Is it permissible for me to download videos from YouTube?

There are numerous external tools and sites that you can use to download YouTube videos without a premium subscription (you can read how to do this here). Apart from the fact that some of these offers should be treated with caution, the legal question: Am I allowed to download this at all?

We have this question for copyright experts Florian Prischl von Stadler Völkel Attorneys placed. As with most legal issues, it cannot be answered with a yes or no, as he explains. “For a lawyer, what counts first and foremost is the contract that you conclude with the person who makes the video available to you,” says Prischl. If you use YouTube, you close one contract with the operators away. “Certain things can be granted and forbidden and a lot can be agreed here,” says Prischl.

AGB

If you take a look at the YouTube-AGB the subject of downloading videos is clearly regulated. The following is therefore not permitted:

“Access, reproduce, download, distribute, broadcast, transmit, display, sell, license, modify, adapt, or otherwise use any portion of the Service or the Content […].”

What happens if you break this contract? “In any case, it is possible that the platform or the User blocked or account suspended, you always have to reckon with that,” said Prischl. However, the probability of this is not particularly high: “In practical terms, it will hardly be possible for YouTube to assign the violation to individual users,” says Prischl.

Right to Private Copy

This is also apart from the contract that the users sign with YouTube Urheberrechtsgesetz (UrhG) relevant – at least if a user is in Austria. However, Prischl refers to this Section 42, Paragraph 4 of the Copyright Act. There it says: “Any natural person may make individual copies of a work […] [digitalen] Manufacture carriers for private use and not for direct or indirect commercial purposes”. This is often referred to as the right to a ‘private copy” referred to, says Prischl. The lawyer sees the downloading of a YouTube video by a natural person – i.e. a human being – for private use as clearly covered.

What includes private use, be a case-by-case decision, explains Prischl. “If I share it in a Facebook group, for example, according to the case law of the Supreme Court, it depends, among other things, on who has access to this group,” says Prischl. “If there are really only close family members there, I would say that’s clearly a private use,” said the lawyer. The same applies if you show the downloaded video at home on your family’s television. However, when it comes to private copying rules, the devil is in the details. The copyright law uses a complex system of basic rules, exceptions and counter-exceptions.

Violation and possible sanctions

According to Prischl, if you violate this right to private copying or make an illegal copy, you have to expect that the rights holders will prosecute under civil law. “The risk is there, but it is low,” said Prischl. “From a practical point of view, the more serious and the more noticeable the breach, the greater the risk.”

The legal consequences are made more difficult difficult traceability a violation. It becomes even more complex when the rights holders are located abroad. “It is far more difficult to pursue an international legal dispute than a domestic one,” says Prischl.