I’m part of a small group of Jr Self Taught Web Developers who were recently brainstorming ideas for a Group Project App we could put together and actually create a user base.

I offered up the suggestion of a podcast application which would have the major feature of being akin to YouTube Sponsor Block, but specifically for podcast episodes.

Essentially, a user contributed database of timestamps for podcast episodes where the mention of cutting to sponsored ads or mentions of sponsorships would be marked so they could be edited out of the episode and then the user could also download said episode where ads are cut out of the final audio file.

My idea was shot down due to fears of possibly infringing on copyright and we ended up with going with another idea. I’m certainly not upset, and am actually excited with the project idea we did choose, but it did get me wondering about whether this idea actually could have legal implications.

I know specifically with YouTube there appears to be a sort of legal loophole that prevents Google from suing projects like invidious, yt-dlp, and YouTube Sponsor Block, but am unaware of the specific details as to how this works.

Thusly, I just wanted to ask if anyone has any insights into whether this project idea would incur any legal infractions from the likes of IheartRadio and other media platforms?

To be clear, I’m not seeking legal advice here, and I’ll be taking any responses with a grain of salt, but I just wanted to see if anyone knows anything on this subject and the legal concerns raised.

I very much dislike being advertised to and podcasts are one of the last bastions of media where advertisements still come up regularly and I’d love to make this application for those who are frustrated with how often they have to skip through sponsor mentions.

Thanks in advance.

  • federalreverse-old@feddit.de
    0·
    6 months ago

    It likely won’t work (well), because lots of podcasts actually use Megaphone and similar services that add interest-based ads into your download. I.e. ads can be of variable length or there may even be no ads, because the podcast targets the US but you’re downloading from Pakistan.

    • z3rOR0ne@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      6 months ago

      I see. I think there might be an issue in redistribution to a certain extent. Some podcasts you can download directly from their website using RSS feeds and command line tools like wget. But a lot of those don’t directly have sponsor mentions, but if they do, those are easily removed because they aren’t injected at download time.

      Others would require download using a service like Spotify, etc. And then editing the audio file and then redistributing it from a centralized data store, and that’s where I believe the legal question would certain gain more validity

      Rather than just providing the timestamps and running a script that removes those clips prior to download from another source (like how the sponsor block api can be queried to cut out sponsor menttions using a command line flag from yt-dlp prior to download), which I believe would fall into more of a legal grey area.

      But yeah, injection of ads based off of location is one potential hiccup I had considered when thinking on the proposed app’s implementation. Unless the ads are always loaded at a specific timestamp in the episode, this means that the length of the ads would be of varying length, making it less likely to work consistently, as you indicated.

      So the only way would be to keep the audio files with the sponsor mentions removed in a centralized data store to be redistributed from, which I’m pretty sure isn’t legal…not sure though.

      Thanks for the insights!

      • ahto@feddit.de
        0·
        6 months ago

        Even if you’re downloading the file directly from the URL found in the RSS feed, that doesn’t mean that ads can’t be dynamically injected into the file. A URL like https://download.my.podcast/episode4.mp3 can still be answered by a script that serves a custom version of the podcast with region specific ads.

      • federalreverse-old@feddit.de
        0·
        6 months ago

        Ftr: I was talking about regular RSS feeds+MP3 downloads, not Spotify exclusives.

        If you really wanted to do something about Spotify exclusives, the likely only way to do this legally is building a custom Spotify client—Spotify allows custom clients, but only for paying customers, not for free users.