No, but the various technological measures that Google uses to make it difficult to download a user copy of the video file, to the point where the compilation and use of an external tool is the easiest option, definitely are.
Seriously, youtube makes it more of a pain in the ass to download a plain video file than basically any other site on the web. You can't just view-source and get it, and you can't even nab the file from the event timeline like you can most sites that obfuscate that.
Like it or not, youtube-dl is popular in part because it does circumvent a lot of measures that youtube intentionally puts in place.
> but the various technological measures that Google uses to make it difficult to download a user copy
Which measures are those?
> to the point where the compilation and use of an external tool is the easiest option
Browser is the easiest way to do HTTP too, but one probably shouldn't claim HTTP is a technical measure to prevent using the Web (though some may be tempted to say so after a long day of debugging... ;)
> Like it or not, youtube-dl is popular in part because it does circumvent a lot of measures that youtube intentionally puts in place.
The only times I've used it was to download some lectures which were freely available to watch them over a long flight and a trip in places where network sucks. Surely, there are a lot of people who probably use it to download some RIAA-tainted crap, but it's not the only use, and the tool still would be useful if all RIAA stuff vanished from existence.
This is correct; the most common commit to the youtube-dl repo is fixing the js decoding that YT changes regularly to prevent eaxctly this type of access.
Obfuscation is clearly an accepted technological approach to security and control, if not always a good or effective one.
No, but the various technological measures that Google uses to make it difficult to download a user copy of the video file, to the point where the compilation and use of an external tool is the easiest option, definitely are.
Seriously, youtube makes it more of a pain in the ass to download a plain video file than basically any other site on the web. You can't just view-source and get it, and you can't even nab the file from the event timeline like you can most sites that obfuscate that.
Like it or not, youtube-dl is popular in part because it does circumvent a lot of measures that youtube intentionally puts in place.