Making developers afraid to work on youtube-dl is a much more powerful move than taking down a few songs that were already available for free on YouTube.
But now I have a copy of the source, and have been thinking about how I might contribute and/or repackage it as a “browser” (with the option to run it in “headless mode”, of course).
(apologies for rewording the Striesand Effect but it is very real).
All GitHub got was a take down request (which they were required to act on), not proof of anything being illegal (which requires a court case to prove)
A potential employer.
"Oh, you committed code to a repo I consider dubious though nothing proven... hmmm not sure I'll hire you".
"Oh, you shop at a store run by a non-white person.... hmmm not sure I'll hire you".
"Oh, you follow a religion, but I'm atheist... hmmm not sure I'll hire you".
... the list goes on.
Two of those are protected classes... the third one isn't.
Implying criminality because you're participating on something "of dubious legality" defined nebulously ("guilt by association") wouldn't play well.
A company could also freely and legally discriminate based on whether or not you prefer whole-wheat bread. That's not a protected class. It doesn't matter that whole-wheat bread is legal.
If, as an employer, I decide that because you chose a specific project (or political party, or brand of motor bike, etc. anything whose association has potential 'dubious legal status') that you're part of a criminal organization (and hence a criminal, or any other description that might be undesirable/harmful) because of that and don't hire you, that may put me at risk.
Obviously there would be a legal bar to meet from that, not the least of which would be proving that it was intentional to defame the person, and resulted in actual damages to that person (i.e. proper standing - would not getting the job be enough?)
IDK IANAL, but I sure AF wouldn't want to be the trailblazer for finding out (like IBM is right now).
> "Oh, you committed code to a repo I consider dubious though nothing proven... hmmm not sure I'll hire you". > "Oh, you shop at a store run by a non-white person.... hmmm not sure I'll hire you". > "Oh, you follow a religion, but I'm atheist... hmmm not sure I'll hire you".
There are zero laws on the books to stop a company from firing you for committing code to an open source project.
Unless you can find me a law that actually says "Companies can't terminate employment or otherwise discriminate based on a code repo commit".
There ARE actual laws that say "You can't discriminate based on Race/Religion/Sex/ethnicity/etc".
Whether or not YTDL is illegal (I doubt it is) is irrelevant to this thread. Just like a company firing you because of a post on facebook or twitter is generally allowed (local laws and state statutes may grant more protections).
Please... prove me wrong and provide laws - local or otherwise - and possible a case where someone successfully sued for wrongful discrimination based on code they wrote.
Projects like YouTube-dl are usually born out of passion, and the best kind of projects.
Plus when you use an anonymous name and get a popular project out of it, you still get recognition. Even if it's not publicly in your name. You'll still feel good about contributing to the world.
But the extra steps are not completely trivial to do right if strong anonymity has to be ensured.