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This logic made a lot of sense to me standalone, but further down the thread I read <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40242476 https://news.ycombinator.com/

by lucb1e 3y ago

This logic made a lot of sense to me standalone, but further down the thread I read <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40242476 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40242476>: > YouTube claims he violated their API terms of service and he [Louis] explains that GrayJay doesn't use the API so they never agreed or accepted those terms. The point (of the person you replied to, too, presumably) is not that they don't have an agreement with Google, but that they're not violating these specific terms (as claimed by Google) because that's not what they signed up for. They run a channel, not an API client. (My understanding of their words, not saying I can judge the legal merit of this.) Not that it seems like a (at least short term) beneficial move to get this type of cross with the platform that can probably terminate your account at their sole discretion, but I'm happy he's trying to get Youtube content more liberated. For instance, you can mark your videos as having a creative commons license, but that means nothing because it's not like it spawns a download button for the users to exercise their granted license. Anyone besides the uploader still has to violate YT's ToS (which I'm sure forbids these third-party video downloaders) in order to get at that creative commons video data

cyber24 3y ago
Just to clarify: This letter was about GrayJay, a 3rd party YouTube front-end that -as I understand it- gets its YT content by parsing the YouTube website. This way they can access YouTube content without using their official (or any, really) API. Parsing the site is more complicated and a lot of work to maintain but good for privacy and no restrictions from API terms of use. Google pretends not to know or understand this by asking the GrayJay devs to honor the terms of an API they actively avoid using. GrayJay is being developed by a team at FUTO (dot org) that Louis Rossmann is affiliated with. His personal 'Louis Rossmann' YouTube channel is seperate from FUTO and GrayJay, and isn't part of this issue, nor is his personal channel mentioned in the letter. I hope I remember correctly, I listened to his video while falling asleep ^^
- wmf 3y ago
  His personal 'Louis Rossmann' YouTube channel isn't part of this issue I'm sure he'd like to believe that but YouTube seems pretty happy to ban accounts for spurious reasons.
  - zarzavat 3y ago
    YouTube, a company trying to compete with Twitch, once banned people’s entire Google accounts for spamming emotes in chat. https://9to5google.com/2019/11/09/google-account-bans-youtube-emote-spam-markiplier/ https://9to5google.com/2019/11/09/google-account-bans-youtub...
  - Zooti 3y ago
    Even if so, isn't that the entire point of this server he is protecting?
- AlienRobot 3y ago
  I'm on Youtube's side here. Any UI is an API with extra steps.
  - f33d5173 3y ago
    If you don't need an account or an api key to access it, then there's no contract signed, and so they can't restrict your usage contractually. An API with no requirement for an API key is functionally identical here. On the other hand, scraping a website that only exposes content to logged in users is the same as using an api behind a key. The relevant part is whether you need to sign a contract to access the content.
    - gooseyman 3y ago
      I’m with you on the API piece here. Is the non-password protected end of the site really fair game for scraping? I’m sure the terms of service say not to, but are those enforceable?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - pests 3y ago
        Craigslist successfully sued PadMapper over similar public scraping.
    - AlienRobot 3y ago
      I think that ship sailed when websites started having to ask users consent for cookies. Now it's no longer "accessing a website" it's "interacting with a service." If they have to ask for consent to set a cookie, you have to abide by their ToS to connect to their servers.
      - seanhunter 3y ago
        I highly doubt that is legally the case. In situations when I have been in conversations with lawyers about this sort of thing they have been universally of the opinion that to be bound to some terms of service the user has to take an affirmative action to accept those terms. The action can’t just be expressing your cookie preference, and in fact in some jurisdictions (Europe, California? I think) the cookie regulations that gave rise to those annoying consent dialogs specifically say you can’t give a user a different quality of service if they refuse the cookies, so that would seem to undermine your argument somewhat.

by lucb1e 3y ago

cyber24 3y ago

Just to clarify: This letter was about GrayJay, a 3rd party YouTube front-end that -as I understand it- gets its YT content by parsing the YouTube website. This way they can access YouTube content without using their official (or any, really) API. Parsing the site is more complicated and a lot of work to maintain but good for privacy and no restrictions from API terms of use. Google pretends not to know or understand this by asking the GrayJay devs to honor the terms of an API they actively avoid using. GrayJay is being developed by a team at FUTO (dot org) that Louis Rossmann is affiliated with. His personal 'Louis Rossmann' YouTube channel is seperate from FUTO and GrayJay, and isn't part of this issue, nor is his personal channel mentioned in the letter. I hope I remember correctly, I listened to his video while falling asleep ^^

wmf 3y ago
His personal 'Louis Rossmann' YouTube channel isn't part of this issue I'm sure he'd like to believe that but YouTube seems pretty happy to ban accounts for spurious reasons.
- zarzavat 3y ago
  YouTube, a company trying to compete with Twitch, once banned people’s entire Google accounts for spamming emotes in chat. https://9to5google.com/2019/11/09/google-account-bans-youtube-emote-spam-markiplier/ https://9to5google.com/2019/11/09/google-account-bans-youtub...
- Zooti 3y ago
  Even if so, isn't that the entire point of this server he is protecting?
AlienRobot 3y ago
I'm on Youtube's side here. Any UI is an API with extra steps.
- f33d5173 3y ago
  If you don't need an account or an api key to access it, then there's no contract signed, and so they can't restrict your usage contractually. An API with no requirement for an API key is functionally identical here. On the other hand, scraping a website that only exposes content to logged in users is the same as using an api behind a key. The relevant part is whether you need to sign a contract to access the content.
  - gooseyman 3y ago
    I’m with you on the API piece here. Is the non-password protected end of the site really fair game for scraping? I’m sure the terms of service say not to, but are those enforceable?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - pests 3y ago
      Craigslist successfully sued PadMapper over similar public scraping.
  - AlienRobot 3y ago
    I think that ship sailed when websites started having to ask users consent for cookies. Now it's no longer "accessing a website" it's "interacting with a service." If they have to ask for consent to set a cookie, you have to abide by their ToS to connect to their servers.
    - seanhunter 3y ago
      I highly doubt that is legally the case. In situations when I have been in conversations with lawyers about this sort of thing they have been universally of the opinion that to be bound to some terms of service the user has to take an affirmative action to accept those terms. The action can’t just be expressing your cookie preference, and in fact in some jurisdictions (Europe, California? I think) the cookie regulations that gave rise to those annoying consent dialogs specifically say you can’t give a user a different quality of service if they refuse the cookies, so that would seem to undermine your argument somewhat.