I've been toying around with a prototype application that uses the YouTube API, and I remember the first time I came across this passage in the TOS very well.
Read it again, closely:
"...the sale of advertising, sponsorships, or promotions on any page of the API Client containing YouTube audiovisual content, unless other content not obtained from YouTube appears on the same page and is of sufficient value to be the basis for such sales."
That's _really_ vague.
How is one to determine what "sufficient value" might mean here? It seems to me that this passage might as well read "you're ability to place advertisements on a web page that uses the YouTube API is subject to our whims."
Of course, I understand that building an application that uses something like the YouTube API is inherently risky, and I think YouTube is well within their rights to have a clause like this in their TOS. I get it. But if you're like this Totlol guy and you're trying to build a business that might support you financially with revenue derived from advertising... I think you're right to be scared off.
It's not vague at all. If you're totlol.com and all your content is from YouTube, you're in violation of the TOS. If, on the other hand, you have a blog that occasionally posts YouTube videos but a lot of other content as well, you should be fine.
But what if you're providing a service that's built on top of the YouTube API and provides value in that it helps people find interesting videos for their children to watch?
What might constitute "sufficient value" in that case?
Is the curation provided by the totlol users not itself content? I'd argue that it is. That is, placement into category, tagging, rating, and even the boolean fact of its presence on totlol are each nontrivial pieces of information---i.e. content---provided on the page. Which isn't to say, necessarily, that they balance the contribution of the YouTube content, but here we are again: what does "sufficient" mean?
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I've been toying around with a prototype application that uses the YouTube API, and I remember the first time I came across this passage in the TOS very well.
Read it again, closely:
"...the sale of advertising, sponsorships, or promotions on any page of the API Client containing YouTube audiovisual content, unless other content not obtained from YouTube appears on the same page and is of sufficient value to be the basis for such sales."
That's _really_ vague.
How is one to determine what "sufficient value" might mean here? It seems to me that this passage might as well read "you're ability to place advertisements on a web page that uses the YouTube API is subject to our whims."
Of course, I understand that building an application that uses something like the YouTube API is inherently risky, and I think YouTube is well within their rights to have a clause like this in their TOS. I get it. But if you're like this Totlol guy and you're trying to build a business that might support you financially with revenue derived from advertising... I think you're right to be scared off.
It's not vague at all. If you're totlol.com and all your content is from YouTube, you're in violation of the TOS. If, on the other hand, you have a blog that occasionally posts YouTube videos but a lot of other content as well, you should be fine.
But what if you're providing a service that's built on top of the YouTube API and provides value in that it helps people find interesting videos for their children to watch?
What might constitute "sufficient value" in that case?
In that case you're not providing "other content not obtained from YouTube" at all, so you're violating the TOS.
Is the curation provided by the totlol users not itself content? I'd argue that it is. That is, placement into category, tagging, rating, and even the boolean fact of its presence on totlol are each nontrivial pieces of information---i.e. content---provided on the page. Which isn't to say, necessarily, that they balance the contribution of the YouTube content, but here we are again: what does "sufficient" mean?