34

Right now I would download a small video from walkthroug from a game. so I started with

alex@Guilmon:~/Videos$ sudo youtube-dl -U
ERROR: can't find the current version. Please try again later.
alex@Guilmon:~/Videos$ 

after little bit searching I found this and this too

Is there an alternative? with my current version I am not able to download it

alex@Guilmon:~/Videos$ youtube-dl --version
2020.09.14
alex@Guilmon:~/Videos$ 
3
  • all of them are going down lately , this uses a third party but works ok. loader.to?
    – pierrely
    Oct 31, 2020 at 4:10
  • You can install the Debian package.
    – mirabilos
    Nov 1, 2020 at 20:12
  • It moved here temporarily: gitlab.com/dstftw/youtube-dl You can update it through pip.
    – MCCCS
    Nov 2, 2020 at 13:47

3 Answers 3

36

The latest version is available on the official website, where you can download the tar.gz file (v2020.09.20). On the homepage, there is a message: "Currently our dev repository is taken down due to DMCA takedown notice by RIAA. Downloads still work as usual."

13
  • 3
    FWIW, the takedown's over the contents of one test; even the RIAA don't (currently) have a case against youtube-dl proper.
    – wizzwizz4
    Oct 31, 2020 at 20:07
  • 4
    @wizzwizz4 that's not correct. The RIAA are claiming that the primary purpose of youtube-dl is copyright infringement under the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA (also a ridiculous claim). They include the tests as evidence for the claim.
    – coagmano
    Nov 1, 2020 at 23:58
  • 2
    @FredStark But isn't that not a DMCA takedown?
    – wizzwizz4
    Nov 2, 2020 at 6:47
  • 3
    @AsteroidsWithWings There is no “on YouTube”. There's a user agent. By your logic, the “video pop-out” features of many extensions (included stock in recent versions of Firefox) are illegal, but that's absurd; if the law really does work that way, I quit.
    – wizzwizz4
    Nov 2, 2020 at 20:52
  • 2
    @AsteroidsWithWings there's very little caselaw for the anti-circumvention provisions, so it's not as clear cut as saying "It's the law". There's a strong argument that youtube-dl's primary purpose is not copyright circumvention and so only a court can decide how the law should apply in this case. It looks like Github's CEO wants to help youtube-dl fight the RIAA so we might just find out for sure
    – coagmano
    Nov 2, 2020 at 22:14
21

The widely used fork youtube-dlc is still being actively maintained.

It's probably a good idea to switch for the time being because the September release from youtube-dl.org is already bitrotted and doesn't work with YouTube (and possibly some other sites) any more. The most recent youtube-dlc release (dated today) does work.

It looks like youtube-dlc has removed the tests that were used as a pretext to take down the main repository. Whether that means they're safe, I couldn't say.

4
  • Besides one being actively updated, are there any effective differences between the two? There are some GUI's that piggyback on youtube-dl, and I'm wondering if youtube-dlc binaries could be swapped in place without things breaking (like a change in switches or switch formatting). Nov 1, 2020 at 4:52
  • @Coldblackice I diffed the sources and it looks like it just adds a few features. The messages are a bit different (it calls itself youtube-dlc for example) which could break automated parsing I suppose.
    – benrg
    Nov 1, 2020 at 5:33
  • @benrg it test it in my debian.
    – nobody
    Nov 1, 2020 at 9:35
  • @Coldblackice Assuming that such GUIs just use the youtube-dl command line, I would expect it to be compatible. Incompatibilites tend to crop up with different versions of software libraries, where such a thing as binary compatibility might mean that the GUI application would need to be re-compiled against the modified library.
    – jpaugh
    Nov 2, 2020 at 15:56
6

You could try this. This was in the readme of the original repo.

sudo curl -L https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl  

This updated my version to 2020.09.20. Maybe that'll be enough for you.

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