http://www.youtube.com/t/terms You agree not to access Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Service itself, the Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate.
Of course some basic laws have been added since the birth of the web. You are not allowed to flood a site with requests and so on. But the principle that browsers and websites are separate entities still applies.
If you want full control over your users clients, create your own protocol and your own client. As long as you use open protocols on the web, you implicitly agree to the contracts of the www and have to live with the fact, that the user chooses his client.
By default, yes, but if you then explicitly override that with robots.txt or a TOS, those take precedent. (Again, I'm not talking legally here, just what's been the cultural custom for the past 20 years or so. In other words, if you ignore either and then get banned, I don't think many netizens would shed a tear for you.)
The court went with the side of the cable company, even if many commentates disagree. What effect a Swedish case can have on German law depend, but using European court case as guides is quite common in Swedish courts if there is no other prior cases. Same might apply for German courts.
It is part of the bigger problem, that courts do not understand every aspect of our complex society and have to listen to experts, which just defers to problem to the election of these experts. You do not want to give them the power either, because they are easier to lobby than justices.
I just hope, that a generation of justices and politician arises, that understands basic principles the web is built on. Like links, that give the web its name, and how they work, who can control them and so on.
check out number 5.
Content is provided to you AS IS. You may access Content
for your information and personal use solely as intended
through the provided functionality of the Service and as
permitted under these Terms of Service. You shall not
download any Content unless you see a “download” or
similar link displayed by YouTube on the Service for that
Content.
I'm thinking it's the photoshop theory of DRM, just enough to ward off grandma, not enough to prevent photoshop from being replaced as the dominant image manipulation suite.
Note that the claim was not that it's illegal or unethical or wrong, simply that YouTube itself (rather explicitly) declares that they don't authorize this use of the site.
I was actually inquiring as to how such use is impacted by the decision. I've found few or none. Then again, there's little commercial content I've interest in regardless.