Dear NewPipe community and other beloved creatures, You might have already noticed this: Searching “NewPipe” via Google will yield plenty information about the project, but a link to the official website is missing. This is because Google submitted to a DMCA takedown notice from a French record label, “Because Music”. The notice demands removing our homepage newpipe.net from their search listings along with a set of other domains completely unrelated to our project. The DMCA takedown notice was published in the Lumen database by Google themselves. While worse things could have happened as the result of such a takedown request, Google’s unlisting of our homepage creates a variety of problems. Given the fact that Google no longer counts visits to our site, it will lose relevance. As a result, websites for fake clones of NewPipe that mimic our homepage will tend to rank higher in the results. This could ultimately cause users to fall for such scams. The team is currently discussing what to do about the situation. We are considering taking legal action. If you are a lawyer and have experience with this and would like to help us, please contact us via email (team(at)newpipe.net). Regards, Schabi
If there’s anything us regular users can do to help, please let us know. This is bullshit.
That’s totally not a massive conflict of interest
I thought the DMCA was used for people or organizations that uploaded or shared infringing material? Isn’t Newpipe just playing whats freely available on youtube/peertube/soundcloud etc? I could be wrong of course but this seems like an abuse, good luck I hope you can fight this!
This should be a pretty cut and dry false takedown. Newpipe doesn’t host any content.
The important part is DMCA is under penalty of perjury, so they nees to demand that be enforced.
You can reach out to the EFF. They took an interest in youtube-dl. However you have a major hurdle to overcome:
RIAA argues that since youtube-dl could be used to download music owned by RIAA-member labels, no one should be able to use the tool, even for completely lawful purposes.
This is an egregious abuse of the notice-and-takedown system, which is intended to resolve disputes over allegedly infringing material online. Again, youtube-dl doesn’t use RIAA-member labels’ music in any way. The makers of youtube-dl simply shared information with the public about how to perform a certain task—one with many completely lawful applications.
IANAL but probably shouldn’t have video on the site showing it downloading copyrighted music. I think that’s the crux here.
https://www.eff.org/about/contact
Good luck, but I think you kinda shot yourself in the foot.
EDIT: if you read the complaint, it’s not for hosting content, it’s Anticircumvention. 17 U.S.C. Sec. 1201 (a)(2)
(2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that—
(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
© is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.
probably shouldn’t have video on the site showing it downloading copyrighted music
This is an extremely good point. Show it downloading something in the public domain if anything at all. Not Selina Gomez “official.” Same as what Kodi had to do with add-ons. Even if it can be used to infringe, separate the main instance from that. It’s not necessary to win the DMCA fight, but it’s an unnecessary target.