Not in Italy
What US law says is often irrelevant outside of the US of A
[1] https://www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/en/it/it211en.pdf
[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A...
You should know that "absolutely" means anytime, everywhere, which is obviously wrong.
You should also know that in Italy for something to be claimed illegal the court has to emit a verdict.
If nobody challenge the status of youtube-dl obtaining a guilty verdict, it is perfectly legal.
Last but not least, that law was created during fascmism, so there's also that.
But in any case "fair use"(as you americans call it) is always permitted in Italy, you don't need a license, you are liable only if the entity detaining the copyright obtains a restricting order from a judge.
So in Italy I can download any video I want from YouTube and I am permitted to watch them, It's not against the law.
What's against the law is the re-distribution of the content.
Moreover, you probably misread the law or skipped that passage, in Italy internet publishing (such as file downloading) itś a different right and it's called "exclusive right of communication to the public of the work"
> it also includes the making available to the public of a work in such a way that members of the public may access it from a place and at a time individually chosen by them
Sorry.
All the responses "not illegal in COUNTRY X"; how is this relevant? Is the RIAA using a law from <UTOPIA_COUNTRY> on a company based in <FANTASY_LAND>?
You can absolutely host this repo with a country & business that doesn't recognize or cooperate with US laws. Your choice is somewhat limited.
The DMCA makes circumventing "effective" protection measures illegal. "Effective" is a term defined in law and basically means any hoop you have to jump through to get to copyrighted material, no matter how flawed or trivially bypassed. The restrictions in place to allow YouTube videos to be only downloaded through YouTube count.
Youtube-dl is absolutely illegal software.