> Vanced is discontinued for "legal reasons" as vanced was infringing the logo and branding of the original YouTube app as the logo resembles the original logo in a similar way and was used without taking prior permission from Google for using the branding.
Huh?!? That was the only reason behind the C&D letter and they killed the product when a simple logo redesign could have solved the issue? Or the C&D letter would have voided any attempt to do that? Something doesn't add up.
I'm the developer of Cydia, an alternative to the App Store for jailbroken iOS devices, a software ecosystem which was filled with both modifications to existing clients and complete re-implementations of clients, and this is definitely the #1 mistake that new developers would make (much to my annoyance, as it just seems so OBVIOUS of a thing to not do, but people really are idiots): you need to be extremely careful with trademarks and logos--only ever talking about a client "for" some other service as opposed to using that service's name as a modifier on your app (so, "YouTube Vanced" is definitely never OK and a dumb decision when you could say "Vanced for YouTube" or even be extremely safe and just stick with "Vanced", leaving any mention of "YouTube" to your descriptions), etc.--lest you get wrecked. And yet, somehow, you see it happen time and time again as people just can't help themselves when it comes to using other peoples' trademarks for their clients.
And yes: it is an incredibly simple thing to avoid, and yet it is also a deceptively difficult thing to fix and cleanly walk away from later when the other party actively wants you to not exist as you are often now stuck in a really shitty position with respect to the hole you have already dug yourself into and the legal fees you are potentially going to lose just trying to defend yourself going forward. Hell: someone I don't like from the "extended" Cydia ecosystem (if nothing else: they are the kind of person who thinks they are above trademarks) once even just hinted on Twitter at building a product with the name "Snapchat" in it (which I obviously would never have sold as I was really careful about this sort of stuff) and their lawyers started coming after me with a cease and desist for something I wasn't even going to do, costing me thousands of dollars to deal with (as their lawyer knew to directly contact my lawyer, making it harder for me to avoid any costs).
Seems legit. I think they think it's a warning shot, they are now on Google's list. This letter is a "nice" way of saying - guys well you are now on our list and shut down or well force you to shut down.
Smart play, rather end on a high note, without months and months of C&Do letters and axety and stress. Learn and move on.
Vanced is a modified version of the official Youtube app. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure it's a copyright violation to distribute modified versions of someone else's software without their permission.
What's probably not illegal to distribute is the source code for the tools they used to generate those modified Youtube apps, so I'm a bit surprised by how adamantly they're refusing to do so in this post.
They did tried to change the logo a few days before all this, at least on Discord.
However as others point here the "You are using our logo without our permission" is just a valid reason to shut down an app, and happens more often that it should.
There's what I consider the 'hierarchy of legal arguments' when it comes to patched software distribution:
1. Trademark infringement. Easy to prove even in a court, often can get an injunction approved with no further effort.
2. Copyright infringement. Requires some effort to convince a judge that, yes, this is your content, code, or art, and that they did indeed copy and redistribute it, which would cost a few hours of legal professionals' time to draft up in layman's terms, and lead to a few dozens of pages in a court filing. Easier for visual stuff (such as images) than, say, decompiled code, especially as with decompiled code you may even 'accidentally' be violating the patched app's authors' copyright.
3. Anti-circumvention. This is a bit more of a stretch, but if someone doesn't want (or can't afford) a defense, it's easy to spin something in this way. For YT, since there's some obfuscation applied (see the YTDL takedown attempt), one could also easily argue this. Similarly, one could also argue the same if, for example, a video game modification 'works with pirated copies'.
4. 'The far stretch', such as 'runtime patches make a derivative work in memory', some antitrust violations ('their free patches are devaluing our paid subscriptions/microtransactions'), and other 'less' gray-area stuff.
5. Outright challenging the legality of specific types of reverse engineering. This one is tough as it may go the wrong way as well, and this could attract the attention of big financial sponsors (e.g. the EFF) to steer this into 'dangerous precedent'.
Now, this case is of course just referring to a C&D, but a lot of companies only send/distribute C&D letters once they also have a court filing for e.g. an injunction ready to go in parallel, for example if the C&D is explicitly refused.
Even if that's not the case, refusing it may just as well lead to a court case in a few months, based on another 'technicality' somewhere in this hierarchy.
(statement of authority: I've dealt with numerous of these cases in the video game industry, some of them being the accused myself, sometimes involving others telling me their experiences and/or asking for advice other than 'get a lawyer')
It seems unlikely to me as well. There has to be something more to it than that. Maybe they were threatened to be taken to court anyway if they said anything else about the cease and desist letter.
