The law isn't based around technical gotcha's but instead on how human judges judge things. It doesn't matter that, if in some very techincally-correct viewpoint, youtube-dl is in theory performing the same actions as a browser. youtube-dl is not a browser, you and I both know that.
User agents aren't "technical gotchas", they're a fundamental concept of the internet we enjoy today. Browsers are merely one type of user agent.
If you make content available via HTTP, then obviously any HTTP client will be able to access it. It doesn't matter that they "meant" for the content to be accessed through browsers.
If they had a proprietary client that wasn't a browser, they wouldn't be complaining at all. So why does it matter? It's about control. It's the fact that user agents act in our behalf in order to do what we want and protect our interests. They want to force us to use something that acts on their behalf, does what they want and protects their interests.
This isn't about "human judges". Those are all paid for. Industry lobbyists literally create the laws that they blindly enforce.
No, this is about a stealthy war that's being fought for the control of our computers. There will never be peace between us. Either the entire copyright industry will be destroyed or we will lose the computing freedom we all currently enjoy and the entire concept of "hacking" will be a footnote of history.
No. The law is very clear that you are allowed to make copies. For some time now you are not allowed anymore to circumvent copy protection for that, which is an illegal law but still standing, but even this is not happening here. The industry has no leg to stand on, this is just terror-by-suing, trying desperately to stiffle fundamental rights of german people.
I'm not defending the industry or the case at all. I'm just saying that saying "youtube-dl is technically a browser", and letting the defense rest its case, is the kind of technically-correct nonsense that often gets written on HN but would never work in the real world.
That's not nonsense, it's very relevant to this case and just the facts. That the judges in Hamburg are not suspectible to facts or reality is on them, not on HN.
And actually, it is what an expert courts should and do commission in such cases would explain.
