> I think within a year there'll be multiple alternatives to youtube-dl which will all bear disclaimers that they are "for educational purposes only" and that they in no way endorse copyright infringement.

i dont think you have to wait that long. its client side, its open source, people have the code, it will most likely be maintained further, just not on github.

this is just meant as a backup, but here you go:

https://git.svarun.dev/ytdl-org/youtube-dl

or get the source with

    pip download --no-binary=:all: youtube-dl