Github has restored youtube-dl, a popular video-downloading toolkit that has become the target of music industry lawyers.
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. And our reinstatement, based on new information that showed the project was not circumventing a technical protection measure (TPM), was inline with our values of putting developers first. We know developers want to understand what happened here, and want to know how GitHub will stand up for developers and refine our processes on these issues.
Github, the popular code-storage and sharing site, took down the repository for youtube-dl last month after receiving the takedown demand. Lawyers claimed that youtube-dl (which works on twitter, facebook and many other sites on the internet) was illegal because it could be used to circumvent DRM—a bizarre but long-anticipated abuse of copyright law seeking to end-run the Betamax case, which established that you can't prohibit tools because they might be used nefariously.
