If you’ve ever used a Youtube-downloading app for your phone or computer, the Youtube-dl library is probably somewhere in the back-end. Unfortunately, if you don’t have a copy of it’s code stashed somewhere, you may not be able to find it.
The RIAA mentioned that the project’s source code “expressly suggests its use to copy and/or distribute the following copyrighted works.”
RIAA, an organization that claims to represent the majority of all the US recording industry, requested that GitHub removed the youtube-dl project from its site, along with forks.
Holy cow, the RIAA has gotten youtube-dl taken off Github. DMCA notice: https://t.co/V50S6H6Evk
— Parker Higgins (@xor) October 23, 2020
The closest example to this RIAA/youtube-dl letter is the one MPAA sent Github to try to shut down Popcorn Time back in 2014. That one cited §512, but relied under the hood on a fairly extraordinary tertiary liability theory https://t.co/CmK8U0ASJB
— Parker Higgins (@xor) October 23, 2020