youtube-dl overwrites cookies.txt

[Troyciv]

• I've verified and I assure that I'm running youtube-dl 2018.05.18

• At least skimmed through the README, most notably the FAQ and BUGS sections

• Searched the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones

• Checked that provided video/audio/playlist URLs (if any) are alive and playable in a browser

What is the purpose of your issue?

• Bug report (encountered problems with youtube-dl)

---

What's the issue?

I saved my browser cookies in a cookies.txt file. I verified (twice!) that the file contains my cookies.

After that I ran youtube-dl --verbose --cookies ~/Downloads/cookies.txt https://globoplay.globo.com/v/6733094/programa/

Ater that I checked the cookies.txt and noticed that all the cookies got deleted from the file. Now it looks like this:

# Netscape HTTP Cookie File
# http://curl.haxx.se/rfc/cookie_spec.html
# This is a generated file!  Do not edit.

I don't think youtube-dl should overwrite the cookies.txt

---

[debug] System config: []                                                                                                                      
[debug] User config: []                                                                                                                        
[debug] Custom config: []                                                                                                                      
[debug] Command-line args: [u'--verbose', u'--cookies', u'/home/user/Downloads/cookies.txt', u'https://globoplay.globo.com/v/6733094/programa/']                                                                                                                                              
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs UTF-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8                                                                               
[debug] youtube-dl version 2018.05.18                                                                                                          
[debug] Python version 2.7.14 (CPython) - Linux-4.13.0-41-generic-x86_64-with-Ubuntu-17.10-artful                                              
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 3.3.4-2, ffprobe 3.3.4-2, rtmpdump 2.4    
[debug] Proxy map: {}        

[Troyciv]

I also tried to remove write permissions with chmod 444 cookies.txt

When running youtube-dl --verbose --cookies ~/Downloads/cookies.txt https://globoplay.globo.com/v/6733094/programa/ again, I get the following error:

[Globo] 6733094: Downloading JSON metadata                                                                                                     
[Globo] 6733094: Downloading security hash for 6733094_90_720_collection                                                                       
ERROR: Globo returned error: Video is for subscribers only. Authorization required.                                                            
Traceback (most recent call last):                                                                                                             
  File "/home/user/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 792, in extract_info                                                          
    ie_result = ie.extract(url)                                                                                                                
  File "/home/user/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 503, in extract                                                        
    ie_result = self._real_extract(url)                                
  File "/home/user/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/globo.py", line 360, in _real_extract                                                   
    '%s returned error: %s' % (self.IE_NAME, message), expected=True)  
ExtractorError: Globo returned error: Video is for subscribers only. Authorization required.

Traceback (most recent call last): 
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 174, in _run_module_as_main 
    "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name)                               
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 72, in _run_code            
    exec code in run_globals       
  File "/home/user/bin/youtube-dl/__main__.py", line 19, in <module>   
  File "/home/user/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 472, in main
  File "/home/user/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 465, in _real_main
  File "/home/user/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 561, in __exit__
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/_MozillaCookieJar.py", line 118, in save    
    f = open(filename, "w")        
IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: u'/home/user/Downloads/cookies.txt'

I don't know why youtube-dl wants write permission to the cookies file.

I am aware that the website (Globo) also gave me an error, but this shouldn't cause the cookies.txt overwrite.

[dstftw]

This is expected behavior since server may send Set-Cookie headers that should be respected.