There's a difference between "illegal" and "not legally required."
* RIAA was legally welcome to send a DMCA letter which didn't conform to DMCA requirements. Anyone can legally send a legal demand letter saying more-or-less anything, and plenty people do.
* Since this letter didn't conform to DMCA requirements, github wasn't required to take down youtube-dl, but was well within its right to do so.
* github wasn't required to take down other instances of youtube-dl, not referenced in the letter, and ban users, but github can probably fire customers without cause, so there was nothing illegal.
... and so on.
RIAA may or may not have a legal leg to stand on with the DMCA anti-circumvention stuff, depending on what exactly Google does, and I haven't dove into the system in enough detail to know. I don't think Youtube implements DRM, but perhaps it does and perhaps youtube-dl circumvents it. That should be between youtube-dl and RIAA, nor between RIAA and github.
My own opinion is RIAA can't have it both ways. If they don't want people to copy, they should use tools designed for that: iTunes, Amazon Music, etc. If they want to use viral networks used for sharing personal videos, they should respect that those networks are designed for, well, sharing. If my mom uploads a video of my son playing with her to Youtube, yes, family members might want to download that if she's okay with it.
The friction here is that centralized media, whom decentralized is disrupting, wants to now use decentralized media (and by "decentralized," I'm talking from a social perspective -- anyone can publish versus a few people can publish -- not a technology one).
* RIAA was legally welcome to send a DMCA letter which didn't conform to DMCA requirements. Anyone can legally send a legal demand letter saying more-or-less anything, and plenty people do.
* Since this letter didn't conform to DMCA requirements, github wasn't required to take down youtube-dl, but was well within its right to do so.
* github wasn't required to take down other instances of youtube-dl, not referenced in the letter, and ban users, but github can probably fire customers without cause, so there was nothing illegal.
... and so on.
RIAA may or may not have a legal leg to stand on with the DMCA anti-circumvention stuff, depending on what exactly Google does, and I haven't dove into the system in enough detail to know. I don't think Youtube implements DRM, but perhaps it does and perhaps youtube-dl circumvents it. That should be between youtube-dl and RIAA, nor between RIAA and github.
My own opinion is RIAA can't have it both ways. If they don't want people to copy, they should use tools designed for that: iTunes, Amazon Music, etc. If they want to use viral networks used for sharing personal videos, they should respect that those networks are designed for, well, sharing. If my mom uploads a video of my son playing with her to Youtube, yes, family members might want to download that if she's okay with it.
The friction here is that centralized media, whom decentralized is disrupting, wants to now use decentralized media (and by "decentralized," I'm talking from a social perspective -- anyone can publish versus a few people can publish -- not a technology one).