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Which was a completely duplicitous PR stunt. Nat:

* Complied with a DMCA take-down request which he had no legal reason to comply with. DMCA takedown requests are for infringing content. DMCA bans anticircumvention measures, but that's between youtube-dl and RIAA. RIAA does that by initiating litigation, or sending a demand letter to the youtube-dl project.

* Took down forks of youtube-dl, which he had no reason to do. Those should have been independent DMCA requests.

* Threatened to ban users who forked youtube-dl, in violation of his own ToS and DMCA policy.

If Nat was doing the bare minimum required to maintain legal compliance, I wouldn't fault him. Legally, he's zealously pursuing youtube-dl and acting as the RIAA's lapdog. At the same time, he's publicly making statements of empathy towards youtube-dl.

Pathetic.



I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft's legal department can override Mr. Friedman's decisions. GitHub's owned by Microsoft, after all.

And Microsoft is part of the RIAA...




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