Security News > 2020 > October > YouTube-dl removed from GitHub after RIAA DMCA notice
The Recording Industry Association of America, Inc. has taken down YouTube-dl's GitHub repositories using a DMCA takedown notice.
Today, the RIAA took down the YouTube-dl GitHub repositories by filing a DMCA infringement notice with GitHub.
While GitHub states that this is a DMCA infringement notice, it is not a takedown request for a copyright violation.
"Indeed, the comments in the youtube-dl source code make clear that the source code was designed and is marketed for the purpose of circumventing YouTube's technological measures to enable unauthorized access to our member's copyrighted works, and to make unauthorized copies and distributions thereof: they identify our member's works, they note that the works are VEVO videos, they acknowledge the those works are licensed to YouTube under the YouTube standard license, and they use those examples in the source code to describe how to obtain unauthorized access to copies of our members' works."
The successful use of a DMCA infringement notice to shutdown software that is in itself not a copyright violation is a scary precedent and one that lays the groundwork for misuse in the future.