GitHub removes tools to download videos due to film industry

A large number of Widevine Dump forks on GitHub are no longer available after the US film industry requested take-downs. The code enabled downloading of videos from Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video.

The Motion Picture Association lists hundreds of repositories on GitHub and orders them to be taken offline for violation of US DMCA copyright law. These include forks of Disney-4k script, Gplay-4k downloader, Netflix-4k script and Netflix videos downloader. Many of the repositories mentioned are no longer available and show a page where GitHub references its DMCA policy, TorrentFreak notes.

The scripts made it possible to download videos from streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video. The forks were based on download tools that a GitHub user named Widevinedump posted to GitHub in late December. According to Torrentfreak, it was relatively old code that was already circulating on the Internet and some tools required users to purchase the required Content Decryption Module from Widevinedump for a fee. The tools would work.

The MPA already submitted a request to GitHub in late December to take those original scripts offline. After that, the download tools did indeed go offline, although it was unclear whether Widevinedump had done this itself or whether GitHub had taken action. In any case, hundreds of forks had already appeared on GitHub by now. According to the MPA, these used Python scripts like disneyplus.py, movie.py, and netflix.py to call the decryption module that bypasses the videos’ Widevine drm.

Widevine is Google’s DRM technology integrated into browsers, operating systems and devices that prevents users from downloading videos from streaming platforms. Content providers do not have to pay for the use of the technology. The DRM offers three levels of security, with L1 providing the highest level of protection and containing no restrictions on resolution or HDR.