The news comes from the COO of Syabas, the company that makes the Popcorn Hour set-top box. Up until now they’d had a loose agreement with the ‘Tube: They can stream video from YouTube for free, but YouTube can change the terms of the deal whenever they want. Which they did!:

YouTube has always retained the right to change its terms of service in the future should it ever wish to do so. As a result of Google’s decision, Syabas is no longer allowed to access YouTube through its APIs. To be clear, Syabas is not being singled out. With the exception of a few strategic partners Google has chosen to work with, the company has informed Syabas they are asking all over-the-top device makers that are currently connecting to YouTube content through its APIs to take down the service.

To quote every set-top box manufacturer in the world, probably: “Shit.” YouTube access had become the kind of thing you take for granted in a connected box or Blu-ray player, and it was nice to have. Now, it’ll be limited to devices like the PS3, Wii and TiVo — backed by the kinds of players who have the clout to pressure Google, or the money to pay them — leaving everyone else to search for some kind of hacky workaround.

I understand that Google wants to squeeze some ad revenue out of YouTube, and that letting anyone and everyone access raw, ad-free content through the back end probably isn’t the best business plan, but this isn’t Hulu — it’s not like they have many powerful content providers to appease, just a bunch of teenagers with webcams. Set-top box folks: Watch your free video cornucopia dissolve on December 2.

UPDATE: YouTube’s statement:

Since July of 2008, YouTube’s Terms of Service has restricted implementations for televisions based on our APIs. YouTube has been in active discussions with various developers on how best to implement YouTube on set top boxes and TVs. There are several companies, however, that have deployed solutions, like video scraping technology, to circumvent the rules and violate YouTube’s Terms of Service. Companies that have negotiated agreements to use our APIs, like TiVo, Sony, Panasonic and Sony’s PS3 are not impacted.

So, companies like Syabas have been in violation of YouTube’s terms of service for some time now and knew this was going to happen. The question remains, though: Why couldn’t they just comply and get a deal like TiVo or Sony? Does it cost anything? Is YouTube selective? Does it just take awhile? [Syabas via Engadget via Lifehacker]

Because the speech-recognition technology is still a work in progress, Google is launching the automatic captioning service on the YouTube channels of just a handful of partners, including PBS, National Geographic and a few big universities. But the company promises that the technology will improve over time — and it hopes for a much broader rollout.

In the meantime, Google is adding a new “auto-timing” feature to its existing manual captioning service to make it easier to use. Video creators will now simply have to create a text file with all the words spoken in a video and Google’s speech recognition technology will take it from there — matching the text to the words as they are spoken. Google hopes this will encourage more users to add captions to their videos.

[AP]

I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that this video seems to be a few years old and I’ve only just seen it, or the fact that I actually wouldn’t mind watching a George Lucas remastered version of Singin’ in the Rain. Actually, I think the second one is worse. Much, much worse.

Contrary to popular belief, (some) tech-heads are also sports enthusiasts, and where do geeks go for their sports fix? Why, the internet, of course!

Here are Gizmodo’s top YouTube picks – if you’ve got your own favourites, don’t keep ‘em to yourself – share them with us in the comments!

Cricket Australia TV
The official YouTube channel for Cricket Australia, the channel offers exclusive interviews with Australia’s finest cricketers, as well as video blogs, and analysis of matches.

Universal Sports Network
The YouTube home of World Championship sporting events, the Sports Network showcases the golden moments in sports that have been captured on video – victories, defeat, blunders, and humiliation.

Driving Sports TV
For lovers of fast cars, DSTV looks into all aspects of the fast and furious sport, featuring interviews with drivers, footage from races, and even exclusives with those who have developed racing car video games.

TNA Wrestling
Is it still a sport if it’s mostly staged? Yes? No? No? Oh, well, let’s be open-minded and accept Total Nonstop Action Wrestling as a sport, because why not! Watch classic matches, the latest TNA news and match previews, and be the first to view exclusive interviews.

BigPond NRL
When the gruff and rough is more your kind of thing, you can’t go past the highlights of NRL on the BigPond sports channel. All the best moments from 2009 caught on video and uploaded into the one spot.

Playing with balls is Gizmodo AU’s week-long look at the technology behind the sports we love, from the jerseys to the balls and everything in between. Go the Everton!

[Pic] ABC

I admit that the whole Hitler subtitle meme has had its day in the sun, but this one had me literally laughing out loud. Is it weird that I actually felt bad for the guy? I mean, it can’t be easy to lose a top 5 ranking in Flight Control, or the ability to read news on the toilet…

Lion’s Gate, Sony and Warner Bros are all reportedly discussing such a service with Google (who owns YouTube), although details are thin. Negotiations are still ongoing, so a lot of major issues are still unresolved: Will downloads be available? Which films would be ad-supported versus a flat fee? What about TV shows? But if YouTube could get a solid, competitive system going, they’d have a fair chance at competing with Hulu, iTunes and Crackle and maybe even turn a profit one of these days. [WSJ]

We’ve seen comparisons like this before and as we move into terabytes of digital storage they’re less and less useful (and interesting). But the move to the cloud is pretty intriguing: Facebook photos, YouTube videos, all that stuff is pretty much unlimited and will continue to grow. [Mozy]

Earlier today several competing social networks banded together to fight the DDOS attacks on their respective properties. Google and Facebook were able to keep the effects minimal while Twitter and others suffered periodic outages and severe slowness through out the day.

Max Kelly, chief security officer at Facebook, explained that the attack specifically targeted Cyxym, and was directed toward websites which he frequented or on which he held accounts, including his Livejournal, where we find the first suggestion that there was a big target painted on his virtual back:

Cyxymu’s LiveJournal page wasn’t accessible, but a cached version showed that it was updated on Thursday with a message about the denial of service (DOS) attacks on his accounts on the US-based sites. “Now it’s obvious it’s a special attack against me and Georgians,” the message in Russian said.

There is no word on exactly who was behind this attack and Kelly declined to speculate. But we wonder: Did Cyxym have a Gizmodo commenter account too or was the DDOS attack on Gawker Media an entirely unrelated coincidence? [CNET]

It’s a little rough right now, but it’s already plenty of fun to play with, at least until your inevitable migraine sets in. The interface lets you switch between a fairly long list of viewing options, be it a particular type of glasses—red/cyan or amber/blue—or a simple cross-eyed option, all rendered from a single source file. It’s incredibly obvious, simply mashing two-panel source video together in a variety of ways, but it’s a surprisingly elegant way to deal with fragmenting 3D technologies. Details about how to activate and upload for the feature, as well as some samples, are available here. [SERoundTable]