I'm not sure what the line of thought is supposed to be here. Youtube also has legitimate reasons to make sure people watch their videos rather than their competitors, but that doesn't mean they can sue me for watching Vimeo.
Of course not. But what if Vimeo is using YouTube to host the videos? The point I am making has nothing to do with copyright. It has to do with leveraging a third party tool to make a competitors product an advantage for yourself.
And in your example they should be suing Vimeo. If we were competing hot dog stands and I use a hammer to break into your cart and steal your family mustard recipe, you don't deliver a notice to Home Depot.
Your analogy makes no sense. RIAA is arguing YouTube-dl is a tool designed to download copywritten material from YouTube because YouTube-dl included test cases in their own code for downloading copywritten material from YouTube. The existence of other streaming sites or other functionality of youtube-dl is completely irrelevant. YouTube does not need to be a party to this, the RIAA is just connecting the dots to make their own case. Their claim is that YouTube-dl is a tool for downloading copywritten material from YouTube because the creators of YouTube-dl literally tested for that in the codebase.
It’s a pretty easy case to make. Any other use of the tool is again, completely and totally irrelevant.
To be even more clear I’m sure YouTube-dl is a useful tool and I think such things should exist. However, this is an important lesson when making and owning these tools. Don’t do the RIAAs work for them.
