Microsoft-owned GitHub has removed YouTube-dl, an incredibly popular Python library to help download YouTube videos. The move is in response to a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
However, youtube-dl is not entirely used for piracy. Soon after GitHub removed the repository, several creators took to Twitter to share how they used the tool to make backups of their own content. The tool is also popular among internet archivists across the globe.
In case people were wondering about why RIAA and Github are wrong about taking down youtube-dl:
With over 72,000 stars before getting taken down, YouTube-dl had quite a huge audience and following in the open-source community. It will be interesting to see if the creators of YouTube-dl manage to bring the project back to GitHub in the future.
