Pale Moon forum

OK this has gone far enough.

Everyone can please stop hammering on the "downloading is illegal" thing. No thanks to Tobin for starting that tangent here.

There are extensions that allow you to do this, yes. In general creators license their videos for public display - in what way these extensions are in conflict with those licenses I don't know, and honestly it is not our responsibility to check the use of extensions, merely the design of them (to weed out plain malware or "harmful by design" ones irrespective of how they are used). Our general approach to these things is to please be mindful what you do with it as you may be breaking the law. This does not, however, mean that the extension itself is illegal, since creators on YT can license their content in many ways and it is your use of the extension that is potentially breaking licenses, i.e.: your actions as a user.

What I'm saying is : always carefully check if you are allowed to download a local copy of what is being streamed before you do so. YouTube will indicate what type of license the videos are under, so inform yourself before you potentially break the law.

Because of the easily-abusable nature of video downloaders like this and the rapidly-changing site structure of YouTube (among other things to try and prevent downloading, since a downloaded copy will also not give them ad revenue), we in general can't provide any support for the use of these types of extensions to the browser.

Strangely enough, there ARE yt vids you cannot download... usually new releases, 'not licensed for this country' etc... But I think many bands / singers realize that it is a 'publicity channel', so would increase awareness, for people to go out and get a **quality** CD etc... DO NOTE that MP3 downloads are not available from YT!!

I hope you dont mind me chatting on...but...

It is a bit strange in UK, dunno about US...

Back when cassette tapes were popular, it was very illegal to copy tapes, BUT! you could go into any hifi shop, and buy a dual tape player, that had a 'high speed dubbing facility - no sign of it getting stopped..

It is always repeated, that once it is on the net, it is 'public property' !!! AFAIK it was said, that you can copy anything, the illegal part is selling it for profit... most stuff is invisibly marked to prove ownership..

The best example years ago was overconfidence, and supergeeks... a guy was shouting how **impossible** it was to copy his protected DVD/bluray... he gave a guy a copy..

I think you will guess the next... 30 mins later the guy came back with 3 copies !!!

Thank you Moonchild, that is precisely what needed to be said. After many attempts to provoke this exact discussion and response for three years now after an older post holding a similar position was rejected on the spot perhaps your rephrasing and clear articulation of it will have renewed impact on it.

Simply put just because you can download (make a copy outside of displaying/streaming in cache) something like a video or image doesn't mean you should or are allowed to legally.

People should be informed about that despite what they end up doing in the end, they should know.

I am done with this point forever on this forum. The message is clear and out there now and there is no excuse for anyone using this forum in combo with the browser or any extensions not to be aware now. So my task is complete.

Moonchild wrote: Why are you recommending something that has spyware in it? Seriously.

Today this is such a common thing, most users do not care at all, i warn these who care. And that extension do its job good, better than another.

RJARRRPCGP wrote:Bad news, looks like the writing is on the wall for youtube-dl to be decimated by a recent court case! I'm not aware of legal threats against GitHub or the like for youtube-dl, but it looks grim! I'm considering dumping YouTube like Paris banning diesel!

I'm sure I caused that. You see, I spent a solid week writing some scripts based on it. I can bring rain too. I just have to forget about leaving expensive power tools outside.

Seriously, abandon themtube. Bitchute is pretty good. They are fine with downloading but the webtorrent-desktop program doesn't work very well in a linux. I'm using Brave to download files from there and to torrent them as a seeder. It doesn't seem to interfere with my browsing with PM even seeding 20 or so & downloading a couple.

BTW, looking at the number of pages in this thread, I guess the answer to OP's title question is "YES".

I am gonna throw you guys a total unofficial bone here. Turn off MSE and double right click on a Youtube Video and see what you get from the context menu.

Without MSE you can still view 320p and 720p versions.