Broadly, I think it would be a mistake to read this with the idea that you're going to get the truth out of it. This smells very much like CYA spin. Not mad at all of course, do what you gotta.
> The main source of income for youtube isn't ads. YouTube revolves around the merchandise and YouTube Premium subscriptions.
Lol. You can open Alphabet's 10-Q or 10-K and find out in a matter of seconds how untrue this is. Reminds me of the famous "Senator, we run ads <suppressed smile>" by Zuckerberg.
> Vanced is discontinued for "legal reasons" as vanced was infringing the logo and branding of the original YouTube app as the logo resembles the original logo in a similar way and was used without taking prior permission from Google for using the branding
So if this is the actual reason, shutting down completely seems a bit of an overreaction. Why not just get a new logo and rebrand the app ?
My impression is that they aren’t legally allowed to reuse any of the source code that was ever used in vanced.
But if they create a new thing as a new team and claim that it shares nothing with vanced; and, critically, they never release the source code from the original vanced (which presumably hasn’t been subpoenaed); then they can reuse the source code, because nobody will know the difference.
This, presumably, would be what they mean by “complications” if they release Vance’s code: it’ll retroactively prove that their new """unrelated""" project is actually related after all.
My take is that Google wanted Vanced dead. On top of trademark problems, if the app was a modified official client then copyright is also at issue. And there's always the CFAA hammer looming.
It wouldn't cost much, compared to litigation, for Google to send them a letter outlining these issues. It's possible they made Vanced an offer they couldn't refuse (i.e., shut down now and avoid litigation)
Not an attorney, but I suspect two mistakes the YouTube Vanced team did with the project is having "YouTube" in the name (Could be considered as a false association and trademark violation by Google or YouTube), and redistributing complete APKs that were modified YouTube APKs that would be under copyright.
I have not looked into the inner works of this, but on device patching of APK DEX classes from a set of patches is possible. Would not require root as long as it generates a patched APK and installs that using the standard PackageInstaller. That is probably a less risky proposition then distributing modified APKs themselves.
> "YouTube" in the name (Could be considered as a false association and trademark violation by Google or YouTube)
This is an important point. The "insert popular company name" for "insert industry" works great when you have just launched but this statement should be ditched as immediately as you get some traction.
I liked how, the Reddit client App "RIF" started. It was first "Reddit is fun", now it has become "RIF is fun".
No matter how benevolent you think the company you are referring to is, at the end everyone wants money, and the survival rate using this strategy is close to zero.
Without naming any names, I have seen certain startups claiming they are the Stackoverflow or Quora of "X" industry. The path Stackoverflow's ownership is taking, I bet they will start suing these companies for false representation sooner then we can imagine.
Yeah binary patching would basically solve this issue and wouldn't be any more of a hassle for the user than vanced already was. For a similar example, see the way most alternative Minecraft servers download and patch official binaries on first start (they started doing this due to getting a bunch of DMCA takedowns a few years ago).
With a bit of effort, Vanced could even have the download page perform the patching and signing in JS/wasm, then include the privkey in the app so it could download, patch and sign new copies of itself on the fly.
Or, for better security, have a web service that signs any APK that matches a set of hashes. Clients patch the APK locally, then send it in to get signed - everyone now has byte-identical APKs, but Vanced severs never technically distributed Google's binaries.
> Some users believe that Google had sent cease & desist letter because the Vanced Team had posted NFT to earn money out of the vanced project. The Vanced NFT was never sold in the end. Besides, it was done as a joke and nothing more.
All stuff they posted prior to shutting down pointed to this NFT not being a joke to be honest. Seems like their claim that it was a joke is more about damage control than it being true.
I'm really sad I missed the boat on Vanced by one day. I'd heard about it for a long time and randomly decided to finally start using it only to find all the download links had been removed the day before. Youtube ads have become horrendously annoying.
Does anyone know if the apks can be found on any archive site?
Do you subscribe to anything on the internet? Perhaps Spotify, your internet connection, Netflix? Have you considered their premium offering, or do you think YT should be free and without ads?
There are archives of them including checksums to ensure the files are not tampered with. I'd rather not post it here as I don't think it's allowed here, but the Vanced subreddit will have quite links.
My understanding is that Vanced was a patching of the official Youtube App, so already on somewhat shaky ground.
If Vanced took advantage of vulnerabilities in the Youtube App, or the source code could point to them, I could see Google reacting poorly to start out with - though afaik (not a lawyer, also not your lawyer) it's legal to distribute source for a patch for a proprietary program and instructions to apply it.
