IIRC the complaint was about the "circumvention" algorithm in the code.

Random cynical thought -- they noticed because the automated testing was bumping up the # of views on those streams, so their members were being forced to pay royalties on views that were not real ...

Does use of youtube-dl to download videos from youtube really bump the view count? I have assumed that it doesn't, since it probably isn't passing whatever systems youtube has for addressing 'view count fraud'.

I haven't tested, so I couldn't tell you.

I imagine as YT's anti-download measures get more intense, the more yt-dl has to behave like a real browser, including ticking up the view count.

I think the point was that their real goal was to kill youtube-dl entirely, and the tests just happened to give them something to complain about to do so.