Re:YouTube-dl has received a DMCA takedown from RIAA
by hajile on Saturday October 24, 2020 @07:55PM
(#24882828)
"Not necessary" doesn't mean it's not still fair use. Lots of things aren't necessary but one definition or another. The argument here is that it's lack of necessity makes it incidental.
Here's the Carl Benjamin case covered in bloomberg (you can look up the specific case if you'd like) https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/youtuber-wins-attorneys...
> Copyright violations don't require the copyright holder to prove commercial harm. That's the entire point of statutory damages.
This is explicitly one of the four points of fair use as stated by the US government, so it's very important.
It's (potentially) the whole content, but a case that was literally just uploading an entire video as-is with a different title was ruled fair use not too long ago, so this isn't itself damning.
I'd like to see a cite for that. Generally, uploading whole content owned by someone else is not fair use absent something like the content being newsworthy in itself (such as video of a police beating). Otherwise, fair use would generally require some transformative effort.
Likewise, since they are unit testing rather than viewing the content, I doubt there is any commercial harm and the market overlap between video viewers and unit testers is zero.
Copyright violations don't require the copyright holder to prove commercial harm. That's the entire point of statutory damages.