YouTube-DL is no more

[DaveC]

The primary failure yesterday of youtube-dl gave this verbose output.

Dave
- - -
Daves-Mac-mini:~ davec$ youtube-dl -v -x 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXawa90YU2s
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: ['--output', 
'~/Downloads/youtube-dl/%(title)s.%(ext)s']
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: ['-v', '-x', 
'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXawa90YU2s']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2020.05.08
[debug] Python version 3.6.10 (CPython) - 
Darwin-16.7.0-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 4.2.4, ffprobe 4.2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[youtube] RXawa90YU2s: Downloading webpage
ERROR: RXawa90YU2s: YouTube said: Unable to extract video data
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "/opt/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 797, 
in extract_info
     ie_result = ie.extract(url)
   File "/opt/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 
530, in extract
     ie_result = self._real_extract(url)
   File "/opt/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/youtube.py", 
line 1820, in _real_extract
     'YouTube said: %s' % unavailable_message, expected=True, 
video_id=video_id)
youtube_dl.utils.ExtractorError: RXawa90YU2s: YouTube said: Unable to 
extract video data


> The YouTube-DL github page was taken down per DMCA request.
>
> Before learning of this I tried to DL a video and use the -x option to 
> extract the audio. This failed so in ignorance I successfully updated 
> MacPorts and when I repeated the audio DL, this time it succeeded 
> resulting in an audio file.
>
> This brings up 2 questions for me:
> 1. Why did this fail? I had a functioning youtube-dl since last MP 
> update with all the required bits (ffmpg, Python, etc) and I don’t 
> update component individually; they were last updated with the last MP 
> update earlier this year. I haven’t updated MacOS for years. So if 
> it was functioning earlier this year, why did it fail yesterday?
> 2. Next time(?) I update MP I presume YouTube-dl won’t update. Will 
> it be removed? Will it no longer work? Is there a way to keep the port 
> I have currently functioning?
>
> Feel free to also answer any questions I haven’t asked about the 
> impact this news will have.
>
> Thanks,
> Dave