Signing up for YouTube comes with some responsibility, such as agreeing to follow the rules set out in their terms of service. Most programs you download from the Internet have their own specific terms, to which you have to agree in order to be allowed to use their service. YouTube forbids you from downloading content. If you want to download YouTube videos you have to agree first that you won’t do it and then do it anyhow.

It’s a pretty good guess that most people don’t take the time to read these long terms of service. They just click the agreement box and get on with the download. It just looks like legal mumbo-jumbo anyway and not that easy to decipher. Maybe you didn’t even know that downloading from YT is illegal, so now you do. It’s like going 2 or 3 miles faster than the posted speed limit — it’s illegal but just about everybody does it.

How many times have your heard, “rules were made to be broken, ” or, “what they don’t know won’t hurt them?” Maybe those adages apply here. But still, that being said, if you copy music or video from YT you’re breaking the rules and subject to the penalties. They include no longer being able to use the service.

There is a single exception to this. If you’ve uploaded your own material onto the YT site, it’s okay to download it back. They give you the option of doing this, in the form of an MP4 file. Just go to your account on YouTube and look for the download button next to your video. But how about downloading someone else’s material?

Searching the keywords in the title of this article will bring up lots of programs for downloading music and video from different sites. Most are free, but some charge a slight fee for their application. Some are easy, with the only requirement to copy and paste the YT URL for whatever you want to copy and clicking the download button. Once downloaded, you simply save to your preferred destination and play it on your player.

Other programs are somewhat more involved, with the requirement that you change the name of the file you’ve downloaded and add an extension to the file name. Some of these sites are full of banner ads and pop-ups, which can be distracting to the task at hand. Others are free of ads and seem much easier to navigate.

Trying out a few of these downloading sites proved the old KISS principle — the simpler, the better. Just putting in the URL and clicking one button to download and a couple more clicks to save was all it took. There were no problems encountered and the quality of the transfer was perfect.

If you want to download YouTube videos it’s easy and there are lots of options available. It’s a great way to fill an MP4 with your favorite content. If you do it for your own enjoyment it shouldn’t be a problem. YouTube was meant for sharing. If you’re doing it for some other purpose, such as financial gain, that’s different. It’s all about intent.

If you want to download videos from YouTube, you can read more information aboutdownloading YouTube videos at ReelSEO.com. They are online video marketing experts and offer a ton of tips and resources for everything related to online video.