Here's the deal. When you're talking about physical stuff when I have it, you can't have it and vise versa. If you have a car and I steal it, you are denied the use of said car.
When it comes to copies of things, though, that all breaks down. When you make a movie and I make an illegal copy (I don't pirate things but let's suppose for a second) you aren't prevented from owning the movie any longer. You've lost a sale for sure, but I didn't just take the copyright away from you and now it's mine and I can sell it and you can't. But that's not even what this guy did.
What we're talking about here is the creation of an "unauthorized" front-end that uses public APIs to display things which are already public.
When you said "take" you're really abusing language in a preposterous way.
First of all nobody was denied use of anything so it's not STOLEN.
Second this content is already freely available on the web.
Third it's freely available via the generic youtube apps google publishes.
Fourth his app didn't download copies to his servers which it then served up (which would be copyright infringement) denying the originating youtube channels views or likes or whatever.
By your "packaging" logic anyone who embeds a bunch of a particular youtube channel's videos onto a webpage should have their servers nuked from orbit. That doesn't pass the laugh test.
If using an unauthorized front-end is really so naughty then why are people allowed to embed things?
Should youtube channel owners be able to dictate which browsers people are allowed to use to view their channels on youtube? Should they be allowed to say "IPv4 only" and disallow the use of IPv6? Should they have the right to dictate which networks are allowed to transport their video? Maybe their content should only be visible to Mac owners and sufficiently cool linux guys but under no circumstances should a windows user be able to view their video.
When it comes to copies of things, though, that all breaks down. When you make a movie and I make an illegal copy (I don't pirate things but let's suppose for a second) you aren't prevented from owning the movie any longer. You've lost a sale for sure, but I didn't just take the copyright away from you and now it's mine and I can sell it and you can't. But that's not even what this guy did.
What we're talking about here is the creation of an "unauthorized" front-end that uses public APIs to display things which are already public.
When you said "take" you're really abusing language in a preposterous way.
First of all nobody was denied use of anything so it's not STOLEN.
Second this content is already freely available on the web.
Third it's freely available via the generic youtube apps google publishes.
Fourth his app didn't download copies to his servers which it then served up (which would be copyright infringement) denying the originating youtube channels views or likes or whatever.
By your "packaging" logic anyone who embeds a bunch of a particular youtube channel's videos onto a webpage should have their servers nuked from orbit. That doesn't pass the laugh test.
https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+embed+channel
If using an unauthorized front-end is really so naughty then why are people allowed to embed things?
Should youtube channel owners be able to dictate which browsers people are allowed to use to view their channels on youtube? Should they be allowed to say "IPv4 only" and disallow the use of IPv6? Should they have the right to dictate which networks are allowed to transport their video? Maybe their content should only be visible to Mac owners and sufficiently cool linux guys but under no circumstances should a windows user be able to view their video.