It's probably worth mentioning that Uberspace is based in Germany, not the United States, so may not feel the same risk from not obeying the DMCA as a US company.
However German laws are essentially: "Once you are notified of copyright infringing/illegal content, you have to remove it, lest you lose your protection as a service provider and become responsible for the content."
A DMCA takedown notice would be such a notification.
On the upside you don't need to do anything if you don't have reason to believe the content is illegal in any way (unlike with DMCAs where you pretty much always have to remove first).
On the downside it's a bit easier to get into trouble as a provider if you chose to let something stay online.
The DMCA works the same way. If you refuse to remove content and it turns out to be legal, then you as a service provider can't be held liable. You only get in trouble if you ignore a valid notice and there is infringement.
Neither is relevant here, though, as it wasn't a DMCA notice but a claim of anti-circumvention.
Youtube-dl itself isn't copyright infringement though. It's a tool that could theoretically be used for copyright infringement.
I don't think it'd be ironic, but it's also not true. It's obviously not a free speech issue, and Germany has laws regarding copyright and circumvention of constraints. I doubt a large company would have taken the same route, uberspace is just generally pretty cool and user friendly.
For instance, it's against the law to insult a government official like a cop (Beamtenbeleidigung). This could mean saying something like "damn cops" in earshot of the police - it doesn't take much.
You could argue that courts aren't as accessible in the US as they should be without deep pockets (rightfully so), but fundamentally free speech _is_ much better protected in the US.
In Austria and Germany insulting a government official is handled by the same law as insulting a normal citizen is (except for that also the superior can file charges for subordinates).
Speaking of Austria, blasphemy laws still apply there and were upheld by an EU court when challenged two years ago [1].
[1] https://humanism.org.uk/2018/10/29/european-court-of-human-r...
This is a bit personal, but my brothers and I grew up in Germany with a father who was verbally and emotionally abusive. However, he didn’t break any laws regarding offensive speech at least.
Ironically legislating against offensive speech protects people from superficial harm of “offense”, causes a chilling effect by curtailing “offensive” speech (what can you say about a corrupt cop in Germany or France without breaking the law?), and does little to prevent actually emotionally abusive speech.
Obviously my views are biased by my own experience, but I think the US is two _centuries_ ahead of the curve here while Europe still struggles with the ghosts of former monarchs.
[0] https://nos.nl/artikel/2038180-fuck-de-koning-roeper-niet-la...
But that's plainly a curtailment of speech. A rose by any other name, etc., etc. Perhaps the restriction is just in your view, but it is what it is.
Are you saying that it's ok/good for people with less money to have worse access to courts than people with more money? If so, why?
https://archive.org/details/SchmhkritikAnRecepTayyipErdoanzd...
Here's a transcript: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
Imagine doing such a poem about Trump in the US. I believe the author would be punished much more harshly than this guy, who even managed to keep his job...
it's hard to imagine any legal action taken against someone who wrote an insulting poem about trump though. people say stuff like "I hope he dies" on social media every day.
"His dick stinks badly like kebab, even a pig's fart smells nicer. He is the man who beats girls while wearing rubber masks. Most of all he likes to fuck goats and oppress minorities."
But like Wikipedia says, Böhmerman retained his job. In my opinion, that's the difference. A higher level of tolerance for speech that most people disagree with.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-revokes-lese-majeste-law/a-390...
Famously, games in the Wolfenstein series are pretty heavily censored in Germany:
https://kotaku.com/wolfenstein-2-has-a-strange-workaround-fo...