The VideoLAN Forums

Hi,

I was recently looking for an all-in-one solution that would allow me to search & play YouTube videos without even starting a browser to avoid using bloatware (Chrome instances eat up 300 MB if I open up the YouTube search page.. big shame of the 21st century).

I found MiniTube and it wasn't that bad, but lacking a few basic features, like selecting output audio device and keyboard shortcuts, so I chose not to purchase and use it. One of the facts I read about made me raise my head. There was a discussion about a removed download feature of MiniTube. It used to be able to download videos, but Google lawyers might have done a great job threatening the author to remove the download capability. I'm just curious why can't they address VLC to remove YouTube download feature (streaming) from VLC or even sue VideoLan creators for enabling people watch & download copyrighted videos without seeing advertisements and stuff.

Can all liability be excluded if it's an open-source / freeware product?

How does this work?

Because VLC does not download Youtube videos. It just plays them.

Although it doesn't have a specific download feature, if you hit the record button, your YouTube movie gets saved to disk while you watch it. This is the same as downloading.

It does not work the same.

That would be the same as recording your screen while playing a YouTube video in your web browser. Goggle won't sue your recording software nor your web browser for it.
the only have a problem with software that was made specifically for downloading video's, which usually goes at a much higher speed than you could watch the video. This kind of downloading is heavier on YouTube's servers. but of course they don't want people to save videos on their PC either way, just for copyright reasons. There just isn't much they can do about that.