Comment by zare_st | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zare_st | Hacker News Reader

Right of computer owner to access public network resources and display it in the way he wants is above profit incentives of resource provider and above any other proprietary rights for that matter.

For instance, if I receive a HTML/CSS data that displays a trademarked design (which should be kept as a whole), I am able to mangle the presentation part any way I want for personal usage. If I publish a site that's a mangled copy of a trademarked site, that's gray area. For my PC usage, no gray area. Same with disassembling, reverse engineering, etc.

Then, I have a right to publish any tools that perform any customizations over owner's items, be them hardware or software. Customizing proprietary software and reselling it is illicit. Customizing for one's own purposes isn't (the proprietor may choose to drop support for owner on his prerogative).

Most important point is that YT and alikes want to freeload in the middle area. They want to be free and public, but they want to force the way you consume them. That is a no go. YT can choose to make a closed system, but then they would lose all random people without accounts finding YT links and watching them. Really, tie the google account, and set up watching quotas, direct payment or any other system where YT directly gets "paid back". The user can use his tokens to access streams from wherever he wants, youtube-dl or whatnot.

> Right of computer owner to access public network resources

This misunderstanding is the basis of your entire argument: YouTube is not a public resource. It’s a private company providing access to mostly private content in exchange for payment under certain terms.

Currently they have the right to deny access as desired and even to pursue legal charges against people who don’t follow their terms. The only way to change the situation is to change the law, such as what some countries have done to limit the amount of tracking they’re allowed to perform. Client portability would be an interesting but challenging argument to make since they would have raise not only the past estimates of revenue lost due to unauthorized redistribution but now would almost certainly make the argument that creators need to be protected against unauthorized AI usage, too. I’d like to be proven pessimistic but it seems unlikely that we’re going to see much political will for IP reform with relatively little public demand.

> in exchange for payment under certain terms.

What terms?

I can go to youtube.com right now without an account, without accepting any agreement or contract, click on a video and it will send data to my computer. How I process that data on my computer is entirely up to me and not anyone else.

Your use of YouTube is contingent on the terms of service offered: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms

It’s true that you aren’t required to create an account but also true that you have no standing to complain if they start blocking access when they detect that you aren’t following their terms. It’s private property so it’s their rules.

By reading this comment, you agree to my Terms of Service.

My Terms of Service are that you must send me $100.

Oh, fuck. Where do I send the $100?

Okay, now try to construct something which is actually a valid comparison:

If you don’t respond to this comment politely, I won’t reply.

Nobody is saying YouTube can arbitrarily bill you - only that they’re entirely within their rights to stop giving you free things if you don’t follow their terms of service for use of their private property.

Is there any example of a court case where they ruled that users are bound to those types of terms when they didn't explicitly opt in? Can I really set up a blog, put an obscure Terms of Service link somewhere, and legally obligate anyone who reads a single blog post to follow those terms - even if they never clicked the link?

I somewhat doubt it.

There have been a number of cases holding that it’s not criminal as long as you aren’t knowingly impacting service to others (e.g. Oracle v. Rimini). Similarly, I can’t put in a “you owe me one million dollars” clause and expect to collect unless I can prove that you knew about it and agreed.

That’s not what’s being argued here, though: YouTube isn’t taking people to court, they’re just enforcing their terms better. Some people don’t like that and are trying to invent some legal right to continue accessing that content, but that simply doesn’t exist.

Yes, but google doesn't have to send you anything. EG, they can decide not to, if you aren't looking at ads, or in their workflow, or using their app, and those may be their terms.

Sure, but as long as they offer public access to their data I will keep consuming it the way I want to, without any ethical, moral or legal issues.

> YouTube is not a public response

> providing access to mostly private content in exchange for payment under certain terms.

Confused frown. That doesn't match any description I've previously come across about what YouTube is.

I thought YouTube content was pretty much entirely 'public'.

