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Apparently, Youtube is upset with techcrunch.com for creating a script that allows you to download movies to your hard-drive. They state that it is in violation of TOS. Let’s take a quick look at their TOS.
Web Access
C. You agree not to use or launch any automated system, including without limitation, “robots,” “spiders,” “offline readers,” etc., that accesses the Website in a manner that sends more request messages to the YouTube servers in a given period of time than a human can reasonably produce in the same period by using a convention web browser.
Offline readers download entire websites. What you are doing when you use any of the various online downloaders to download 1 video at a time is techinically within the TOS. You watch the video, say to yourself, that’d be a great thing to download, and you do so. You sent the same amount of requests to the server that you would normally send if you had just simply watched the video alone.
User Submissions
…You also hereby grant each user of the YouTube Website a non-exclusive license to access your User Submissions through the Website, and to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service.
So through the use of their allowance of embedding videos into user homepages, or any homepages for that matter, does this license become invalid? What if I were to download a youtube video from another website that has embedded it onto their page? I wouldn’t be downloading from the website, even though it would be through youtube, so technically I would not be at fault since I was not on their website at the time of download.
This one just kind of irks me.
User Submissions
F. YouTube permits you to link to materials on the Website for personal, non-commercial purposes only. In addition, YouTube provides an “Embeddable Player” feature, which you may incorporate into your own personal, non-commercial websites for use in accessing the materials on the Website, provided that you include a prominent link back to the YouTube website on the pages containing the Embeddable Player.
Why does this irk me? It is unnecessary. What, the fact that you can click on YOUTUBE and GO TO THE SITE or click on “Share” and it takes you to the youtube website isn’t linkage enough? Hell, that’s IN the “embeddable player”. Why the need for an extra link?
So what’s the big deal? They’ve got their panties in a bunch. And ever since the Google acquisition, well… I have nothing against Google. But everybody who knows what I’m talking… just nod your heads.
Thanks to tehcrunch.com for the idea for this post. And of course, Youtube.com, or more specifically, the TOS, which, by the way, nobody ever reads.