Public attention to the take-down resulted in Streisand effect reminiscent to that of the DeCSS take-down. Users criticized the takedown, noting the legitimate uses for the application, including downloading video content released under open licensing schemes or to create derivative works falling under fair use (such as for archival and news reporting purposes). GitHub initially complied with the request. The RIAA request argued that youtube-dl violates the Section 1201 anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, and provisions of German copyright law, since it circumvents a "rolling cipher" used by YouTube to generate the URL for the video file itself (which the RIAA has considered to be an effective technical protection measure, since it is "intended to inhibit direct access to the underlying YouTube video files, thereby preventing or inhibiting the downloading, copying, or distribution of the video files"), and that its documentation expressly encouraged its use with copyrighted media by listing music videos by RIAA-represented artists as examples. On October 23, 2020, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) issued a takedown notice to GitHub under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), requesting the removal of youtube-dl and 17 public forks of the project. In 2021, dstftw stepped down and was replaced by dirkf. Ricardo Garcia stepped down as maintainer in 2011 and was replaced by phihag, who later stepped down and was replaced by dstftw.
Initially, only YouTube was supported, but as the project grew, it began supporting other video sharing websites.
Youtube-dl was created in 2006 by Ricardo Garcia.