It makes perfect sense to the people who design these twisted legal machinations.
A tool like OBS is designed for generic desktop recordings, while youtube-dl is designed specifically to enable the copying of copyrighted works. Or at least that's what the RIAA will say, and unfortunately a judge will likely be very sympathetic to that claim.
I wonder where this will go defensively in court if it gets there.
I guess what the RIAA is really saying is that murder is legal depending on what was used to kill someone.
A hunting knife could be used to kill someone but it could also be used to slice a pizza pie. A pizza cutter was designed to slice pizza but it could also kill someone without too much effort.
If it's not ok for youtube-dl to create an mp3 of a music video but it is ok for OBS to do the same then it must also be ok to decapitate someone with a pizza cutter[0].
In that analogy, the RIAA is saying “hunting knives are illegal, because they’re primarily designed or marketed for hunting, which is illegal” and you are saying “that’s unfair because I use my hunting knife to cut pizza.” The analogy breaks down because hunting knives aren’t illegal, but copyright circumvention devices are.
The end result provided by both tools is what's illegal in both cases. Recording copyrighted material and murder.
In my analogy the RIAA is saying a specialized tool for recording copyrighted material (youtube-dl) is illegal but since they didn't file a DMCA request for non-specialized tools that record copyrighted material (OBS and the like) then they must be ok with allowing copyrighted recordings from those tools.
Thus the RIAA thinks specialized tools for murder (hunting knife) are illegal but generic tools not designed for murder (pizza cutter) are fine to kill someone.
A tool like OBS is designed for generic desktop recordings, while youtube-dl is designed specifically to enable the copying of copyrighted works. Or at least that's what the RIAA will say, and unfortunately a judge will likely be very sympathetic to that claim.