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bheadmaster

No, you got the analogy backwards:

YouTube is running a bicycle track.

YouTube keeps throwing sticks in people's wheels.

People put stick shields on their wheels.

YouTube makes heavy magnets that pull people's stick shields and blames stick shields for people's bikes being slower.

If you're serving content on the internet, and I download some of that content, it is completely up to me what I do with it on my machine. Google may screech "nooo you can't play downloaded videos if you don't play downloaded ads first", but that's complete bullcrap since Google can't tell me what I can and cannot do with my computer.

If Google doesn't like what I do with the content I download from their YouTube servers, Google can choose to make YouTube subscription-only. Yet they never did. Go figure. They want to have their cake and eat it too.

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Those videos are not on your computer though? They are not your videos...

> Those videos are not on your computer though?

Is that a question? As long as my screen is not connected to Google's servers through a 100 mile long HDMI cable, the videos have to be downloaded to my machine before they can be played on my screen.

> They are not your videos...

Google made them available to me through a publicly accessible website.

>Is that a question? As long as my screen is not connected to Google's servers through a 100 mile long HDMI cable

...but your computer is in fact connected to google's servers through a 100 mile long cable. Maybe not an HDMI cable, but maybe that is key to your argument somehow?

>Google made them available to me through a publicly accessible website.

Cafes are also publicly accessible, that doesn't mean the coffee is free. If a cafe gives out coffee for watching an ad, you still have to watch the ad to get the coffee. Just because you found a way to skip the ad watch, doesn't mean you are entitled to the coffee at the "publicly accessible" cafe...

> Maybe not an HDMI cable, but maybe that is key to your argument somehow?

Yes, because the file has to be downloaded on my computer. Once it's on my computer, it's no longer Google's business what I do with it. What's your issue with this argument, exactly?

> Cafes are also publicly accessible, that doesn't mean the coffee is free.

Not a good analogy, downloading content from a publicly accessible server is free, while getting coffee is not free.

A better one would be that a cafe is giving away free coffee with the condition that you also take their advertisement pamphlet. Once the coffee and pamphlet is in my possesion, it is no longer cafe's business what I do with it - I have complete freedom to throw the pamphlet away and enjoy the coffee.

You are taking the file from google. Google has a system in place to gate that file with an ad view(s). You are circumventing that system. It costs google money to send you that file. It cost the creators money to generate that file. You are compensating neither and instead talking about how the file is yours once you circumvent compensation for it.

Please, you cannot be this dense.

Actually, I'm asking Google to serve me a file via a GET request. The response they send back includes the content along with an ad. Google would prefer I watch the ad but since the bits are on my computer and Google has no say in how I operate my computer, which bits I read, or how I allocate my time their wishes don't really matter after they've sent me the bits I care about.

Google could just say "no" and not send me any content at all. I'm not "taking" anything though.

> Google has a system in place to gate that file with an ad view(s). You are circumventing that system.

No, Google has a system in place to serve the video with ads. Google does not, and cannot, control what I do on my computer. Google could control what I can download, e.g. through authorization mechanisms for enforcing subscription, but they don't. They run a web server which serves content for free, and they would like me to play ads on my computer before playing the content. But what they would like is completely irrelevant to the discussion - their wishes aren't moral laws.

> Please, you cannot be this dense.

Right back at you.

>Google has a system in place to gate that file with an ad view

This may be their intention, but, no, they don't gate files with ad views. They allow you to start downlaoding the ad and the file at the same time. I am not circumventing a "system to gate files with ad views" because that is not the system that they have.

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