https://frontpagelinux.com/news/youtube-dl-dmca-takedown-by-riaa/
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Well that’s certainly a knee-jerk reaction piece which in addition to ignoring facts, misses the point completely.
Which is what exactly?
Read your post and doesn’t change my opinion at all. This takedown accomplished nothing and only popularized and added fuel for the minority of people who may have used it for nefarious reasons. There are dozens of browser extensions and other software that accomplish the same thing. RIAA could have actually accomplished something had they instead worked with YouTube-dL on documentation changes and proper warnings instead of this worthless takedown which has only accelerated the popularity of the tool and caused it to be spread across the entirety of the internet from Reddit to Torrent sites. It’s a garbage overreach by a company that has notoriously done more damage to content creators and artists than helped…in my opinion.
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Lol that’s everyone’s opinion.
Your premise is what is incorrect. “Naturally this is done under the guise of protecting the content creators from having their ad revenue stolen.” This is not why the RIAA claimed they took yt-dl down. “The clear purpose of this source code is to (i) circumvent the technological protection measures used by authorized streaming services such as YouTube, and (ii) reproduce and distribute music videos and sound recordings owned by our member companies without authorization for such use. We note that the source code is described on GitHub as “a command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and a few more sites.” This is why the RIAA took it down.
The takedown happened because it could happen. That is why we are all saying things like “we all saw this coming.” I’m not here to change minds. I’ve been giving the official source tarballs to anyone who has asked. I’m here to keep the record straight that this isn’t an attack on free software. This is the result of a greedy company using the law as a means to an end.