It sounds like they're making it really clear that they've "killed" the project, probably so they can just start another one that doesn't have the same issues. I wouldn't be surprised if they just form a new LLC, and transfer the old code as IP between the two, tweaking the offending assets and calling it a day.
Google probably said something like: "For now we ask you to not use our Logo and trademarks anymore and if you comply by shutting the project down, we are happy to leave it at that.
If however you decide to continue we will come after you for the numerous other issues this project has such as the fact that it is an unauthorized modification of our official youtube app, primarily used to deprive us and our partners of income.
It's your choice"
Google lined up their troops and fired a warning shot. Vanced recognized their unwinnable position and surrendered.
That's the reason this write up doesn't make any sense because they did do that, the old logo was just the YouTube logo with a gradient and a line, the new logo is much closer to NewPipe's and they dropped the YouTube from "YouTube Vanced"
[+] [-] squarefoot|4 years ago|reply
Huh?!? That was the only reason behind the C&D letter and they killed the product when a simple logo redesign could have solved the issue? Or the C&D letter would have voided any attempt to do that? Something doesn't add up.
[+] [-] saurik|4 years ago|reply
And yes: it is an incredibly simple thing to avoid, and yet it is also a deceptively difficult thing to fix and cleanly walk away from later when the other party actively wants you to not exist as you are often now stuck in a really shitty position with respect to the hole you have already dug yourself into and the legal fees you are potentially going to lose just trying to defend yourself going forward. Hell: someone I don't like from the "extended" Cydia ecosystem (if nothing else: they are the kind of person who thinks they are above trademarks) once even just hinted on Twitter at building a product with the name "Snapchat" in it (which I obviously would never have sold as I was really careful about this sort of stuff) and their lawyers started coming after me with a cease and desist for something I wasn't even going to do, costing me thousands of dollars to deal with (as their lawyer knew to directly contact my lawyer, making it harder for me to avoid any costs).
[+] [-] DocG|4 years ago|reply
Smart play, rather end on a high note, without months and months of C&Do letters and axety and stress. Learn and move on.
[+] [-] Zak|4 years ago|reply
What's probably not illegal to distribute is the source code for the tools they used to generate those modified Youtube apps, so I'm a bit surprised by how adamantly they're refusing to do so in this post.
[+] [-] TrianguloY|4 years ago|reply
However as others point here the "You are using our logo without our permission" is just a valid reason to shut down an app, and happens more often that it should.
[+] [-] ntauthority|4 years ago|reply
1. Trademark infringement. Easy to prove even in a court, often can get an injunction approved with no further effort.
2. Copyright infringement. Requires some effort to convince a judge that, yes, this is your content, code, or art, and that they did indeed copy and redistribute it, which would cost a few hours of legal professionals' time to draft up in layman's terms, and lead to a few dozens of pages in a court filing. Easier for visual stuff (such as images) than, say, decompiled code, especially as with decompiled code you may even 'accidentally' be violating the patched app's authors' copyright.
3. Anti-circumvention. This is a bit more of a stretch, but if someone doesn't want (or can't afford) a defense, it's easy to spin something in this way. For YT, since there's some obfuscation applied (see the YTDL takedown attempt), one could also easily argue this. Similarly, one could also argue the same if, for example, a video game modification 'works with pirated copies'.
4. 'The far stretch', such as 'runtime patches make a derivative work in memory', some antitrust violations ('their free patches are devaluing our paid subscriptions/microtransactions'), and other 'less' gray-area stuff.
5. Outright challenging the legality of specific types of reverse engineering. This one is tough as it may go the wrong way as well, and this could attract the attention of big financial sponsors (e.g. the EFF) to steer this into 'dangerous precedent'.
Now, this case is of course just referring to a C&D, but a lot of companies only send/distribute C&D letters once they also have a court filing for e.g. an injunction ready to go in parallel, for example if the C&D is explicitly refused.
Even if that's not the case, refusing it may just as well lead to a court case in a few months, based on another 'technicality' somewhere in this hierarchy.
(statement of authority: I've dealt with numerous of these cases in the video game industry, some of them being the accused myself, sometimes involving others telling me their experiences and/or asking for advice other than 'get a lawyer')
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toxicFork|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrm4|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kebab|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] H8crilA|4 years ago|reply
Lol. You can open Alphabet's 10-Q or 10-K and find out in a matter of seconds how untrue this is. Reminds me of the famous "Senator, we run ads <suppressed smile>" by Zuckerberg.
[+] [-] Aaargh20318|4 years ago|reply
So if this is the actual reason, shutting down completely seems a bit of an overreaction. Why not just get a new logo and rebrand the app ?
