Technically, this is a reply to a comment by Dmitri Pavlov. But it is only tangentially related to the discussion in Gowers's blog. At the same time, I see in it a good occasion to start a discussion of issues related to the infamous by now copyright law. This notion had some worthwhile components just 10 years ago. Now it looks like a complete nonsense obstructing progress. It does not even succeed in making big movie studios and music labels (the main defenders of extreme forms of the copyright law) richer. At the very least, no proof was ever offered.
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Dear Dmitri,
Thanks a lot. You certainly know that I am not an expert in
software. I am not using UNIX, I am using Windows, and I have no idea what to
do with your code. I definitely have the latest version of Adobe flash, or at
least the previous one. I doubt that there is some version released in March
which is required to deal with a video posted more than a year ago.
The browsers I use most of the time, Firefox and Opera, have
several extensions allowing downloading almost everything by just pressing a
button and selecting the quality of the stream. These extensions don’t see any
video content on Simons’s page.
I got the idea, and it looks like I will be able download
these files even without your list. But your list will save me a lot of time, if
I decide to do this (at the time, I am not inclined).
But this does not mean that files are not protected in the
legal sense. Files are not protected if there is either a download button, or
a statement like the following: "You are free to inspect our code and download our
videos if you will find a way to do this". Your suggestion amounts to
doing the latter without permission.
A third party software told me that it is able to see the
video (actually, another one, much more interesting for me), but will not
download it because this would be illegal. Moreover, the software stated that I
have only one legal option to have the video in my computer: to take
screenshots of each frame.
“If they were aware of
this issue,
they would almost certainly
add HTML5 video elements and direct download
links.”
You see, I contacted a mathematician who is to a big extent
responsible for this whole program of interviews, posting of them, etc. He agreed
that videos should be downloadable, and said that he will contact appropriate
persons. I have no reasons not to trust him. So, the people at the Simons
foundation are aware of this for more than a year and did nothing.
Even if these links would be on the page (I am not able to
see them, and I don’t know what do you mean by “plain video URLs are embedded in the text.”), there are 26 files
for Lovasz alone. This is a far cry from being convenient. I will need to use
an Adobe video editor (which I accidentally do have on another computer by a
reason completely independent from mathematics – most mathematicians don’t), and to
glue them in one usable file. It would be even possible to add a menu with
direct links to these 26 parts, very much like on a DVD or a Blu-ray disc. But,
frankly, why should I to this? Is Simons’s salary (which he determines himself,
being the president and the CEO of his company at the same time) not sufficient
to make a small charitable contribution and hire a local student to do some primitive
video-editing? His salary a year or two ago was over 2 billions per year. I did
not check the latest available data.
Concerning youtube.com, I would like to say that if
something looks like an active attempt to protect a video for you, it is not
necessarily so for others. Personally, I don’t care how their links are
generated. For me, it is enough to have a button (even three different!) at my
browser which will find this link without my participation and will download
the file, or even several simultaneously. Moreover, I doubt that youtube.com
really wants to protect videos from downloading. They have a lot of 1080p (Full
HD) videos, and I don’t know any way to see them in 1080px high window at youtube site. There
are two choices: a smaller window, or a full screen. I haven’t seen a computer
monitor with exactly 1080px height. Anyhow, the one I have is 1600px high, and upconverting to this size leads to a noticeable decrease of quality. The only
meaningful option for 1080p content is to download it.
Buy the way, the Simons foundation site suffers from a similar, but
much more severe problem. The size of the video window appears to be small and
fixed. And they may stream into it 1080p content; this was the case with the
video I wanted to watch a year+ ago. A lot of bandwidth is wasted. And my ISP
hardly can handle streaming 1080p content anyhow.
Please, do not think that I am an admirer of youtube.com
policies. Nothing there is permanent, i.e. everything potentially interesting
should be downloaded. Their crackdown on the alleged (no proof is needed)
copyright violators is the online version of the last year raids of the US
special forces in several countries simultaneously.
Next post: To appear.
