legal – Is it allowed to embed YouTube videos behind a paywall?


You want to get paid for curation. I understand and would like the same ability. But the YouTube Terms of Service Agreement specifically prevents this as stated under Section 4, Paragraph D….

4. General Use of the Service—Permissions and Restrictions
D. You agree not to use the Service for any of the following commercial uses unless you obtain YouTube’s prior written approval:
the sale of access to the Service;

Otherwise you would see hundreds if not thousands of paid sites curating YouTube videos on various topics and sub topics – basically charging for their curation.

But there is nothing stopping you from doing this on YouTube itself. We have a large YouTube Channel that contains a mix of our original videos, videos we distribute under license from other producers, and publicly available YouTube videos. We curate all of these by topic.

I have seen a paywall site with a page that contains curated YouTube videos. I don’t believe the site owners understand that they are in violation of YouTube’s Terms of Service. All other videos on their website are original to the website owners. They offer the YouTube curated video page as a perk to subscribers as this page is not available in front of their paywall. That’s a great tactic: encourage subscription because, in addition to your own licensed content, you offer a large volume of curated publicly available content. Unfortunately, as we see, it’s illegal.