A few points you might want to consider:

* youtube-dl is not just for Youtube (ie. google). It supports heaps of sites, and youtube is probably less likely to have the sort of content I'm referring to than twitter, pornhub, liveleak, who knows.

* I am in Australia, so for a subpoena (or similar) my friends would need to issue an MLAT request, which would indeed take a very long time. In fact, this often does happen, but in the meantime a formal preservation request (to the service provider) and a local copy (via something like youtube-dl) are important steps.

* Many investigations don't go to court, for a litany of reasons (that's a pun I guess). In such cases, a subpoena isn't in context: law enforcement have to investigate what has happened, to figure out if it needs to go to court.

* Some investigations are important but do not meet the 'serious crime' threshold for forcing companies or parties to provide information. If you can imagine being the victim of a minor crime, that someone filmed and put on twitter, I'm sure you can imagine the local police may want a copy of the video before the tweet gets deleted - but also know that there will never be an international cooperative justice process. It's just a local issue.

* Publically posted video is very common and often important, and it is not surprising that the police need a tool to download it. There are so many sites and web browser technologies, and the cops are not efficient spending their time coding youtube-dl equivalents.

I feel quite strongly about youtube-dl being taken down for copyright infringement by the RIAA, but have tried to answer in an informative way. Sorry if it comes across harsh - no ill will intended :)

The process for a subpoena takes forever and isn't guaranteed.

If I have a subject who has relevant video on a service like YouTube, and I decide to go the subpoena route, here's the process:

- Find the exact video, document the URL, Content creator's account name, and video upload date.

- Submit a preservation letter to Google to ensure the video will still be accessible when the subpoena is auctioned.

- go to my prosecutor/legal team to determine what jurisdiction the subpoena has to go through. It could be the county I'm in, the county the subject lives in, the county the video was uploaded in (unlikely), or the county where Google hosts the video.

- draft the subpoena and get it reviewed by whichever judge/magistrate applies.

- wait who knows how long for the subpoena response, hopefully it comes back with the real video and important content.

- face defense arguments in court that my subpoena was improperly obtained/submitted

"The process for a subpoena takes forever"

No, it doesn't. And that "forever" are human rights that are established and should require a subpoena to contest.

I mean, we’re talking about publicly viewable stuff, here. Both the citizenry and law enforcement ought to have ways of archiving stuff like this.

(I can imagine lots of cases how this could be used to fight police corruption.)

That's for private, non publicly accessible, content.

If you post a video of murdering someone publicly - no subpoena should be required.

They have a handy upload site for your requests!

https://lers.google.com

Maybe save that argument for where it applies?

In this thread we're talking about publicly available data.

The fact that the path that works for non-public data is burdensome is good because it reduces abuse. Demanding that it be used for public data too just creates more pressure to undermine the (already insufficient, IMO) protections that exist for private data.

I mean, 'taking a copy of publicly-available evidence' instead of asking someone else to provide it isn't exactly 'not doing policing properly'.

I think that using youtube-dl to download a video that a suspect has uploaded to YouTube, and presenting it in court is an example of doing policing right.

If you don't want your videos to be used against you in court, I would recommend not publicly broadcasting them to the entire world.

Assuming the content is public, why would they need a subpoena?

you mean "because they could just use youtube-dl to download it?" I think that's why we are arguing that ytdl is a tool with legal and moral purposes and should remain accessible.

Is availability on a locked, walled garden "public"?

I think we can tell what the RIAA thinks about that.

RIAA doesn't dispute that it's public.

Being public doesn't mean publicly owned. It means publicly accessible... Like your local shopping mall.

Because the RIAA has shown that this specific tool can't be 'public'.

If we have to play by those rules, LEO should too. Boo hoo if it's harder.

> RIAA has shown

They haven't shown anything. They made a claim. We'll know what rules we have to play by if it comes to a court ruling.

I mean, GitHub took it down, no?

Why would that have any bearing on the validity and legality of RIAA's logic?

You can claim anything, too. GitHub only checks if the Takedown is valid in format with necessary information provided.

Has someone abused this to harass big-name Github projects with takedown notices?

They follow the DMCA process.

The RIAA isn't part of the government.

What if this tool remains public in a different part of the world? Are you going to wall off from the rest of the world so you can no longer see the tool and pretend it doesn't exist?

Which way do you think takes less time and effort?