Clever workaround!

-Andrew Lih
Associate professor of journalism, American University
Email: andrew@andrewlih.com
WEB: http://www.andrewlih.com
BOOK: The Wikipedia Revolution: http://www.wikipediarevolution.com
PROJECT: Wiki Makes Video http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wiki_Makes_Video


On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 7:43 AM, Deryck Chan <deryckchan@gmail.com> wrote:

Actually, there's a "Download MP4" button when I'm logged in as Wikimedia Hong Kong (channel owner). So if you want to transfer the videos, email me off-list and I'll add you to the admin list of the WMHK YouTube channel. Then everybody including the YouTube TOS will be happy.

On 22 Jan 2014 19:58, "Andrew Lih" <andrew@andrewlih.com> wrote:

On 22 January 2014 01:49, Andrew Lih <andrew@andrewlih.com> wrote:
Yes, that's related to copyright and permissions of the material, but what about that first sentence:

You shall not download any Content unless you see a “download” or similar link displayed by YouTube on the Service for that Content


Jan pointed out that youtube2mediawiki.py doesn't actually "download" the video, so I think we're fine with the provisions of licensor's permission in the sentence below.

Well not exactly -- just because the downloading is modularized into a Python script doesn't mean it's not downloading. :) The exact code actually does download:

#download video and save to file.
        u = self.opener.open(url)
        f = open(filename, 'w')
        data = True
        while data:
            data = u.read(4096)
            f.write(data)
        f.close()
        u.close()
        return True
 
Commons is ultra-conservative with copyright, but doesn't really care about any other terms and conditions imposed by anyone else. So I think it's fine to transfer the videos from YouTube to Commons - no copyright is violated and the ambiguity in the YouTube TOS works in our favour.

Yes, I do believe there's not much to worry about in this particular situation. Just be aware that we're running afoul of the TOS, even if Google is lax on enforcement. A violation of TOS could be used to go after users in other less clear-cut cases.

-Andrew


_______________________________________________
Wikimania-l mailing list
Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l


_______________________________________________
Wikimania-l mailing list
Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l