The EFF covered this issue, it was an abuse of the DMCA.
> First, youtube-dl does not infringe or encourage the infringement of any copyrighted works, and its references to copyrighted songs in its unit tests are a fair use. Nevertheless, youtube-dl’s maintainers are replacing these references. Second, youtube-dl does not violate Section 1201 of the DMCA because it does not “circumvent” any technical protection measures on YouTube videos.
The bigger story behind this that by reinstating YouTube-dl Microsoft basically came out and said “sue us we dare you” over people peddling this legal theory and the copyright trolls blinked.
The original youtube-dl was taken down by GitHub because of the DMCA complaint, not because it violated the DMCA. It was subsequently restored by GitHub. This project is simply more actively maintained; it's existence has nothing to do with the DMCA scandal.
The complaint wasn't even a valid 512 takedown notice, but an (inaccurate) 1201 anti-circumvention complaint written so as to closely resemble a 512 notice.
(Where "512" and "1201" refer to the specific portions of US Code Title 17 copyright law regarding DMCA provisions for infringement safe-harbour protections to service providers and circumvention of copyright controls, respectively.)
I can't tell if you're being serious, but yes of course it matters. Youtube-dl got taken down, and all its forks got taken down, so is this project different or is it gone tomorrow because its existence got broadcast on hackernews?
Did it change something that made it not violate fall into the same "this violates DMCA" trap that youtube-dl fall into, so that it's not susceptible to the same takedown?
Because that's interesting and worth learning about.
See elsewhere in the thread for details, but youtube-dl was restored by Github and is generally not considered to be in violation of the DMCA. You can see it on Github here: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl
A copyright holder abused the DMCA process to take it down the first time.
while setting aside the genuineness of the problem, it was a rather poor decision on the dev's part. there was no need to rub it in the faces. if they were so unawares of what they were doing, then it makes me wonder what other facets they were playing fast and loose with. when making a thing that you know is going to cause ripples, then it just seems much smarter to avoid handing someone else the rocks to cause the ripples.
Could you show me where it was in the documentation? My understanding was copyrighted videos were only referenced in the unit tests, and only then because they needed special handling, the code for which couldn't be tested against a "regular" video.
