Downloading Youtube FLVs – legal or not?

I`m still considering releasing my RichTube – Youtube Apollo tool to search, watch, download and organize youtube videos.
You can watch a screencast here. The more i think about their Terms Of Use i think that they are just wrong saying donwloading is not allowed because they are a streaming service.
What is the difference beetween progressively downloading videos to the users cache (what they call streaming) and downloading them elsewhere?
Here is an interesting statement from youtube: http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/11/15/huh-youtube-sends-techcrunch-a-cease-desist/

What is your opinion on this?

BTW: cool updates for RichFLV are on the way. Quite busy at the moment may take till end of next week.

May 7, 2007 | Filed Under Apollo, Boredom, Uncategorized 

Comments

5 Responses to “Downloading Youtube FLVs – legal or not?”

  1. Brandon Ellis on May 7th, 2007 9:44 pm

    What about the VideoDownloader plugin for Firefox? You can save YouTube videos with it and they are still up.

  2. JD Lasica on May 8th, 2007 5:21 am

    One option: Use a darknet.

    http://www.socialmedia.biz/2007/05/downloading_you.html

  3. Jon B on May 8th, 2007 6:18 pm

    Ah, you tempt us…

    I say release it and worry about legality or not later :P

    Looks a slick app and your richFLV is awesome.

  4. freizeitflasher on May 10th, 2007 9:13 am

    i think you should not publish richTube. I know its a great tool (i’ve seen it live) and you spend a lot of time and power in it but i think you risk to much.

  5. Arvind Tiwari on November 23rd, 2007 1:16 pm

    How can YouTube say that they do not allow downloading of their videos. There are numerous sites, applications, & browser plugins that already allow people to download video files from various sites like YouTube, Google Video, MetaCafe etc.
    I am just curious as to how these people found the logic to get the path of the FLV file on these sites.
    So I would suggest, put it up there & let people enjoy.

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