Independent Research Studio

OpenTuwa is designed as a global educational tool. Our multi-language subtitle system helps language learners, hearing-impaired users, and researchers access video content across linguistic barriers. We believe accessibility is a universal right, not a premium feature — and we provide it free of charge to everyone.

All videos are embedded via YouTube's official tools. Ads play normally, views are counted, and creators receive full algorithmic credit. Our subtitle interface sits above the video purely for readability — it does not block, skip, delay, or otherwise manipulate any ad delivery. Any incidental visual overlap is a technical byproduct of accessible design, identical in nature to YouTube's own native captions.

Legal scholarship and federal courts recognize third-party captioning for accessibility as protected fair use. The U.S. Supreme Court (Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, 1984) identified making copyrighted works accessible to people with disabilities as an exemplary fair use. The Second Circuit (Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, 2014) affirmed that accessibility efforts are non-infringing where copyright holders do not serve the accessibility market themselves. Leading academic analysis concludes that captioning undertaken strictly for accessibility constitutes fair use. The Librarian of Congress has expressly exempted from DMCA anti-circumvention liability the research and development of captioning and accessibility features for video players.

The Second Circuit (Richardson v. Townsquare Media, 2026) confirmed that YouTube's Terms of Service grant an affirmative, enforceable license to embed videos through the official player. The court drew a critical distinction between “conditions” (breach = copyright infringement) and “covenants” (breach = contract issue, not copyright). YouTube's platform policy requirements — including the overlay and modification rules found in its API Terms and Required Minimum Functionality policy — are covenants, not conditions. Only YouTube may enforce them. Their breach does not nullify the embed license or expose embedders to copyright claims from third-party creators.

We further note that YouTube's own native closed-captions and subtitle track rendering are themselves visual overlays displayed in front of the player. We believe the overlay prohibition in YouTube's API policies is best read as targeting overlays that alter, obscure, or interfere with the player's core functionality — not third-party accessibility overlays that serve the identical function as YouTube's own features. Federal accessibility law (the Americans with Disabilities Act, the CVAA, and the Rehabilitation Act) reflects a strong public policy favoring captioning access, which informs how we believe this term should be interpreted.

We operate transparently and in good faith. We do not circumvent any technological protection measure, encryption, or access control. We honor takedown requests from any rights holder. Our subtitle system is an accessibility feature, not an ad-blocking mechanism — a distinction we have publicly documented, and one that is true of how the system actually functions. We operate as a non-profit, independent research project with no revenue from advertising, subscriptions, or content sales. Our sole mission is making knowledge accessible across languages and borders.