[conspire] apt-get install youtube-dl

[Nick Moffitt]

Rick Moen:
> I put together that page a while ago, based on the best information I
> had at the time, but was well aware that maintenance / updating is
> key, as the major video streaming services continue to fool with their
> Javascript-based obfuscation in an attempt to discourage downloaders /
> offline viewers.

I occasionally speculate on the motivations for this.  Given past
history with things like rtsp and mms, where obfuscation like this is
really effective, I remain somewhat impressed with how effectively clive
is able to keep up.  I can't help but wonder if deliberate obfuscation
to thwart tools like clive could be more effective than they are now.

It's possible that they're taking a Great Firewall of China approach:
build the pons asinorum instead of the iron curtain.  Send enough random
RSTs to people who can't figure out VPNs and you keep the general trend
in the population aligned with your aims.  Shuffle locations enough, and
the bulk of the folks with the three month old copy of YTBDLD.EXE will
give up and sit through the ads.

Gootle and YouTube have certainly cracked down on live playing
applications, though.  Totem (the default movie player in GNOME, which
has a plugin to browse YouTube as easily as any collection of videos
stored locally) ran into this little objection from above:

	https://code.google.com/p/gdata-issues/issues/detail?id=2457

In the face of all of this, I have to wonder if the shifting locations
and XML structures and JavaScript shenanigans aren't simply development
teams blithely rolling out arbitrary changes for their own internal
reasons.  Better to assume good faith, or at least unmenacing idiocy, I
suppose.

-- 
"Ill-informed qmail-bashing is better than no
qmail-bashing at all."
        --Don Marti