If they removed their website and access to the content was limited only to those who paid a monthly subscription via an app then that'd be slightly different.

But then they'd lose all the foot traffic.

Private doesn’t have to mean “locked down to subscribers” - only that the owner has no obligation to give you access except on the terms they picked. In this case, it means “available with ads”. They’ve made the decision that more people watch ads than buy video, which has clearly worked well for them but also means that they don’t have other content available when the creators don’t like that (for example, movies generally aren’t available without an additional payment).

It's not public in that you must enter a legal agreement before you can access any of its data. That's what the terms of service are when you first load up the website. The TOS will specify terms under which they are free to withdraw your access.

There's a TOS?

Since when? Do I need to click OK to agree to it before I can watch any videos? Do I need to do this each time I load up the website?

I don't think I've ever seen a TOS for YT (although I must admit I'm very good at not actively being and to remember actions that have become habitual).

Here's the YouTube TOS. I believe they ask you to agree to it along with the cookie policy banner that shows up when you don't have cookies stored:

https://www.youtube.com/t/terms

Edit: actually you're right they don't explicitly ask you to agree to the TOS, but the TOS contains this paragraph.

> If you do not understand the Agreement, or do not accept any part of it, then you may not use the Service

So I guess the agreement is implicit rather than explicit.

Something that I'm not even asked to read, just shown a link to alongside the link to the privacy policy, doesn't seem like any kind of "agreement" If it's necessary for me to read something as part of an agreement then I need to be told of this, i.e. for any "meeting of the minds" to have happened.

You absolutely are not entering a legal agreement, without commitment by some means.

TOS is not a contract. It's them saying why they may choose to stop serving you.

I guess you're right in that it's not a contract because nothing is being offered in exchange on your part as a user. But it certainly reads like a "legal agreement" to me. I'm not sure what difference that actually makes:

https://www.youtube.com/t/terms

It usually comes down to enforcement: they can’t expect to get money from you without proving that you knowingly agreed to the deal but this kind of thing will probably prevent a lawsuit if you see something you don’t like or they block your access – if you weren’t paying anything, a court probably won’t accept an argument that you deserve any compensation for loss of a free service.

> But it certainly reads like a "legal agreement" to me > I'm not sure what difference that actually makes

Funny that. Almost as if by including a lot of "legal sounding words", normal people instinctively defer and back away because they don't understand it. Which is entirely intentional to make you think the rules go one way, when they in fact do not.

Another example is "Not responsible for broken windshields"

See https://www.venable.com/insights/publications/2022/08/are-yo...

I believe that they ruled you must be forced to click a Consent notice to be bound by those terms, and even then it is not enough. Read for details.

Ad-impressions as payment is one of the most accessible means of service monetization in the world. You only need eyes or ears to be granted access. Cutting that off, or somehow ruling it illegitimate to require, will raise the bar and cut off less affluent and less educated communities.

This is true. Maybe the deal just needs to be negotiated in a more formalized way. I kind of like how Brave handles the problem, where the browser itself shows you ads (in a much less obtrusive and more privacy-preserving way than how sites do it) and then distributes the resulting funds to the sites you visit. If advertising were structured that way, instead of how it is now where sites will serve up ads and get aggressive if your client chooses not to display them, then you could retain advertising as an option for those who want it while also allowing alternative payment methods for those who would prefer that, and preserving end user control over the software running on their machine.

The right to general purpose computing should be part of the constitution in any country that claims to value free speech.

Freedom of expressions

And who is obligated to provide these resources? There is a big difference between the government not being able to restrict you in some way, and some party providing you with something (general purpose computing in this case). Presumably someone should have provided printing presses as well.

You pay for drinking water, it's still a human right. You have the right to free speech, but aren't entitled to somebody else providing you with a platform. These things aren't incompatible.

This would be more about putting a limit on the degree to which this right can be impeded in the legal system and by regular laws which happens to be the main point of a constitution.

