The Campaign to Shut Down Crucial Documentary Tool youtube-dl Continues – And So Does the Fight to Save It

submitted by Drewski from eff.org

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[–]In-the-clouds 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

youtube-dl is one of those tools I have used the most. Very useful. And I don't care about downloading copyrighted material. I usually want to download amateur content made by regular people they share freely. I am not usually interested in downloading content made by corporations, and I avoid propaganda.

This past year I noticed that the download of YouTube videos using youtube-dl has been throttled to about 70 kB/s. But Twitter videos and Vimeo videos are still downloading the same as before.

[–]Drewski[S] 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

There's a fork called yt-dlp which fixes the throttling issue along with adding additional features. If you prefer a GUI to the command line there's a frontend for it: yt-dlg

[–]In-the-clouds 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thank you! I will try that.

Here is another tool I have used to get around the throttling, but it does not allow for a batch file of videos to be downloaded, but each video URL has to be pasted individually. However, this tool is easy to use. It's a website that requires no installation. At first it looks like it only downloads an MP3, but when you get to the next page, you can specify the MP4 file to download.

https://savemp3.app/en/

[–]In-the-clouds 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It works! I downloaded and installed yt-dlp on a Windows 7 machine, and the videos are downloading at full speed. I thank you for taking the time to share your tip.

[–]neomarxist_bullshit 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Yeah. Content on the internet disappears all the time so if it's good I want to save it.

[–]In-the-clouds 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Good point. By downloading a copy, we can archive it, and re-upload it if it gets censored or removed.