Is it legal to download YouTube video?

Is it illegal to download YouTube video for personal use? Many people would answer that question by suggesting it's something of a 'grey' area. Actually it's pretty black and white.


Google, which owns YouTube, makes its money through advertising. It provides 'free' video content for you to enjoy, and you return the favour by viewing some ads (or by paying for a YouTube Red subscription, assuming it is available in your country). Downloads the YouTube video to watch it offline and you're no longer holding up your piece of the bargain, so why should it want to scratch your rear?

It's fairly obvious that Google would want to avoid you downloading its content. Not entirely does it want to protect its profit potential, but it holds to protect the content creators who upload video to its site who may also be creating a living from that substance. And this is why you won't find apps that leave you to download YouTube in the Google Play store: Google does not condone such a drill.

But is it actually illegal to download YouTube?

For personal use, no it is not illegal to download YouTube video. But it is immoral.

Taking steps to avoid video-streaming quality issues and overstepping your data-downloading limit are common sense, and avoiding advertising is not illegal (ad-blockers are the bane of our diligence, besides).

In-browser ad blockers are legal - if a little unfair to the publisher when accessing free, advertising-supported media - and no-one will pull you in front of a judge for leaving the room to get a cup of tea during a TV ad break. You can yet cut the ads after a few seconds on most free catch-up TV sets, and fast-forward the ads on record programs.

Simply weigh the fact that lots of the people who create YouTube videos rely on the money they earn from the ads displayed on their clips. If not illegal, we can certainly all agree that this is morally incorrect.

Downloading video from YouTube does breach Google's terms of serving. Inside Section 5.1 it states: "YouTube hereby grants you permission to access and use the Service, subject to the following express conditions, and you agree that your failure to cleave to any of these conditions shall constitute a rupture of these Terms on your part: you agree not to access Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Website itself, the YouTube Player, or such other means YouTube may explicitly designate for this determination.

"You agree not to access Content for any reason other than your personal, non-commercial use only as intended through and permitted by the normal functionality of the Service, and solely for Streaming. "Streaming" means a contemporaneous digital transmission of the material by YouTube via the Internet to a user operated Internet enabled device in such a way that the information is intended for real-time viewing and not meant to be downloaded (either permanently or temporarily), copied, stored, or redistributed by the user.

"You shall not replicate, reproduce, disseminate, transfer, broadcast, exhibit, trade, license, or otherwise exploit any Content for whatever other purposes without the prior written consent of YouTube or the respective licensors of the Content."

In other language, you are permitted to see YouTube video only through Google's own website and apps. You are not permitted to see YouTube video offline on your iPad, iPhone or Android device, PC or laptop through a third-party app.

Such third-party apps will continue to pop up on the network, and people will continue to use them to make available offline their favorite YouTube videos. Google might not be aware that you're employing them to download content from YouTube, and yet if it did any threats of banning you from the service are all but impossible to uphold. Subsequently all, you don't require to be signed into your Google account to access YouTube.

Then, at the close of the day, it's actually up to you to decide whether or not downloading video from YouTube for personal exercise is something you should be exercising.

Piracy and Copyright Protection

A major concern with downloading YouTube video and practicing it in your own projects or for your own gain is the simplicity with which you can fall afoul of copyright protection.

You might suppose it's OK to download commercially available music or video for free, but media companies are not in the business of throwing out their goods for free - and justly so. The more people who follow your thinking, the less money they get, and the less money is granted to the original content creators - often ordinary people fighting to create ends meet.

Google is hot on piracy. It encourages users to draw its attention to any videos that breach copyright and, where a video uses a soundtrack or other element owned by some other individual or company, it will award the original content creator any credit that arises from it.

We won't get into depth over the ins and outs of online piracy here, suffice to say that in order to remain on the correct side of the law, any content you do download from the web, for which you do not own the copyright, must be for your personal use solely. You must not distribute or financially benefit from that substance. It must also come with the express permission of the copyright owner.

Source Link: https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/how-to/internet/is-it-legal-download-youtube-videos-3420353/

Is it legal to download YouTube video? Is it legal to download YouTube video? Reviewed by Unknown on December 18, 2017 Rating: 5

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