YouTube Attempts to Sue Against Video Downloaders Should you be worried? Probably not, yet
By Rustam Singh
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Turns out, the largest video uploading portal on our planet does not appreciate copyright infringement very much, and especially not ways to circumvent its traffic to other websites. YouTube has sent a legal notice to TubeNinja, one of the several hundred thousand websites that enable users to download videos on their computer for offline viewing and sharing that the website violates YouTube's legal terms of conditions. This is a part of YouTube's continual battle against websites and services that encourage users to download from the site. However, as of right now, TubeNinja is still working fine.
With over a billion active users and millions of hours of video content available, YouTube surpasses any other video sharing platform on the planet, including Snapchat, Facebook and Vimeo. Every day, hundreds of millions of users use its services regularly to not only watch video content but also listen to music for free. YouTube renders its services absolutely for free to its users, with the exception of YouTube Red, a newly launched exclusive channel for paid customers and some videos that are available pay per view. In order to encourage more users and more content, YouTube bombards videos with advertisements, from banner ads, skippable video advertisements to unskippable ads, if you're not using an ad blocker. If you prefer to have a cleaner interface without the ads, then click here to find out how to block all ads on your computer without using any extensions, completely independent of the browser you use.
With YouTube, the debate isn't just restricted on whether you should block advertisements thereby depriving Google of advertiser's revenue, but that downloaded videos discourage artists and creators. Once a video is downloaded, it merely counts as one view – no matter how many times you view it. Once it's brought offline, users can share the video via any platform without counting as a view for the artist/creator, which is illegal technically, but there's no possible way YouTube or the creator can know (unless reported). Advocates for allowing downloading content claim Google trying to sue the millions of downloading services is like suing people using VHS recorder users for taping the television broadcast.
Ironically, Google's very own Chrome browser has several plugins that allow users to download content off YouTube and other media streaming websites. The official app for Youtube on iOS & Android allows users to download content on their cell phones. From a business standpoint – it makes senses to strictly utilize only YouTube as a platform for sharing your videos, and not using your website's own video player, and especially boycotting Facebook's video sharing features. Click here to read more on the same.
TubeNinja has asked for clarifications on the same and has out rightly refused to take down its services at this point in time, according to reports. What's your take on downloading videos from YouTube? Let us know in the comments on our official Facebook page Entrepreneur India
