Don't dismiss the legal situation so easily. This could be an interesting case. First of, which law is to be applied? Philip and his site seems to be located i

Don't dismiss the legal situation so easily. This could be an interesting case. First of, which law is to be applied? Philip and his site seems to be located in Germany, so german law, or american one, because of where youtube is located? Seems to be determined that german law it is. This is important, because it profoundly changes the importance of the ToS and wether they are accepted by simply using the service or not. The case itself is also interesting. Youtube is a public available resource, the videos are accessible for everyone. This means that it might be perfectly legal to use those for anything, including conversion to mp3. In Germany, that would not be the case if they were proteced with any effective means, which seems to mean with any means at all, like basic encryption (even with a known-to-be-known key). For Youtube-videos, that does not seem to be the case, there is no protection. This has to be compared to the needs of youtube (i think so at least, if the case is not clear already because of a definitve law), which most probably lose money from operating their service - for another service which earns money - without having the opportunity to earn any money with it (given their ad-based business-model). Which means that the case can be linked to the discussion of property of digital products, with drm and open access. So no, i think it's not simply blocking access, end of story.