Why did my YouTube conversion program just stop working?

Question:

Dear Leo. There’s a current problem with converting from YouTube to mp3
files. This has been OK for many weeks in the past. I’ve been using video to
mp3 by simply entering the URL address and a conversion to mp3 has been no
problem. However, at the moment, this program does not function and similar
conversion programs do not work. Do you have any information to aid in this
matter?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #35, I look at how YouTube protects online videos from being
downloaded and how that will often break software meant to download those
videos.

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Download Youtube videos

The problem isn’t so much a technical one (although it is) as much as it is a… I’ll even call it a legal one.

Here’s the deal:

What you’re attempting to do with YouTube is against YouTube’s terms of service.
They don’t want you to be able to download YouTube videos or convert them to other formats. It is essentially a form of piracy when you do so.

What they do is every so often make a change on their site; it may be intentional to thwart these kind of programs; or it may be a change for some other reason that accidentally happens to cause these programs to begin failing. But they don’t care.

Preventing YouTube piracy

They don’t want these programs to work in the first place.

So the short answer is yeah, it’s going to happen; it’s going to happen regularly.

What you’re doing is not officially supported by YouTube and it’s actually actively discouraged by YouTube.

Downloading programs keep up

Now, having said that, there are many programs that do this kind of thing – and they all face exactly the same problem when YouTube makes a change: they all break.

The thing to do is to keep an eye on new versions of that software that you’re using. See when they update to chase the changes that YouTube has made.

My guess is the program that you’re using will be updated at some point in the not-too-distant future to take into account any of the changes that YouTube has made. Then, they’ll start working again.

Game of cat and mouse

But that’s really what it boils down to – it’s a game of cat and mouse, if you will, with YouTube making changes to essentially prevent these kinds of programs from working – and then these programs making changes to account for the changes that YouTube just made.

Next from Answercast 35 – Why can’t I get the old version of Windows Live Messenger to work?

3 comments on “Why did my YouTube conversion program just stop working?”

Leo, you’ve posted instructional videos on YouTube before. Did you give up ownership or intellectual property rights by doing so? I always thought YouTube was a hosting site similar to, say, Dropbox where photos, documents, and videos can be freely shared. Shouldn’t you be the one to decide if people can download your videos?

No, one does not give up intellectual property rights when posting to YouTube. There are terms that you agree to, and options you can choose (for example I choose to retain copyright, yet allow embedding of my videos on other people’s sites).

15-Jul-2012

Actually I think there is one completely legal way in which to download videos/MP3s, etc. from YouTube. Its in the YouTube terms of service where it says, no downloading unless the page has a Download link button imbedded in it. Well the tricky genius part of it is that Google also owns and offers Chrome, and among the possibly suspicious gathering of download plugins there is one, made and offered by YouTube that embeds the download button on any YouTube web page, completing the circle and meeting the YouTube terms of service.

The name is YouTube Downloader: MP3 / HD Video Download from youtube.com, and again, the key action is it places the Download button in the web page itself, meeting TOS.

On a similar note, FireFox browser has an add-on to download YouTube videos, the Ant.com downloader. It allows you to skip the URL documentation.