On their blog, GitHub representatives said that youtube-dl violated section 1201 of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It was this article that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) referred to when it filed a complaint on GitHub in late October.
However, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an international human rights organization, took up this case. In a letter sent to GitHub by the foundation's lawyers, it was clarified that the blocking is illegal. The fact is that according to clause 1201, copyright infringement occurs by bypassing the protection system on any service. However, Google does not use any system to prevent YouTube videos from downloading. Therefore, the repository of the youtube-dl project cannot be deleted or blocked, since the algorithm used in it does not bypass any systems for preventing content download from the site. Therefore, the repository was pushed back to the platform.
