[qwerty456127]

> Mourning the loss of ytdl myself but trying to be realistic)

It's just a GitHub repository which is lost, not ytdl itself.

[radlad]

So - if the issue is really the marketing around youtube-dl, does this mean someone can create a fork named something else, use different marketing, and carry on?

[qwerty456127]

I can see no reason why not. Just don't put it on GitHub, put it on a private hosting in a country unfriendly to copyright trolls.