Google Bars Site That Converts YouTube Songs Into MP3s 177
An anonymous reader writes "Google is apparently cracking down on a popular site that converts the music from YouTube videos into MP3s. YouTube-MP3.org has received a letter from Google, YouTube's parent company, notifying the site operators that converting videos this way violates YouTube's terms of service, according to the blog TorrentFreak, which said it has seen the letter. In addition, YouTube apparently has blocked YouTube-MP3.org's servers from accessing the site."
How stupid, and useless (Score:3, Informative)
It is trivial to extract the audio from a youtube video and convert it to an mp3. There are tools on Windows, Linux, and OSX that can do that without a lot of effort. So, shutting down this site is, IMO, an exercise in futility.
Re:How stupid, and useless (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm pretty sure they know that is impossible to stop the not completely tech challenged user from doing this himself, but those are a) a minority b) are mostly indistinguishable from normal users so theyy probably don't care.
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and what about the children... ohhh think of the children.
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AND funding terrorism...
You forgot to add that. FTFY
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Even worse, if it pushes people who previously used the online solutions in to using downloaded tools, it's putting a lot of users in harms way with regards to malware.
There's got to be a better solution to malware than making everyone use cloud-based services for everything.
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Re:How stupid, and useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How stupid, and useless (Score:5, Insightful)
It is trivial to extract the audio from a youtube video and convert it to an mp3. There are tools on Windows, Linux, and OSX that can do that without a lot of effort. So, shutting down this site is, IMO, an exercise in futility.
I suspect that you are underestimating the degree of laziness, technical ignorance, and futzing-with-youtube-on-computers-they-can't-install-stuff-on-because-they-are-at-work/school, at play here.
Obviously, Google knows that you can do whatever you damn well want with the video once you've downloaded it(and, while they receive no further ad revenue, it also doesn't cost them anything further, and they have no way of going after you, so they aren't going to bother).
I suspect, though, that Google takes a dim view of tools, usable even by morons, that eat their bandwidth, throw away any ads they serve, and quite possibly upset the RIAA and friends without any benefit to Google.
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That last part of your comment might be the key. If Google were to neglect this kind of infringement, the music and film industries associations could find grounds to claim that Google is damaging their businesses.
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If Google were to neglect this kind of infringement, the music and film industries associations could find grounds to claim that Google is damaging their businesses.
Or they could use it as grounds to pull their music videos and Google loses out on the 15-30 seconds of a commercial they show before them.
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"you can do whatever you damn well want with the video once you've downloaded it"
To supplement your point: When you say something like this to most people, they respond: "But I don't download YouTube videos -- I just watch them on the website!"
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$ cd
$ ffmpeg -i FlashFoO bar.mp3
Done...
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If you're already on Linux and using ffmpeg, why not encode it as .ogg? Unless you have to accomodate a poor portable media player, but even most of those support it now.
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If you're already on Linux and using ffmpeg, why not encode it as .ogg?
Because it is already an mp3 stream, and re-encoding into another lossy format would make the quality even worse.
Re:How stupid, and useless (Score:4, Informative)
>>>Because it is already an mp3 stream
Usually it's an MPEG4 codec, like AAC or AACplusSBR. Converting to mp3 is a downgrade.
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and reencoding from mp3 to mp3 is better? what about dumping the stream part?
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Why even re-encode it? Usually it's straight MP4, or an MP4 wrapped in an FLV container. Suck out the aac, put it back in an audio-only MP4 - nearly anything can play it.
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Buy a cheap Android phone with no minutes (Score:2)
N900 or N9 in USA (Score:2)
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You must be young. Too many of us ripped our cd's to ogg, only to find that no sub-$100 mp3 player seems to play them. Then you have the fun of re-ripping your multitudes of cds, or transcoding them all to mp3, losing even more quality.
"Only to find"?
Are you saying that you ripped all your files to OGG expecting to be able to do that *before* you checked?
I've nothing against the Ogg audio format- I think it's a good idea, and probably technically better than MP3. However, I ripped all my music files to MP3 because I knew that- though it was far from the best codec around- it was as near universally supported as makes no difference.
Ogg has *never* been as widely supported as MP3, and primarily used by tech-savvy users who ought to kn
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Linux: /tmp
$ cd
$ ffmpeg -i FlashFoO bar.mp3
Done...
