This may be a dumb question, but I would like to know whether it’s
A) legal and
B) technically possible
today to save videos from youtube.
I ask because I remember that way back several years when youtube started, there was a lot about “copyright” and therefore youtube basically said “We will embed videos, so nobody can save/download them, therefore no problem with sales being hurt; and if anybody tells us about violations, we will take the video in question down immediately.”
However, laws and court sentences change, so I wonder if it’s now legal to download or save youtube videos?
In some jurisdictions? Some videos, but not others?
I also wonder if it’s today technically possible, by just going to site XY and downloading a certain software - I have an old adress for a website that declares it will convert a link to a youtube video to a downloadable file, but for some reason it doesn’t work for me. I don’t know why.
If it isn’t legal or possible, is there a big site which does offer legally downloadable videos?
I’M NOT INTERESTED IN ANYTHING ILLEGAL.
Thanks for all tips and infos from knowledgeable Dopers.
When you buffer the video, your saving it on your computer. You can usually just go to your browsers cache file or the /tmp directory and pull it out. So saving a copy of Youtube videos on your harddrive is intrinsic to watching them, and thus I can’t imagine its illegal. Or at least, if its illegal, Youtube in general would be illegal
Not sure that the file’s presence in your cache automatically gives you legal authority to keep it.
The files in the cache have arbitrary names and you can’t readily identify a given file as being “Funny cat vs iguana video LOL”. I guess it could be argued that this mangling constitutes an electronic protection system that it would be illegal to circumvent. Ridiculous, yes, but possible. (IANAL)
I have no idea about the legality of saving YouTube videos, but I just copy the URL and go to a website called Keepvid.com that allows me to download the video. (Originally, you could only download it in .flv format, but lately they’ve allowed downloads to .mp4 files.)
Ah, here we go. YouTube terms of service (apparently everyone who views anything on YouTube agrees to this) :
Section 4 C : You agree not to access Content through any technology or means other than the video playback pages of the Service itself, the Embeddable Player, or other explicitly authorized means YouTube may designate.
Section 5 B : (…) You shall not download any Content unless you see a “download” or similar link displayed by YouTube on the Service for that Content. You shall not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, broadcast, display, sell, license, or otherwise exploit any Content for any other purposes without the prior written consent of YouTube or the respective licensors of the Content. (…)
Section 5 C : You agree not to circumvent, disable or otherwise interfere with security-related features of the Service or features that prevent or restrict use or copying of any Content or enforce limitations on use of the Service or the Content therein.
Is a TOS legal if its not even presented to the user? I mean, the TOS itself says that I agree to them just by using youtube, but I can use Youtube without ever being presented with the TOS. I don’t see how I can agree to something without even being aware of it.
But again, almost every single user breaks this everytime they watch a Youtube video. My browser (and everyone elses) downloads the video automatically.
I have trouble believing the TOS would ever hold up in court.
It’s probably illegal. Remember just because something is in a contract or agreement doesn’t make it so. I can sign an agreement to work for $3.00/hr but it wouldn’t hold up, because it’s below minimum wage and you can’t contract for something that isn’t allowed.
Some things you can’t waive via contract. I’m not saying this is one of those things, but it’s good to keep in mind, that just because you sign something doesn’t mean it has the force of law.
Thanks, I found that. Now I have a little download link right on my youtube site.
(I did not manage to figure out in which file folder Firefox puts my cache, though. In IE, I used to be able to open the cache folder directly, but Firefox makes everything so easy that I only found how to delete the cache, not how to open the folder. Maybe it’s a question of limited rights.)
I think if only small snippets or promos are downloaded it’s different from a whole TV ep. And I think it also depends on which TV station it has been shown, because in some countries, TV stations pay a fee to allow private taping of their broadcasts (back in the VHS days). So it probably depends a lot.
Don’t forget that constanze is in Germany (right?) and thus the laws are probably different. I know that, as recently as a year ago, it was legal to make copies of software as long as you owned the disk–something that is technically not legal here.
And, of course, it depends on the licensing of the video when it was uploaded. People like artists, political parties, religious groups, advertisers, and others who want their videos spread around, release their videos on YouTube with terms that explicitly allow viewers to save them. YouTube has the Standard YouTube License (see Section 6 of the Terms of Service) that permits YouTube to do its thing, but for real spread-it-around action, you can also release your video under a Creative Commons license.
As a visual artist, I have similar concerns. I get around the whole problem of having to contact copyright holders and paying to license things by a) making them myself, or b) using things that are explicitly licensed via Creative Commons to allow commercial reuse without payment or notification. You can actually do an image search in Google and restrict the results according to their licensing terms.
No, you’re right, I’m in Germany. And yes, our courts ruled several years ago, when companies started taking technical copyright measures, that it was legal to make copies (up to 5) of a legally bought Audio-CD or CD-ROM, because the original disk could easily be scratched and damaged (esp. listening to a CD in your car, where it gets very hot), but the companies wouldn’t replace them.
Therefore, making a “safety copy” of a program ROM or a copy for your car of an Audio-CD was good usage practice, and so the courts ruled that circumventing technical measures for this reason was allowed, and that companies shouldn’t introduce measures without loopholes.
Copying one Audio-CD and selling 100 copies on the school-yard, or uploading the mp3 to an exchange forum are still forbidden.
That’s why I said that the rules will differ among jurisdictions.
I now wonder if generally speaking, the very fact that youtube removes all protested videos doesn’t mean that all remaining videos are therefore legal to download? Or is that too simple?
But I thought the special thing about Youtube was that it uses streaming technology where it isn’t saved onto your temp file? With the other advantage of leaving no incriminating files on your PC?
Glancing over the legalese, I can’t find how to figure out as a viewer whether it’s copyright protected - this seems to be more oriented towards the people who upload videos, not those who download.
I know about Creative Commons, but so far I haven’t quickly found their symbols on youtube videos - have I been looking at the wrong place or at the wrong videos?
Yes, that’s one of the nice things about google search, that it allows searching for Creative Common pictures only to avoid problems.