Re: (was Re: Adding a description text property for a track) non-free javascript and ytdl

[Yuchen Pei]

On Fri 2022-03-18 16:23:04 -0400, Yoni Rabkin wrote:

> Yoni Rabkin <yoni@rabkins.net> writes:
>
>> I realized that I don't know a lot about ytdl/youtube-dl and went to
>> have a look. As a result, I came across a potential show-stopper for
>> inclusion in Emms in any form.
>>
>> I was concerned when I saw that ytdl/youtube-dl has a javascript
>> interpreter built-in.
>>
>> I found the following thread that reports that ytdl/youtube-dl downloads
>> and runs non-free javascript automatically as part of accessing the
>> sites it supports:
>> https://trisquel.info/en/forum/do-youtube-dlhtml5-video-everywhere-run-nonfree-js
>>
>> The thread is from back in 2017. Is this still the case? If so, is there
>> a libre version of ytdl?
>
> I bit more research reveals that this concern is real. Apparently there
> is a fork called hypervideo which removes the non-free parts:
> https://notabug.org/heckyel/hypervideo

It is not clear to me what non-free parts hypervideo has removed from
youtube-dl, given youtube-dl is under Public Domain and the hypervideo
readme does not explain.  It definitely has not removed the JS
interpreter
<https://notabug.org/heckyel/hypervideo/src/master/hypervideo_dl/extractor/youtube.py#L1816>.

Best,
Yuchen

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