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You're just saying that Cobalt is small and non-profit so they must be good and YouTube and ByteDance are big and rich so they must be evil. But if you only loo

You're just saying that Cobalt is small and non-profit so they must be good and YouTube and ByteDance are big and rich so they must be evil. But if you only look that what they are actually doing here, it's very similar: bypassing protections to use a service in a way that the service provider doesn't like.

phoronixrly 2y ago
Bytedance and youtube are evil, but not beacause they are big and rich. Cobalt is good, but not because they are small and a non-profit.
snvy 2y ago
Cobalt is bypassing protections to allow legitimate Youtube users to download single videos without causing harm and with no monetary incentives. Bytedance is mass downloading thounsands of videos, all for monetary incentives while heavily breaking the TOS and potentially ignoring copyright laws. Similar, but one is doing way more harm than the other.
- whywhywhywhy 2y ago
  > and with no monetary incentives Donations are a monetary incentive > while heavily breaking the TOS and potentially ignoring copyright laws Cobalt also breaks the TOS and ignores copyright laws, personally I don't think that matters but having a double standard when one company does it "It's ok when they do it" and when one you don't like does it you try to use copyright laws and TOS as a weapon just makes me think it really isn't about TOS or copyright is it. Also just gives YouTube ammunition to impose stricter protection against smaller violators like cobalt, like self running yt-dlp
  - rileyboi 2y ago
    [dead]
loloquwowndueo 2y ago
If bytedance are so big and rich why don’t they implement their own scraping solution instead of abusing a small service like cobalt.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  ...Because someone scraping from a Bytedance IP range is not necessarily Bytedance, just like requests from an AWS IP do not imply Amazon authored the spider
skeaker 2y ago
In isolation, a thief masquerading as a security system technician and an actual technician both do good work by checking on your home security. You can't meaningfully say one is better than the other, because even though one is secretly casing out your home so he can rob it later, in isolation they're doing the same thing.

phoronixrly 2y ago

Bytedance and youtube are evil, but not beacause they are big and rich. Cobalt is good, but not because they are small and a non-profit.

snvy 2y ago

Cobalt is bypassing protections to allow legitimate Youtube users to download single videos without causing harm and with no monetary incentives. Bytedance is mass downloading thounsands of videos, all for monetary incentives while heavily breaking the TOS and potentially ignoring copyright laws. Similar, but one is doing way more harm than the other.

whywhywhywhy 2y ago
> and with no monetary incentives Donations are a monetary incentive > while heavily breaking the TOS and potentially ignoring copyright laws Cobalt also breaks the TOS and ignores copyright laws, personally I don't think that matters but having a double standard when one company does it "It's ok when they do it" and when one you don't like does it you try to use copyright laws and TOS as a weapon just makes me think it really isn't about TOS or copyright is it. Also just gives YouTube ammunition to impose stricter protection against smaller violators like cobalt, like self running yt-dlp
- rileyboi 2y ago
  [dead]

loloquwowndueo 2y ago

If bytedance are so big and rich why don’t they implement their own scraping solution instead of abusing a small service like cobalt.

sangnoir 2y ago
...Because someone scraping from a Bytedance IP range is not necessarily Bytedance, just like requests from an AWS IP do not imply Amazon authored the spider

skeaker 2y ago

In isolation, a thief masquerading as a security system technician and an actual technician both do good work by checking on your home security. You can't meaningfully say one is better than the other, because even though one is secretly casing out your home so he can rob it later, in isolation they're doing the same thing.