If I recall correctly, newer versions of Flash player no longer put stuff in /tmp and you have to dig through /proc instead. But I agree with one of your responses above that you should probably just make it output AAC since that's usually the format it's in (it goes way faster that way, too).
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No, it's still in /tmp, but it's immediately unlinked so the file still exists while the flash instance is running. Here's a command line I found to do the /proc digging and relink the files in /tmp for you. (obviously you must run this before closing the flash player that is holding the file in existence):
for h in `find /proc/*/fd -ilname "/tmp/Flash*" 2>/dev/null`; do ln -s "$h" `readlink "$h" | cut -d' ' -f1`; done
Source: http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/7991/recover-tmp-flash-videos-deleted [commandlinefu.com]
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The nice thing about that site was google song copy link download done in around 10 seconds or so.
Sure you can do it for yourself but it is slower a lot slower. On the negative side sometimes its a poor version of the song you wanted plus the sound quality is never that good. Doing it yourself it is just as crappy but it takes longer.
The other good thing was for your typical house party there is always someone with a desire for some song you don't have and wouldn't want in your collection you could just
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They are simply stopping a leecher, they don't care about people doing it for themselves.
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Re:How stupid, and useless (Score:4, Insightful)
True. It's also pretty damn easy to recover the .avi, .mp4, or .flv video and process it client-side. Whether it infringes copyright or not, what you do with ffmpeg on files that reside client-side, etc., is your problem, not Google's.
Where this website crossed the line is in trying to monetize it by being a wrapper around YouTube.
Full disclosure: My position on the issue can be summarized as "fuck streaming [slashdot.org]." Streaming media is the memory hole [wikipedia.org] of 1984. For free/fan-based content that doesn't infringe (e.g. fair use), it's nice to know that you can keep your favorite content, even after your friends deactivate their accounts, or if a lawyer claiming ownership of a 2-second sample in a 3-minute video disagrees with you.
Re:How stupid, and useless (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why I save EVERYTHING that I really like. You can't count on anything online still being there tomorrow, much less ten years down the road.
Especially if it's something not many people care about. This is why people like Jason Scott (from textfiles.org) are my heroes.
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Re:How stupid, and useless (Score:5, Informative)
Err, I think you mean textfiles.com. Unless you meant to point at the domain squatter instead...
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Oops, my bad!
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I've only ever bothered to do so with one song: a song that I like from my Pandora station that isn't available for sale anywhere physical or digital (a remix from an old import CD). I found it on a different, legal on-demand streaming music service and captured the audio.
For anything else, though, $1 is worth far less than the ten minutes it takes to do this process, so I just buy the song.
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Not even eBay, or purchasing the import CD used some other way?
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Man I tried. Could not find it in a year of looking. I was contemplating trying to capture Pandora for hours at a time so I could grab the song when it happened to play, then I found it on one of the newer sites where you can request specific songs.
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It is trivial to extract the audio from a youtube video and convert it to an mp3. There are tools on Windows, Linux, and OSX that can do that without a lot of effort. So, shutting down this site is, IMO, an exercise in futility.
It's only futile if Google's goal is to prevent people from transcoding audio from a video into an MP3 (afterall, so far, there's no DRM that can keep someone from plugging the analog audio-out cable from their computer into their sound card though I'm sure some day RIAA and MPAA will make sure we have analog fingerprints on all of our outputs that would close this analog hole). However, if Google's goal is to appease the RIAA and make it appear as though they are helping to protected RIAA's rights, then p
Interactivity defeats the analog hole (Score:2)
afterall, so far, there's no DRM that can keep someone from plugging the analog audio-out cable from their computer into their sound card though I'm sure some day RIAA and MPAA will make sure we have analog fingerprints on all of our outputs that would close this analog hole
One way to work around the analog hole is by making a work interactive because a walkthrough video is no substitute for playing it yourself. That might be part of why MPAA members such as Disney and WB have started subsidiaries that develop video games.
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THat its trivial to do is irrelevant. They are fully within their rights to block this usage, since..
A) its basically a ticking legal timebomb
B) it gets them 0 revenue (the automated servers skip the ads
C) it costs them money (the servers are downloading the videos)
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So what? (Score:2)
Browser Extensions (Score:5, Informative)
What about sites that host browser extensions/add-ons/plug-ins? Opera, Chrome and Firefox all have extensions that will do this right from the YouTube page with a single click.
