YouTube-dl's repository has been restored
gitlab.com has their DMCA processing workflow online (as they do most of their policies and workflow documents, which is awesome and few if any other companies are as transparent).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;about.gitlab.com&#x2F;handbook&#x2F;engineering&#x2F;security&#x2F;operations&#x2F;trustandsafety&#x2F;dmca-removal-requests.html#taking-action" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;about.gitlab.com&#x2F;handbook&#x2F;engineering&#x2F;security&#x2F;opera...</a><p>My reading of it is that under that gitlab workflow youtube-dl would still be down. Unless&#x2F;until &quot;there was a valid counter-notice and no response has been received from the plaintiff within 10 days of the counter-notice being forwarded&quot;. (Unclear what happens if there is a valid counter-notice and a response from plaintiff HAS been received, the workflow stop there!). This did not happen here, github reinstated without either a formal counter-notice (that EFF letter is not formatted like one), and definitely without waiting 10 days for a response from plaintiff.<p>Gitlab&#x27;s workflow there is a <i>totally typical</i> DMCA workflow, it&#x27;s not bad it&#x27;s just <i>normal</i>. It&#x27;s the workflow  more or less spelled out in the DMCA itself,  arguably what the DMCA <i>requires</i> for the host to get &quot;safe harbor&quot; status. (I don&#x27;t entirely understand how Github can get away with what they have done and say they are doing going forward, honestly. It&#x27;s think it&#x27;s a potentially risky move for them opening them up to lawsuits from the copyright holders; of course they know they have deep pockets to defend themselves too).<p>The DMCA is actually pretty terrible in it&#x27;s real-world contemporary effects. That&#x27;s general, not about github, or github&#x27;s fault. You are right to think it&#x27;s awful. But it&#x27;s not about github. People seem to be really chomping at the bit to assume that github has somehow acted <i>especially poorly</i> (for those who want to protect people against DMCA takedowns) -- to me the reverse seems to be true.<p>I think both github&#x27;s actual current actions and most especially their proposed new workflow go <i>way beyond</i> what most of their peers (including gitlab) do to resist&#x2F;slow down&#x2F;stop DMCA takedowns.<p>I&#x27;m not sure how github garnered so much bad will, that people are so eager to paint them in a bad light. They clearly have garnered a <i>lot</i> of bad will from developers though, at least on HN; every thread about github has people piling on to suggest extreme levels of unethical behavior from github.<p>I do not believe it is justified here.