> Any hosting platform will sooner or later have to comply with such a request. It can become very expensive if you end up in court.
Yet it wasn't actually DMCA takedown request, but a strange new kind of takedown request, where a a private company claimed (falsely) that youtube-dl violated section 1201 and demanded that github remove it.
Unfortunately github seems to have codified these new "1201 takedowns" which didn't seem to exist previously.
Even if DMCA 512 doesn't cover DMCA 1201 violating circumvention tools, that wouldn't make GitHub in the clear to host them. If anything, it would actually increase their liability: the whole point of DMCA 512 is to provide a process by which an ISP can disclaim liability for contributory copyright infringement.
If they refuse the request on the grounds of "you can't DMCA a circumvention tool", then they're still liable regardless of if a DMCA 512 takedown can or can't apply to a 1201 violation, since there's still an underlying tort of distributing a 1201 circumvention tool. If they accept the request, and get sued anyway, they could at least argue that they have a safe harbor (or should have a safe harbor).
Yet it wasn't actually DMCA takedown request, but a strange new kind of takedown request, where a a private company claimed (falsely) that youtube-dl violated section 1201 and demanded that github remove it.
Unfortunately github seems to have codified these new "1201 takedowns" which didn't seem to exist previously.