Yes, maybe that’s where my confusion sits. If I take a bunch of music and put together a playlist and post it on, say YouTube or my own site, that is perfectly fine?

This depends on both the music in question and your jurisdiction. There is nothing inherent about "music" that makes it illegal to share it with others. Is it Taylor Swift or something your friend recorded? It makes a big difference.

This is a tool to satisfy the use case of sharing music with others. Sometimes such sharing will be illegal, but at other times it won't.

Couldn’t the same be said for youtube-dl? Again, I don’t know.. just curious.

People seem to assume that, just because youtube-dl got a single takedown request from a prospective plaintiff, it’s now as illegal as cocaine. The reality is that youtube-dl is a perfectly legal tool, and it will continue to be so at least until a judge rules otherwise — and even then, only in a specific jurisdiction.

Should you be considered a child-molester just because I accuse you to be one?

Wow, you got real dark with that one.

Exactly, youtube-dl is a legal tool. You have to expect that everyone is trying to game the law and push the scales in their favour.

In that case, it is in RIAA's best interest that everything is locked down and they maintain exclusive control over as many things as possible. It is also in their favour to make the public view anything related to sharing of media files as suspect. That doesn't mean this position is reasonable and valid.

Yes, the same could and has been said about YouTube-dl. It depends what you do with the tool. If you are using it to download videos that specifically allow this, then there is nothing illegal about it. It's the same thing with a hammer. You can use it for legal or illegal actions, but that doesn't make the hammer an illegal tool...

By watching videos or listening to videos, you make a non-digital copy of it in your mind! Is that legal? If you hum the song, is it illegal reproduction? If you describe the video to a friend, is that unauthorized reproduction? If you formulate a critique of it, is it an illegal derieved work? Who gets payed in these cases?

Here comes the hilarious twisted language to justify 'sharing'.

Yes, as long the musician licensed his/her work in a way that let you do it. In some cases you also allowed to reuse that music in your work.

Take a look at:

https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ https://www.jamendo.com/start http://ccmixter.org/

I’m not talking music that is under a CC license - I’m talking lil bow wow and the spice girls.

It's the same. It's not "who is?", it's "have you a license to do it?". If you have a license to reshare spice girls works, and you want to use funkwhale, well, you can.

Nine Inch Nails have CC licensed albums. So "being famous" and "music that is under a CC license" is not mutually exclusive...

I don’t think there is anyone on HN confused on that. I’m sorry if it slipped beyond you but I’m specifically talking music people don’t have permission or the rights to sharing.

The problem was with how you phrased your original comment. You implied that it (the tool?) is not legal because it offers "the ability to share your music online". This is why people started replying in this sense.

It depends on who you are sharing with and the context.

I could setup a server with my music collection and give access to my friends. That is fair-use.