[Announcement] Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads · Issue #14404 · yt-dlp/yt-dlp
github.com
Beginning very soon, you'll need to have Deno (or another supported JavaScript runtime) installed to keep YouTube downloads working as normal. Why? Up until now, yt-dlp has been able to use its bui...

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.org/post/1872634

So, starting now, Google started mandating full JS for YT, effectively breaking all third-party clients and locking the site to their official client.

This reeks of DRM.

UPDATE: Installing Deno and installing yt-dlp through PyPi fixes yt-dlp but the very idea that Google is mandating JS to lock down YT in an attempt at pseudo-DRM is still crappy.

UPDATE #2: inv.nadeko.net is working again for now.

  • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    DRM is expensive. Very expensive in fact because it is basically non-trivial encryption.

    A website with as much traffic as YouTube cannot afford to DRM every single video stream. There just isn’t enough processing power and electricity available.

    Netflix et al. have a tiny fraction of YouTube’s traffic with more income per user due to subscriptions.

    Plus YouTube’s storage demands are many orders of magnitude larger. A maximum upper bound for Netflix is 1 PB I’d imagine. Archiveteam alone has selectively downloaded more than 3 PB. YouTube has, I’d imagine, a double digit exabyte amount of data stored + backups.