Uberspace is Being Sued
Uberspace is currently being sued for hosting youtube-dl's main page. This is the industry's second attempt in unpublishing information about the tool after their unsuccessful try in taking down youtube-dl's GitHub repository.
Published by Philipp Trommler. This article has also been translated to: de.
I am no lawyer, but the fact that GitHub has restored youtube-dl's repository after internal investigations (and, admittedly, quite some community backlash) back in 2020 leads me to the conclusion that youtube-dl might not be as illegal as the music industry tries to make you believe. I don't want to get any deeper into the legal arguments here, as they differ from country to country, anyways, but I'm pretty sure everyone has their own idea whether it's ethical that you shouldn't be allowed to make a private copy to consume media in the way you would like it1.
Still, the music industry is going for another round, this time here in Germany. Their new target is Uberspace, a liberal hosting provider, which stands in for free speech and privacy. And happens to host youtube-dl's home page. I don't share every view with Uberspace but they have their stances and I respect them for that. I'm hosting this very blog there, too, and their service is excellent. Additionally, they provide a variety of programming languages/run times to chose from.
So, if you'd like to support Uberspace with standing in for user's freedom, consider becoming a paying customer there, too. Just make sure to chose a sustainable plan2, IIRC they start at 10€/month. The extra paranoid can even pay cash!
- Maybe you even have to make a copy in order to consume it at all because their stupid web shit doesn't work on your devices because you don't swap them like your underpants because you're trying to avoid e-waste... 🙄 ↩︎
- They're going for the pay-what-you-want, or rather pay-what-you-can, model. ↩︎
Filed under Misc. Tags: blogging, free speech, publishing, web.
Want to comment on this article? Write me at blog [at] philipp-trommler [dot] me!