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Most of those actually use an interim server like the one in the article to make the conversion, so could be blocked. Even those that don't frequently have problems. Youtube keeps adjusting the way it streams the media files to try and optimize overall bandwidth use and performance, and every time they make a change it breaks the plugins for a few days. That said, I don't think they can outright block them without blocking the media itself; a browser that allowed websites to query every plugin installed wou
Re:Browser Extensions (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it's really easy to do it yourself, and it works extremely well in Firefox. It'll work with most sites and is unblockable basically. The sites it won't work with are sites that do exclusive streaming (no caching and play/pause/rewind/etc requires are handled by the server which changes its bitstream) and sites that break the video into tiny segments and the player dynamically changes the quality.
What you need is a firefox extension called "Live HTTP Headers" that lets you see HTTP headers as they scroll by, and something like Flashblock or NoScript that prevents running of flash (HTML5 video isn't that prevalent yet and only big ones like YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion support it while everyone else still uses flash).
The method is to load the page up, then open the Live HTTP Header window. Click the flash player and let it load and start the video. One of the things Live HTTP Headers will have captured is... the URL for the media (look for MIME type video/flv or video/mp4). Copy that URL and paste it in a browser tab (which also gives you cookies). If you don't have a handler, it'll ask to download. If you do, block the site temporarily and use NoScript to right-click and download it.
This method works because it relies on the fact that most video sites retrieve video via HTTP or HTTPS (could be a Flash limitation) rather than streaming the video (which requires server work) and using HTTP/HTTPS makes it more CDN-friendly since it's a static file.
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I'm pretty sure that some of the video downloader plugins for Firefox already work this way.
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Chrome Web Store forbids extensions that download YouTube videos. The one I use [spoi.com] has a special Web Store version that cuts out that feature but the site where you can get the "Full" edition of the extension is listed IIRC.
That tool just figures out the url of the media files backing the YouTube video though, you still have to do all the conversion work yourself if you want it in a different format or just want the audio from it.
Of course I only use it to save perfectly legal bits of sound bites and so forth
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And also programs like Orbit Downloader, clive, cclive, etc. :)
Boy that sucks. (Score:2)
Boy, that sucks. If only there were developers working on cure this ill. Perhaps users of this very site [slashdot.org]. Maybe they could solve the problem with a firefox extension [mozilla.org]?
Too bad. Because I would have totally loved that to be a real thing.
Protip: It is, and I'm being cagey.
And not a single f**k was given... (Score:5, Informative)
Cloud:
- Keepvid: http://keepvid.com/
- Vixy: http://vixy.net/
- Saveyoutube: http://saveyoutube.com/
- Savevid: http://www.savevid.com/
- More: www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=youtube+video+download
Firefox addons:
- Download Flash and Video: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-flash-and-video/?src=search
- YouTube Download: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-download/?src=search
- 1-Click YouTube Video Download: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1-click-youtube-video-download/?src=search
- Download YouTube Videos as MP4 and FLV: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-youtube/?src=search
- More: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search/?q=firefox+download&appver=&platform=
Chrome extentions:
- YouTube Downloader: MP3 / HD Video: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hokfcbmfpgeajcgkaeigohghnkhjmcbj
- FVD Video Downloader: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lfmhcpmkbdkbgbmkjoiopeeegenkdikp
Manually:
- HOWTO: Download FLV videos from YouTube manually: http://inspirated.com/2007/08/24/howto-download-flv-videos-from-youtube-manually
Dear Google,
give up. LOL, noobs...
Regards,
NotASingleF**k.
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You really think that is what this is about? It's about getting them of the hook from a legal liability standpoint. Obviously they cannot control the client but they can control requests made through another web site....
Sensationalist Title (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why this article is of interest.
A site does something which goes against youtube's TOS - Google changes something in Youtube to block it - and sends a letter to the owner of the website. So?
If you Google it - you still get search results, and Google didn't do any tricks which we find immoral.
Why is this an article? What were we expecting? How could Google have dealth with it better?
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^ I agree with this
It was nice of Google to send them a letter though..
Audacity (Score:3)
I used to use Audacity for this, and it worked well. However, the audio quality on YouTube is noticeably awful.
I don't think they need to block these sites. The poor quality is what finally pushed me to start purchasing songs.
