Security News > 2020 > November > GitHub reinstates YouTube-dl, promises to overhaul DMCA reviews
Today, GitHub shared more info regarding why YouTube-dl was kicked off the platform and about why GitHub handled this situation the way it did.
"Our actions were driven by processes required to comply with laws like the DMCA that put platforms like GitHub and developers in a difficult spot," GitHub's Director of Platform Policy Abby Vollmer said.
In YouTube-dl's specific case, GitHub first reinstated a fork which was patched to address the issues signaled in RIAA's DMCA claim and then the YouTube-dl project repo after the Electronic Frontier Foundation sent in more info to show that the utility did not violate the DMCA's anticircumvention prohibitions.
"To help them, GitHub will establish and donate $1M to a developer defense fund to help protect open source developers on GitHub from unwarranted DMCA Section 1201 takedown claims," Vollmer said.
One of these newly created commits - containing the YouTube-dl source code - was attached to the GitHub DMCA repository.