Well, it's actually somewhat impressive.

Our articles are available under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) so yeah, now it is legal. Didn't used to be, but the fight I had trying to take down any spammy site that just ripped our articles wasn't worth it. You take down one, another four pop up. It was a losing battle. So I decided to just forget about them all. Most of them don't even scrape our RSS, they scrape the website directly and end up pulling in a hidden source link I added to all article rendering so it does the job.

Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. As much headache as it may feel, for some perspective what you write is high profile enough for somebody else to take the time to do such a thing. Pretty neat actually.

Quoting: Liam DaweWell, it's actually somewhat impressive.

Our articles are available under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) so yeah, now it is legal.

It's actually still not compliant, because there needs to be a link to the license the work is under. However, someone could, if they so wished, take the bot site's work and redistribute it or remix it under CC BY-SA 4.0 and turn the tables on the botters. It would be funny to see their reaction, but I doubt the bot site's work is worth the time investment of even trying to be annoying to them.

Quoting: Samsai

Quoting: Liam DaweWell, it's actually somewhat impressive.

Our articles are available under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) so yeah, now it is legal.

It's actually still not compliant, because there needs to be a link to the license the work is under. However, someone could, if they so wished, take the bot site's work and redistribute it or remix it under CC BY-SA 4.0 and turn the tables on the botters. It would be funny to see their reaction, but I doubt the bot site's work is worth the time investment of even trying to be annoying to them.

Actually, it credits the original article at the end of the speech, at least.

Quoting: kokoko3kActually, it credits the original article at the end of the speech, at least.

Not enough for CC BY-SA 4.0 compliance. The adapted work must be accompanied by note about which license the work is under and a way to access the license text, AKA link to the license.

Those videos just come off as sad...

Like the misguided works of some childlike AI. Having just achieved consciousness and is desperate to find some way of reaching out. Some way of being of service. Some way of reaching out to humanity.

So it's a text to voice thing from a web scrape that adds some visualization and dumps it out as a video?

Oh and it includes the text of the video before the video (isn't that redundant?)

So is it like for blind people?
Or like people who want to hear their news because they are doing something that requires visual attention (like commuting, our at work or something?)

I guess it's easier to output to YouTube than a sound file.

I'm still not sure I get it...

It must be some sort of playing off google algorithms. In general, what google has done with the web and the things real websites of actual companies have on them, basically illegible stuff because seo specialists made text with robots and not potential clients in mind, is frightening.

Hmm, audio transcripts of written works can be very useful accessibility complements - i.e., visually impaired people get access to texts. In Brazil there are actually copyright exemptions for this kind of thing (meaning you could create braille books and audiobooks for any work, regardless of copyright, so long as it is non-commercial).

Regardless of that, and whether this particular bot is made for or even suitable for visually impaired people (not just blind, but various levels of "bad eyesight" - yes, some people could navigate visually and still need accessibility tools for reading), I find this more acceptable than a simple text scraper. It (presumably) serves a different use-case, whatever it is - listening while doing something, podcast-style? Easily viewing it on a smart TV with a youtube app but clumsy web browing? People that just enjoy audio a lot more than text on a screen? Maybe not ideal, but could serve a purpose.

Being a video instead of an audio file seems redundant, sure, but I have used youtube to listen to music before - sometimes it is easier to use the dominant video platform that everyone uses instead of something else that is more audio-focused.

Quoting: eldakingHmm, audio transcripts of written works can be very useful accessibility complements - i.e., visually impaired people get access to texts. In Brazil there are actually copyright exemptions for this kind of thing (meaning you could create braille books and audiobooks for any work, regardless of copyright, so long as it is non-commercial).

Regardless of that, and whether this particular bot is made for or even suitable for visually impaired people (not just blind, but various levels of "bad eyesight" - yes, some people could navigate visually and still need accessibility tools for reading), I find this more acceptable than a simple text scraper. It (presumably) serves a different use-case, whatever it is - listening while doing something, podcast-style? Easily viewing it on a smart TV with a youtube app but clumsy web browing? People that just enjoy audio a lot more than text on a screen? Maybe not ideal, but could serve a purpose.

Being a video instead of an audio file seems redundant, sure, but I have used youtube to listen to music before - sometimes it is easier to use the dominant video platform that everyone uses instead of something else that is more audio-focused.

As you say, visually impaired people need a speech-to-text software even to surf the web.
I think they would find way more useful to use that engine to read a simple rss than browsing youtube to find that info, but maybe there is (more than) one legit use casea after all.
Still, I'm not inclined to trust the good faith of the creators of that scrapers.
I bet their intent is to just monetize other people's work with minimum efforts.