Few days ago the popular content download software “youtube-dl” was taken down by RIAA. They left a notice in the GitHub-Repository that youtube-dl violates copyrights. In my opinion this is a shame. With youtube-dl it was possible to download any content from youtube. That means you were also able to legally download content that was not protected by any content license. If we start to take down youtube-dl because we could also use it to download content illegally, then we should also take down all the browsers. We could also use browsers to illegally download content.
I am also stunned by GitHub. They just took it down, without any struggle. Cases like that show us how easy it is to censor software without any public discussion. At this point I would like to remind you to backup your GitHub-repositories.
PS: I just realize that I do have a tag for how I feel about RIAA…