What right do you think is being violated, though? It’s not like anyone is arguing that you must use YouTube so I don’t see freedom of association or your control of what you do on your computer being impacted. I would support claims if, say, a public school required students to watch videos but that would be against the school for having picked an unsuitable vendor rather than YouTube.

Rights aren't necessarily added to the constitution because they're currently being violated. They're added to secure the rights into the future.

There are many developments that are moving in the direction of this being violated, the most recent of which is Web Environment Integrity[0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity

I'm not sure if you're arguing a positive right to general purpose computing (where somebody has to provide you with) or a negative one (where somebody can't stop you from having). Could you please clarify?

I'm arguing a negative right: "This would be more about putting a limit on the degree to which this right can be impeded in the legal system and by regular laws which happens to be the main point of a constitution."

So what precisely are you asking for?

As I said, "The right to general purpose computing should be part of the constitution in any country that claims to value free speech."

Yes, but that’s not related in any way to using a private service without paying for it. You have that now and if YouTube shut down tomorrow you’d still have it.

I believe my comment is perfectly clear in the context of the comment I was responding to.

That’s probably why you aren’t getting much support: if you can’t specify what you’re saying in enough detail for anyone else to even know what you mean it’s going to be hard for us to talk about it.

At this point GP has made clear higher up in the thread. GP said they are arguing a negative right, which means that it's not something somebody has to provide to you, it's something they are prohibited from doing to you. For example, Freedom of Speech in the US Constitution is a negative right, meaning that the government cannot prevent you from your freedom of speech. It doesn't compel anyone to do anything to "give" you that right, it means that it can't be taken away from you.

What you are arguing against would be a positive right, in which case I would agree with you. And to be clear, there are others arguing for the positive version vs. the negative version[1], so it's very easy to get cross threaded on this topic, but is ultimately a very different philosophical thread

[1] For example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37899830

I’m fully aware, but they’re unclear about what specifically they believe should apply here. There’s no right to access someone else’s videos and the example they gave of drinking water doesn’t remotely fit this situation since that’s both a necessity and in most cases provided by a regulated utility rather than a normal business.

We typically think of these kind of rights in the context of governments or natural monopolies because you don’t have a choice about using those but that’s clearly not a valid position here. The closest I can come would perhaps be a government privacy regulation limiting the types of tracking which a company is allowed to perform or perhaps some requirement that things like DRM not be restricted to a single option, but they have specified anything in enough detail to know if that’s what they had in mind.

For hardware, the government could subsidize manufacturers for units sold in the country that meet requirements. Or provide a tax rebates to citizens who purchase them. Nobody is saying "A car in every driveway, and a server farm in every basement." Just ensuring a general purpose computer is affordable for families earning some fraction of the poverty line.

For software, The government could give grants to developers of FOSS operating systems and essential software, similar to how the US encourage the arts through the National Environment for the Arts. The grants would come with a requirement for distributing the works online to any citizen (e.g. download link on a public page). For people with crappy or no internet, the gov could mail USB sticks or CDs for cost plus shipping.

The battle for general purpose computing (as opposed to locked-down content-consumption devices) is already lost.

I wonder if you'll keep your free rights opinion the first time some bot abuses your service, causes a few 100.000$ in AWS costs and then goes away without paying for it.

What part about Google accounts and tokens did you not understand? Bots can’t freeload if your services are protected by service credentials and fees.

A significant part of the fees Ticketmaster charges goes to mitigating bots reserving seats and then reselling them on the secondary market. This problem can be easily addressed by requiring reserves and purchases to be made only from registered accounts. They choose not to do this because they’ve determined the cost of combating fraud is offset by allowing non-account holders to make purchases for events.

The person they are replying to confabulated a “Right of computer owner to access public network resources and display it in the way he wants”. If such a right to private property existed, it would lead to exactly the problem the person you’re replying to asked about, which is why it doesn’t exist.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com