Is youtube-dl safe?

[Stonecold1995]

I have a program installed called youtube-dl, and it's a python script. It requires root privileges to update itself, but the code itself is obfuscated. The first two lines of the file are like this when opened with vi:

#!/usr/bin/env python
PK^C^D^T^@^@^@^H^@Ú<9c><Av²9ûã^]^@^@ù_^@^@^Q^@^\^@FileDownloader.pyUT   ^@^C«àeP<97>

I don't really trust running something like this as root if I don't know the source (I'm not too good at writing Python but I can read it well enough to tell if it's malicious). If it's legal to do so, is there any way I can reverse the obfuscated code, or is this just compiled for speed (.pyc or something)?

So does anyone know of youtube-dl is safe to use? I downloaded it with apt-get, but I'd still like to make sure.

[rookcifer]

Probably a byte-code file (.pyc as you said). If it is from the repos it is doubtful it is malicious, though. If you're interested in reading the source, it is on Github.

[Stonecold1995]

Probably a byte-code file (.pyc as you said). If it is from the repos it is doubtful it is malicious, though. If you're interested in reading the source, it is on Github.

Thank you!