Download videos as mp4 from youtube

It’s not illegal to download videos for personal use. In some cases, it might also be legal to download videos for commercial reasons, as long as those reasons are covered by “fair use”. However, depending on which videos you download, you may be breaking YouTube’s terms of service.

Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., U.S. (), a.k.a the “Betamax case”, was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States ruling that the making of individual copies of complete television shows for purposes of time-shifting does not constitute copyright infringement, but is considered fair use.

The court stated: “When one considers the nature of a televised copyrighted audiovisual work and that time-shifting merely enables a viewer to see such a work which he had been invited to witness in its entirety free of charge, the fact that the entire work is reproduced does not have its ordinary effect of militating against a finding of fair use.”

Although there may be different interpretations, we believe that downloading content from video sharing website for the purpose of watching it at another time or on a device without an Internet connection has the same purpose as timeshifting and should, therefore, be considered fair use. As such, from a user’s perspective, downloading videos is entirely legal.

You should also be aware that the YouTube Terms of Service state “you shall not download any Content unless you see a "download" or similar link displayed by YouTube on the Service for that Content”. Although it’s not “illegal” to break the contract you enter into with YouTube when using their services, we do not wish to encourage or condone this practice. As such, we respectfully ask that you only download videos which are marked as such and/or to which you personally hold the copyrights.