Simple clear advice in plain English

Is it legal to download videos from Youtube onto an MP4 player?

It is easy to download Youtube videos using Keepvid, but the legal angle is tricky

Use Keepvid to download videos from Youtube
Keepvid is a streaming-video-capture website

Q  I have an MP4 player that can play downloaded videos that I have transferred to it. I was wondering if there is any easy, safe and legal way to download videos from Youtube?
Peter DiManna

A  Easy and safe, yes? Legal? Much trickier to answer. The easy way (which is also quite safe) is to use a streaming-video-capture website. Paste a Youtube link into the box on the Keepvid website, for example, and seconds later you will be able to download the related video as an MP4 file that you will be able to transfer to your portable player.

However, it would be illegal to do this without the permission of the copyright holder. While we are sure there are some Youtube users who publish original material and state clearly in the accompanying notes that they are happy for others to download their work for their own use, the vast majority don’t. 

In other words, while it is easy to download videos from Youtube, seeking the necessary permission to do so requires a lot more effort.

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