you mean "because they could just use youtube-dl to download it?" I think that's why we are arguing that ytdl is a tool with legal and moral purposes and should remain accessible.

Is availability on a locked, walled garden "public"?

I think we can tell what the RIAA thinks about that.

RIAA doesn't dispute that it's public.

Being public doesn't mean publicly owned. It means publicly accessible... Like your local shopping mall.

Because the RIAA has shown that this specific tool can't be 'public'.

If we have to play by those rules, LEO should too. Boo hoo if it's harder.

> RIAA has shown

They haven't shown anything. They made a claim. We'll know what rules we have to play by if it comes to a court ruling.

I mean, GitHub took it down, no?

Why would that have any bearing on the validity and legality of RIAA's logic?

You can claim anything, too. GitHub only checks if the Takedown is valid in format with necessary information provided.

Has someone abused this to harass big-name Github projects with takedown notices?

They follow the DMCA process.

The RIAA isn't part of the government.

What if this tool remains public in a different part of the world? Are you going to wall off from the rest of the world so you can no longer see the tool and pretend it doesn't exist?