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YouTube Threatens Legal Action Against Video Downloader (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on from the YouTube,-and-Piracy dept.

Embracing over a billion users, YouTube has become the go-to source of many for music and movies. But the scale of YouTube has also given rise to piracy and copyright infringement. To fix this, the Google-owned video portal has started to contact third-party services that allow users to make a copy of a YouTube video and is urging them to shut down their functionality. TorrentFreak is reporting about a similar instance, in which YouTube's legal team contacted a popular service called TubeNinja. From the report: "It appears from your website and other marketing materials that TubeNinja is designed to allow users to download content from YouTube," the email from YouTube's legal team reads. According to YouTube the video downloader violates the terms of service (ToS) of both the site and the API. Among other things, YouTube's ToS prohibits the downloading of any video that doesn't have a download link listed on the site. Later, Google's video service adds that if the site owner continues to operate the service this "may result in legal consequences." Despite the threatening language, TubeNinja owner Nathan doesn't plan to take the functionality offline. He informed YouTube that his service doesn't use YouTube's API and says that it's the responsibility of his users to ensure that they don't violate the ToS of YouTube and TubeNinja. "Our own ToS clearly states that the user is responsible for the legitimacy of the content they use our service for," Nathan tells us.

2 of 321 comments (clear)

  1. Sony Betamax principle by neghvar1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I see this act no different than recording a radio broadcast onto a cassette tape or recording a TV broadcast on VHS or DVR’s. Now we record a video or audio stream from an online source onto your hard drive. The same principle applies to these activities, different source on different media. So I say Youtube has no legal basis to threaten the developers of these apps. This is how I get my music today. http://www.freemake.com/free_y...

  2. Re:Fair Use? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And how do Google think people can create their own copy/edit montages of other peoples' videos.

    That's another can of worms. Too many people are creating videos using other people's copyrighted work, get called on it, and scream "fair use" for what they're doing. Several lawsuits are underway regarding that issue. It's better to create your own unique content that doesn't use other people's copyrighted content.