Easy on Linux (Score:2)
pacman (Score:2)
pacman -S youtube-dl (arch)
How long until Namco Bandai cease-and-desists the maintainer of this method?
How I interpreted the headline. (Score:4, Insightful)
A Google service for bars called "Google Bars" that converts youtube songs into MP3.
And site is back to working again (Score:2)
The mods over at youtube-mp3.org have already fixed the problem, probably swapped ip's or something.
the site is back up working 100%...
youtube/google has failed and original post is no longer relevant.
Browser plugin (Score:2)
This could easily be replaced with a browser plugin. Then there's no one to C&D because the author of such a plugin need never agree to Googles TOS. Google would have to C&D their users directly.
should have rickrolled them (Score:2)
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Or even Zwaluw ach Zwaluw [youtube.com] by Max & Betsie Anders.
WARNING: NSFPWFE (Not suitable for people with functioning ears).
But that would probably violate their corporate motto "do no evil".
As if this stops anything (Score:2)
Useless site (Score:2)
I uploaded a video last night (Score:4, Interesting)
Youtube is accusing me of plagiarizing, because i put a PUBLIC DOMAIN audio track of "The Star Spangled Banner" in the video. Their automatic software however has decided this is false positive enough with someone else's recording of OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM (!?) to block my video. I disputed the claim, linked to the public domain audio source, and now I have until July 18 to twiddle my thumbs while Youtube placates the copyright trolls.
Our intellectual property system is an absurdity that hinders creativity, I want to live in a just and sane society. Our intellectual property system is incompatible with being fixed, and any move to a more sane status quo requires that it be made abundantly clear to everyone that laws put on the books in the days of cassette tapes do not work in a world of TCP/IP.
I support anything and everything that directly undermines the enforcement of intellectual property laws. Civil Disobedience is what is needed, civil disobedience here in this context is any and all actions that are sane and reasonable consumer actions of YOUR CULTURE but obviously not in line with intellectual property letter of the law. Supporting artists does not mean supporting the parasitical corporations and laws that merely operate on a rent seeking basis, and add no value to our culture or our creativity.
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if a corporation is large enough to serve a major social function of my culture, it is open season to insist it abide by social norms. again, of course, the legal status is that a corporation is not a government entity, and therefore not bound by public demands. this is a nice sentiment in a world where adequate alternative choices exist. but we're not talking about a free market situation, we're talking about a oligarchy, domination by a handful. in such a corporate oligarchy, the corporations have taken o
This is about teaching people to google! (Score:2)
Okay, look, we all know how easy this stuff is to get around. That is the whole point. Google wants to educate the public on how to use computers for getting copies of music better.
First off, Google knows you can easily get a better copy of the song by using google. But people are lazy and don't to go thru instructions on how to do anything, they just want to pop an address in and out comes whatever they want. Google isn't happy about this. See, google makes a search engine, and if you always us
Weird... (Score:2)
So I just tried it out, it seems to work just fine..huh.
Why is this news? (Score:2)
And so it begins (Score:2)
Now that they are both provider and in effect produce, the shoe is on the other foot
What ever happened to fair use? Oh, that is right the AA's have about stamped that out.
good (Score:2)
this should keep the MAFIAA quiet for a while.
it's an ineffective token move, no doubt designed to placate an ineffective and token business model and keep them off their back for a bit.
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The original summary stated that Google had removed the site from their search results. That to me is censorship.
No, I did not read the article, so I guess that's what I get for commenting on what was written in the summary.
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The original summary stated that Google had removed the site from their search results.
I have been bit by that as well. It throws me, since we can not change our posts... So, sorry for the assumption.
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Not that Google isn't evil when it suits them, but I'm relatively certain that this is a CYA move to keep YouTube from being sued by the **AA using whatever made-up laws their lawyers have pushed through to make this illegal.
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Remember kids -- Google took the solemn pinky oath to Not Be Evil, so the removal of YouTube-MP3.com from their search results is for your own good. And remember, Youtube is staunchly against copyright violation and has never violated any copyright or made copyrighted media available to unauthorized parties -- ever.
Evil is not always black and white. If the choice is between allowing videos to be transcoded to MP3's or having RIAA pull down every song on Youtube because they feel they are going to eat into MP3 sales, which choice would the average user consider to be more evil?
