A German court has ruled that the open-source download manager JDownloader2 is forbidden. The tool can be used to record DRM protected video streams. The developer of the software argues that the record feature has been removed and was only available in nightly builds.
A developer added the functionality on a development server which automatically builds new versions of the software every five minutes. As JDownloader is open-source, everyone can add code to it, which happened in this case.
Appwork, a company that sponsors the development of JDownloader2 argues that the disputed download feature of the RTMPE streams is no longer present in recent builds of the software and has posted a statement on the JDownloader2 website.
The software was actually already forbidden since the 25th of April, when a court in Hamburg banned the software. That the news broke today is because the ruling got published. The court ruled that the software can be used to record videos that are streamed using the RTMPE protocol.
This protocol, also known as protected streaming, is developed by Adobe and is used to protect movies on e.g Hulu.com and videos on the Fifa website. But also protected videos from the video portal of the German commercial TV station ProSiebenSat 1 could be recorded and the German court ruled that as unlawfully.
In 2012 another German court forbid similar software for similar reasons.
