the point is: not ms is using it, the user is using it.
Like a knife. You can sell a knife without any problem, its perfectly legal. But if the buyer then kills someone with it, its an illegal use.
Maybe here there is no legal use for the youtube app possible, but then its only illegal to use the app, not to build it.
And as long as a user without google account can use the app (because google does not block the api to unauthenticated users), the user is not bound by any google TOS, and can use the app as he likes.

what part of googles IP? Maybe they need to avoid using trademarks like Youtube, okay.

Having TOS on a website is not enough for consent, thats the reason every website puts a checkbox next to "i agree to the TOS". You need to activly agree to be bound ... the websites only enforce their TOS by not providing the service to users which did not click "agree". If they provide the service (as youtube provides videos to anonymous visitors), the visitor is not bound to any TOS.

Mint? Maybe LMDE? Or siduction?

as far as i understood, they did not use the dev tools, but they are scraping the website. so its like a powerful youtube-only-browser.

jup. so using the app may be illegal, but distributing it is not.

and yet, most of the cheaper dvd players ignore region codes.

> my intention is not to request that you eat an Apple
a comma would have helped there.

when did ms agree to them?

you're wrong there. the app maker writes a client, think of it like a browser (maybe with adblocker included). The content provider has the server. the user accesses the server with the client. the content provider can choose to require some kind of login and maybe even authorization of the app, by using some accesscodes. as long as the publisher freely allows access, the user can use the app to access it.

as long as the api does not enforce the acceptance of the TOS (i.e. by being only usable with a account, and you need to accept TOS to create an account), you are not bound by TOS.

they should win. What right does google have to enforce its TOS? If they provide a service with some API (and if its only HTTP with html which can be retrivied and parsed to extract video urls), everyone can access it and use it. The same thing, as website owner cannot forbid userscripts or adblocking. They choose what they provide with what interface, i choose which client i use, and how it should display the content.

to remove it from market is their right. But if i installed the app, they should have no right in the world to remove it without my consent!

what? I do not think you understood the problem. When i have the content, either as some content or as encrypted content + decryption keys + opensource-decryption-method, then i can save the content. The publishers do not want me to be able to save their streams.

the web is the subset of strongly interlinked freely available content. DRM content can be provided as part of the internet, but does not belong to the web.

And very well suited for this type of rhetoric question like in the article ... because the author doesn't provide any arguments, he is convinced of, so he puts a question in the title instead of a hypothesis (without questionmark)