Re:Funny block... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're blocking their servers from downloading the videos. They aren't removing it from their search results. That's exactly what I'd do in their case. They'll simply feed it URLs, see who connects to download the video, block the IP, and repeat.
This seems like a complete non-story to me. But then, I've never heard of that site before. If it is actually popular, I can see why that alone would make it news-worthy. As a technical person, I'd look for a browser plugin to download the video, then a desktop app to rip the audio. Searching for a website which automates the process wouldn't have even occurred to me. It's funny how being technical can cause you to miss the boat on some trends just because the problem addressed was just never a problem for you in the first place..
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Anyone who can't figure out how to download the video for himself, then rip an MP3 from the video, doesn't deserve to listen to the music. Geez, Louise - you don't even have to be a Linux guru to figure this stuff out!
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Indeed.
Previously, I have done as the GGP described. Lost the plugin and converter in a reformat (curse you, Windows!), and you know what? It was less of a hassle to just use a website to convert it on those rare occasions that I actually *did* want to download a Youtube video as an MP3, than it would have been to reinstall and configure the special software to do it. I don't do it that often, so I don't need the sort of instant capabilities of a browser plugin.
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Once you figure it out, you can use this knowledge to extract audio or video portions from video sources other than YouTube. You also have the freedom of not relying on a third party service to extract the audio for you.
There isn't even a need to figure out anything. It's already been figured. You only need to perform a web search.
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i've read their site... what the hell does it actually do? i.e. which service(s) is it scumming the content from?
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interesting. i don't use windows, but if it can really find the stuff i look for and at decent bitrates, it could save me some hours. i'll keep it in mind.
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I personally didn't feel like "figuring it out" across three different platforms for something I only used about twice a month.
Honestly, if I'm listening to an interview or a standup routine from Youtube, I don't NEED the video of someone talking. And if I'm anywhere where bandwidth is limited or just plain sucks, I appreciate having an MP3 converter two clicks away that doesn't require me to horse the video across a line that's struggling to stay above dialup levels.
Re:Funny block... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who can't figure out how to download the video for himself, then rip an MP3 from the video, doesn't deserve to listen to the music
That's like saying anyone who can't figure out how to install a tap doesn't deserve water.
This kind of attitude LOWERS the value of technical people. You are basically saying that this is the standard that separate the normal people from the retards.
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"You are basically saying that this is the standard that separate the normal people from the retards."
Welllllll - let's just say that a lot of elementary school age children can figure it out for themselves. One of whom is closely related to me. I walked in his room, looked over his shoulder, and asked, "What you doing, Son?" "Oh, I like this song, so I'm piping it through VLC and saving the audio so that I can play it back on my iPod."
My answer? "Son, you have poor taste in music. Who the hell is this
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Nickelback is a group.
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Personally for three years I thought it was just a derisive term for a particularly talentless band.
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...a desktop app to rip the audio...
No excuse for mousey-clicky, simply type into the command line:
ffmpeg -i my_video_file.avi extracted_audio.mp3
mplayer -dumpaudio my_video_file.avi -dumpfile extracted_audio.mp3
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yeah, that part is easy. Now, from the command line, can you provide something to extract the music from all the video listed at http://www.youtube.com/music [youtube.com], skipping ads ?
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I though it was abandonned, thanks for pointing out it was alive again :)
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Will youtube.com sue real.com next?
BTW IANAL but I think it's legal to download YouTube video because of the Betamax case. I suspect YouTube-MP3.org may have been targeted because a) they purloined their trademark and b) YouTube-MP3.org acts as a third party "distributing" copyrighted works (not merely Betamaxing it for time-shifting) because they act as an intermediary between YouTube and the end user. It's the low-hanging fruit for YouTube -- if they can succeed against YouTube-MP3.org then probably the next target will be a similar site that doesn't mimic their trademark. Then if they succeed with that maybe they'll even try their luck with going after tool vendors (though probably at first one smaller than real.com), thereby overturning Betamax.
Why bother going after anyone else? It costs money to litigate. Google went after these guys for three reasons:
1) They infringed on Youtube's trademark.
2) They're wasting Youtube's bandwidth.
3) Shutting them down gives Google proof they're protecting IP when the **AA's come knocking on the door.
Anyone with half a brain can find an alternate way to scrape the audio substate from a Youtube video.
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it's blocked from converting new videos. they still have cached mp3s of all the videos they've previously converted.