Black Hat Uni Blog

Signing up for YouTube comes with some responsibility, such as agreeing to follow the rules set out in their terms of service. Most programs you download from the Internet have their own specific terms, to which you have to agree in order to be allowed to use their service. YouTube forbids you from downloading content. If you want to download YouTube videos you have to agree first that you won’t do it and then do it anyhow.

It’s a pretty good guess that most people don’t take the time to read these long terms of service. They just click the agreement box and get on with the download. It just looks like legal mumbo-jumbo anyway and not that easy to decipher. Maybe you didn’t even know that downloading from YT is illegal, so now you do. It’s like going 2 or 3 miles faster than the posted speed limit — it’s illegal but just about everybody does it.

How many times have your heard, “rules were made to be broken, ” or, “what they don’t know won’t hurt them?” Maybe those adages apply here. But still, that being said, if you copy music or video from YT you’re breaking the rules and subject to the penalties. They include no longer being able to use the service.

There is, however, an exception to the rule. YouTube allows the original poster of a video to download it in the form of an MP4. They’ll only let you do this two or three times before the option disappears, but it comes back eventually and then you can do it again. But if you’re the one who did the upload, you probably already have a copy, so it’s kind of redundant. And it doesn’t make it possible to download someone else’s content.

Searching the keywords in the title of this article will bring up lots of programs for downloading music and video from different sites. Most are free, but some charge a slight fee for their application. Some are easy, with the only requirement to copy and paste the YT URL for whatever you want to copy and clicking the download button. Once downloaded, you simply save to your preferred destination and play it on your player.

Other programs are somewhat more involved, with the requirement that you change the name of the file you’ve downloaded and add an extension to the file name. Some of these sites are full of banner ads and pop-ups, which can be distracting to the task at hand. Others are free of ads and seem much easier to navigate.

After trying a few of the different methods of downloading, the one that was easiest and didn’t require anything but typing in the URL and clicking the download button seemed to do the job with no problems. The downloaded video played right away and was just as clear and loud as the original. What else could you ask for?

If you can download YouTube videos or music it’s a great way to fill up an MP4 player or your computer hared-drive with your favorite stuff. If your intention is just to enjoy and share the videos with friends it shouldn’t be a big deal. If your purpose is geared towards somehow profiting financially from these downloads… Well, that’s a different story. Let your conscience by your guide.

If you are interested in downloading YouTube videos, you can find information on YouTube download tools as well as other tools, tips, resources and best practices for online video marketing at ReelSEO.com – the online video marketing experts.