I wonder if "un-automating" the scrapper by introducing a tiny user-interaction (as tiny as clicking on a link in a browser or even tinier) can technically remove author's tool from robots and scrappers category.

I'm quite sure that does not save your skin as it is an obvious "trick" to circumvent that clause in the Terms and Conditions.

That little "click" is nothing different than starting your scraping tool. Whether you do that at the begining of your scraping session, or again and again on each page makes no difference. A scraper remains a scraper and that kind of tool is explicitly forbidden.

It might be different if, after manually clicking on a YouTube link, the data streamed to you somehow ends up on our hard-disk where - surpise surprise - you happen to find it later. Of course, there will be issues of copyright law and such, but that is a whole other can of worms.

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

My blog: Imperial Deltronics