's a strong argument that `youtube-dl`'s primary purpose is not copyright circumvention and so only a court can decide how the law should apply in this case. It looks like Github's CEO wants to help `youtube-dl` fight the RIAA so we might just find out for sure – coagmano Nov 02 '20 at 22:14
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    @AsteroidsWithWings what law exactly? The world **is not all under US jurisdiction,** just to mention the first point. Secondly, the DMCA provides that if a tool has a substantial non-infringing use case, it is non infringing. Finally, to reiterate, there are tons of videos _on YouTube_ with a license allowing copying and redistribution. – Andrea Lazzarotto Nov 03 '20 at 11:30
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The widely used fork youtube-dlc is still being actively maintained.

It's probably a good idea to switch for the time being because the September release from youtube-dl.org is already bitrotted and doesn't work with YouTube (and possibly some other sites) any more. The most recent youtube-dlc release (dated today) does work.

It looks like youtube-dlc has removed the tests that were used as a pretext to take down the main repository. Whether that means they're safe, I couldn't say.

benrg
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  • Besides one being actively updated, are there any effective differences between the two? There are some GUI's that piggyback on youtube-dl, and I'm wondering if youtube-dlc binaries could be swapped in place without things breaking (like a change in switches or switch formatting). – Coldblackice Nov 01 '20 at 04:52
  • @Coldblackice I diffed the sources and it looks like it just adds a few features. The messages are a bit different (it calls itself youtube-dlc for example) which could break automated parsing I suppose. – benrg Nov 01 '20 at 05:33
  • @benrg it test it in my debian. – nobody Nov 01 '20 at 09:35
  • @Coldblackice Assuming that such GUIs just use the youtube-dl command line, I would expect it to be compatible. Incompatibilites tend to crop up with different versions of software *libraries*, where such a thing as *binary compatibility* might mean that the GUI application would need to be re-compiled against the modified library. – jpaugh Nov 02 '20 at 15:56
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You could try this. This was in the readme of the original repo.

sudo curl -L https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

This updated my version to 2020.09.20. Maybe that'll be enough for you.

stackzebra
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