GitHub warned that users may be banned if they repost the YouTube-dl source code

Earlier, the Recording Association of America sent a DMCA complaint letter to Github, asking the platform to delete the well-known open-source project YouTube-dl repository and code.

Subsequently, the Microsoft subsidiary followed the relevant legal requirements to delete this open-source project. It never expected that this deletion would cause protests from a large number of users around the world.

The reason is that a large number of users rely on the YouTube-dl tool to download the audio and video of the YouTube website, although some of the downloaded content does have copyright issues.

But there are also many users who use this tool to download content that does not have copyright issues. As the project is deleted, it may seriously affect the normal use of these users.

The Recording Association of America stated that the YouTube-dl project can bypass Google’s copyright protection and download copyright-protected works directly from YouTube.

Including some copyright-protected audio works, users can directly listen to the songs through the video after downloading or use other tools to extract the video songs.

Therefore, the association decided to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Law to initiate a complaint. After receiving the complaint, Microsoft handled the complaint according to the established process, which is to delete the project source code.

Normally, copyright complaints are directed toward the infringing work itself. For example, after you upload a copyright-protected song on the YouTube website, you will receive a notification from Google to its copyright owner to request deletion within ten minutes.

The YouTube-dl project is just a tool, not a song, so there is no direct infringing content, so immediately after the project was deleted, it caused a large number of users to protest.

Although Microsoft deleted the project repository and source code as required, after being discovered by users, a large number of users copied the code from other channels and continued to upload Github.

Now, if you search YouTube-dl on Github, you can see thousands of accounts hosting related codes. Many fans hope to use this method to fight the Recording Association of America.

There is even a guy who uploaded the relevant source code to the Github repository for processing DMCA notifications, which has not been officially deleted for several days.

However, Github has warned that if users continue to copy the relevant code base, the account may be temporarily banned, or even permanently.

Although Github hopes to help the Youtube-dl project resume, the platform must comply with the legal requirements before legal requirements, so it is impossible to resume this project.

At the same time, Github also warned that if the user continues to host the relevant code, it will be regarded as a violation of the terms of service, and the account may be suspended or permanently blocked.

Github does not want users to be banned from the platform because of this, but if users continue to do so, Github may eventually have to take corresponding measures.

Github is powerless in this situation. Unless someone sues the Recording Association of America and obtains court support, the project will never be restored.