Video to mp3 conversion, is it legal?

[45yearsagasman]

As you all know, Youtube contains a vast amount of music video. There exists free software whereby by inserting the URL of the video it can be converted to mp3 files and can be downloaded to your pc to store and then to maybe upload to your portable device. IS THIS LEGAL? What does the panel think?

 

[Diyisfun]

I would have thought that the posting it to youtube was illegal.
I download all the time, if I didnt I would only listen to radio, so I dont feel as though I am depriving anyone from royalties

 

[45yearsagasman]

My thoughts exactly. Many artists allow their work on Youtube and it is essentially free for the whole world to view FOC. I did wonder if converting it to mp3 and then onto a portable device was allowed.
Youtubes site has no mention of this.

 

[Monsterminty]

firefox has a plug-in that allows you to rip from youtube.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/easy-youtube-video-downl-10137/

from there its no big deal to convert to mp3 BUT......if you are going to download from the pirate bay or using soulseek etc.

 

[^woody^]

It is copyright theft and unlawful to copy from YouTube or elsewhere online with specific permission to do so

There are copyright changes planned to allow "fair use" copying of stuff you own to play on various devices you own, but not that's it

 

[Monsterminty]

sorry woody i meant to make that clear in my post, my point was if the op was going to break copyright laws he/she may as well use torrent sites etc. rather than waste time ripping from youtube. I do not in any way condone this behaviour.

 

[^woody^]

The problem is that to most people, just copying something from YouTube or whatever is not too unlike just videoing a program from the TV, or taping from the radio. We all did it without batting an eyelid and it was "acceptable"

However actually searching a torrent site or suchlike for a mp3 download is deemed completely different and does have that element (in peoples minds) of piracy and unlawfulness

When in fact, both are completely the same.

And yes you are correct in that the OP may as well get a better copy via torrents, but most people just don't see it like that - one way is good, the other is naughty

Obviously the other point of view is "WTF", the record companies have been ripping us off for years and the artist suffers no loss because they get a very little percentage from music sales nowadays, and I wouldn't buy the record in any case so there is no loss

... buts that debate has been done to death.