[+] [-] derefr|4 years ago|reply
But if they create a new thing as a new team and claim that it shares nothing with vanced; and, critically, they never release the source code from the original vanced (which presumably hasn’t been subpoenaed); then they can reuse the source code, because nobody will know the difference.
This, presumably, would be what they mean by “complications” if they release Vance’s code: it’ll retroactively prove that their new """unrelated""" project is actually related after all.
[+] [-] that_guy_iain|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jffry|4 years ago|reply
It wouldn't cost much, compared to litigation, for Google to send them a letter outlining these issues. It's possible they made Vanced an offer they couldn't refuse (i.e., shut down now and avoid litigation)
[+] [-] bradleybuda|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roastedpeacock|4 years ago|reply
I have not looked into the inner works of this, but on device patching of APK DEX classes from a set of patches is possible. Would not require root as long as it generates a patched APK and installs that using the standard PackageInstaller. That is probably a less risky proposition then distributing modified APKs themselves.
[+] [-] anyfactor|4 years ago|reply
This is an important point. The "insert popular company name" for "insert industry" works great when you have just launched but this statement should be ditched as immediately as you get some traction.
I liked how, the Reddit client App "RIF" started. It was first "Reddit is fun", now it has become "RIF is fun".
No matter how benevolent you think the company you are referring to is, at the end everyone wants money, and the survival rate using this strategy is close to zero.
Without naming any names, I have seen certain startups claiming they are the Stackoverflow or Quora of "X" industry. The path Stackoverflow's ownership is taking, I bet they will start suing these companies for false representation sooner then we can imagine.
[+] [-] franga2000|4 years ago|reply
With a bit of effort, Vanced could even have the download page perform the patching and signing in JS/wasm, then include the privkey in the app so it could download, patch and sign new copies of itself on the fly.
Or, for better security, have a web service that signs any APK that matches a set of hashes. Clients patch the APK locally, then send it in to get signed - everyone now has byte-identical APKs, but Vanced severs never technically distributed Google's binaries.
[+] [-] chakkepolja|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] endisneigh|4 years ago|reply
Says everything you need to know about NFTs
[+] [-] mkdirp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simulate-me|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rryan|4 years ago|reply
> If you are talking about creators who are not earning money for using vanced, you should know they won't make millions out of those ads.
... right. Feel free to keep telling yourselves that.
[+] [-] charcircuit|4 years ago|reply
There shouldn't be issues as long as you are sharing them as patches unless they didn't own the rights to the code they added.
[+] [-] loxias|4 years ago|reply
> The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us.
???
Anyone have any idea (or even guesses) as to what that's about? Does the source contain a murder confession?
[+] [-] DonBarredora|4 years ago|reply
What would those complicatiosn be?
[+] [-] ethanpil|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kayson|4 years ago|reply
Does anyone know if the apks can be found on any archive site?
[+] [-] blamazon|4 years ago|reply
For me, this is worth it to remove ads and add background play and picture-in-picture.
[+] [-] silentsea90|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kadoban|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] denkmoon|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] charcircuit|4 years ago|reply
In the future the ReVanced project will success it.
[+] [-] neurostimulant|4 years ago|reply
You'll need to install both youtube vanced and vanced microg in order to make google login within vanced works.
[+] [-] jtdressel|4 years ago|reply
I have not done any level of verification.
[+] [-] mkdirp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xputer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willcipriano|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cuteboy19|4 years ago|reply
is it possible that Vanced actually contained Malware/Cryptominers and therefore they dont want to open source it?
[+] [-] bhaak|4 years ago|reply
How would Google have acted if the source code was open source from the beginning?
[+] [-] Shared404|4 years ago|reply
If Vanced took advantage of vulnerabilities in the Youtube App, or the source code could point to them, I could see Google reacting poorly to start out with - though afaik (not a lawyer, also not your lawyer) it's legal to distribute source for a patch for a proprietary program and instructions to apply it.
[+] [-] the_common_man|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 4oo4|4 years ago|reply
I really want to know what these "complications" are, this is the sketchiest way I've seen someone refuse to open source something.
> The vanced team will "NEVER" make its source code public. Making the source code available on the internet can cause serious complications for us.
[+] [-] asimpletune|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ftuuky|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chagaif|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moneywoes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Vespasian|4 years ago|reply
If however you decide to continue we will come after you for the numerous other issues this project has such as the fact that it is an unauthorized modification of our official youtube app, primarily used to deprive us and our partners of income.
It's your choice"
Google lined up their troops and fired a warning shot. Vanced recognized their unwinnable position and surrendered.
[+] [-] OmegaDungeon|4 years ago|reply