>One developer behind Invidious explains in an open letter that Google is wrong and that they will not comply with the request to shut down Invidious. The argumentation: Google appears unaware that Invidious is not using YouTube's official APIs for providing its service. Since Invidious does not use a programming interface from YouTube, it is not bound by the conditions that Google states in their cease-and-desist letter.
It's amusing when people try to use a technical argument to explain why the law doesn't apply to them.
Plenty of servers, countries, and decentralized networks operate outside the reach of DMCA without issue. See: thepiratebay
Also there is always Tor, IPFS, freenet... etc etc. It is super easy to host anything you want on the internet and collaborate around it these days anonymously.
If push comes to shove the team can just fork to a -smilar- project with the critical youtube-connectivity function removed as an academic project, that users just happen to download and apply a small community patch to on the fly. All kinds of games you can play.
Google will lose this battle badly. Code is speech.
Interesting; I haven't heard of Invidious before (which apparently runs on a host as a website, not as an app on a device), but there are many apps which access YouTube without showing ads. And of course, ad-blockers like uBlock Origin will block YouTube ads in the browser.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36262722
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306479
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36250582
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36368811