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Comment by effie | Hacker News Reader

Just because something is written in terms and conditions, does not mean it is the word of God (or courts).

More generally, do you have to legally agree to Terms and Conditions to communicate with service provider's servers over HTTPS? Do you legally agree to them after you communicate one packet in such a way?

I don't think when Google crawls various websites, that Google has to agree to various licenses those website owners may have, or that its crawling of them implies such agreement.

It's ridiculous to believe that a magazine publisher, or a TV provider can require users to watch or hear the ads. Real life shows many people intentionally don't, using various methods, and I see no reason why Youtube provider should be different in this.

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> More generally, do you have to legally agree to Terms and Conditions to communicate with service provider's servers over HTTPS? Do you legally agree to them after you communicate one packet in such a way?

Browsewrap agreements (agreeing by using the site) are pretty much unenforceable to your point. I'm not sure this is the same thing however.

Youtube don't offer a customer facing consumable service for offering an ad free experience outside of Premium or their Developer API. The app is deliberately bypassing the provided services. Bypassing those published mechanisms is hacking, and depending on where you are, may not be legal. I suspect for most consumers of HN, this would be the case.

Browser crawlers fall under fair use. I'm not sure this does.

I get it. I don't like ads either.

> Youtube don't offer a customer facing consumable service for offering an ad free experience outside of Premium or their Developer API. The app is deliberately bypassing the provided services. Bypassing those published mechanisms is hacking, and depending on where you are, may not be legal. I suspect for most consumers of HN, this would be the case.

IANAL, but it seems like if it worked like that then adblockers in general would be legal, so I'm going to assume that it doesn't work like that.

Can you explain what you mean? Adblockers are not illegal afaik.

Right, that's my point; from my amateur perspective, if it was illegal to grab YT videos without displaying ads, then it would be equally illegal to, say, show a blog post while not displaying the ads it tried to include. And since ad blockers are, AIUI, completely legal, it would seem to follow that it's also legal to download YT videos and play them without playing ads. (Of course, IANAL so maybe there's some angle I'm missing)

Just call this a specialised browser

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