so I made a new PHP script (and am planning to launch a website soon) for downloading videos from video sites. it get's the download link from sites such as MegaVideo, YouTube, Veoh, etc. and plays it in my own web player without their advertisements. It also gets rid of their time limit restrictions and creates a dynamic page (SEO-friendly) for each video with automatic keywords, description, author, etc. from their video information. now... I was wondering... am I violating any of their terms of services? It's similar to embedding a video (MegaVideo for example) on your website right?
Put yourself in the shoes of the site owner. You have to serve a ton of videos and you need a huge huge infrastructure, which is very expensive. You do all that for free. Now, to pay for the costs, you start serving advertisement. Then some punk shows up and makes a PHP script that bypasses all that boring stuff, that makes you money. As a result, now the script becomes famous, and there are enough sites running it, your profits diminish, you can barely afford the servers. What do you do? Is it legal? Absolutely not. Can you get away with it? Sure, if you want to be a scammer and sell it to innocent victims, who will then get sued by Google - go ahead. But you will surely make a lot of people hate you! Doing business is very simple, but also very hard! It's all about attitude - mine is to look at win-win situations, where everybody is happy. Good luck! Side note: it is possible you could sell the script as an educational material, but you would need to talk to a lawyer, and make sure whoever buys it fully understands the dangers of using it.
ah ok thanks. what about just to download the videos? the viewers pretty much are downloading the videos when they watch them.
LOL... illegal?... No. The video is publicly accessible on youtube, megavideo, etc... Just because your custom player bypasses ads doesn't mean its illegal.
so when FireFOX ELIMINATED THE ADS WITH PLUGIN, SO FIREFOX COMMITTED ILLEGALLY???? I think its legal, if firefox can do it, then you may also do it. (my 2 cents) Eliminating ads is not illegal in my opinion
Firefox isn't displaying the videos on their website. The copyright owners holds all rights to usage of their content and they grant usage to embed under terms which you must agree to before using - especially in a commercial situation (like on a website which has advertising or takes in ANY revenue). If you don't want to display ads on content, buy your own videos and don't display content owned by someone else without express permission - permission which they, not you, get to decide the terms of usage.
I dont think that Video sites like Novshare, or Megavideo personally own all the rights of the videos, arent they are uploaded by their users. If this was the case, why they take down the videos when they get the emails for violoing or publishing video they dont have rights for? so movies, tv shows, or anything videos, if you personally shoot your video then i can see you are right, but when the there are movies, shows, that are maid by big companies like warner bros, and are uploaded on these sites like rapidshare etc, then i dont think you are violting the video uploaded sites rules, but you might be violoting the owner of videos who orginally made the videos.!! anyhow, iam moving on, it was good sharing this subject.
It's true that hosting sites like MegaVideo don't generally own the content but in theory, they have been granted a usage license, and they can set usage requirements if you want to embed a video that is displayed on their site (using their bandwidth). * you're using Megavideo solely for personal, noncommercial purposes; * you will not copy or distribute any part of the website without Megavideo Limited's prior written authorization; * you will fully comply with the terms and conditions of these terms of service as well as our acceptable use policy If you went directly to the creator of the video and obtained their permission to use the content in another manner and host it on your server, then that's a different story - but the OP is talking about using content and bandwidth of someone else (and my guess it is for commercial purposes) and that is what is going to require express permission or allowance under their TOS.
gotcha. my thinking was if you're able to view the videos, does it really matter where from? but I guess it does. I'll still sell the script for anyone that wants to take a look at the code. It took me forever to decrypt the MegaVideo algorithm (and when I found it it was so simple lol). also if any of you want to take a look at a demo of it, let me know. it's pretty interesting imho.