They reinstated the repo without going through the usual DMCA counter-notice process. Which would require youtube-dl to file a counter-notice, and then to wait some amount of time for the original complainer to respond, before reinstating the content.

I think there are few if any major other hosts who would have done this -- although perhaps with the example set here, more will going forward?

Honestly, I don't totally understand how you can get away with being as protective of the person receiving a takedown notice (in this case developer) as github has been, under the DMCA. It is unusual.

Compare for instance to gitlab.com's DMCA workflow. (Which it is amazingly awesome that gitlab has all their policies/workflows like this public and transparent, which github does not, true!). Following this workflow, youtube-dl would still be down, until/unless "there was a valid counter-notice and no response has been received from the plaintiff within 10 days of the counter-notice being forwarded"

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/security/opera...

So yes, I would say that github has already acted in a way to stand up for developers, in reinstating youtube-dl already, and in changing their policies for the future further. Even in their present actions, they seem to be really pushing at DMCA safe harbor allowances.

Did you read the new policies? It sounds like in the future it will be way more difficult to get repos taken down with DMCAs, and even for legitimate ones they'll allow devs to respond or fix the repo before it gets removed.

Maybe GitHub didn't nail it this time but in my opinion it takes some mental gymnastics to not see this post as a really positive turn from GH.