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I would like to write a piece of software that downloads and processes YouTube videos to extract certain metadata, e.g. to identify music playing in the video. I believe that processing the video in this way is a fair use, and my understanding is that it would be off-topic here to ask (so please take it for granted). I also think that it is obvious that if I used my downloaded copy to e.g. just personally listen to the song, then that would not be a fair use.

My question is: does this matter, legally? If my processing is a fair use, does it matter that the same mechanism allows, or makes easy, other uses that are prohibited?

Some things I've considered:

  • Violating the ToS: YouTube's ToS do not permit you to download the raw video, even if that would not infringe copyright. However, I don't think this is legally relevant. Using a program like yt-dlp to download the video does not require a YouTube account, or accepting the terms.
  • Breaking digital locks: It is illegal to break or circumvent DRM, even if you plan to use the unlocked material for a fair use. However, I don't think YouTube is actually protected by DRM, so I don't think this is legally relevant either.
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    I am allowed to take a picture of a page of a book, and post it to social media with my comments about the book. That's fair use. Does that mean it's ok to break into your house to get that picture? I mean I'm not breaking any copyright law by doing so, right?
    – Kate Gregory
    Commented May 20 at 13:08
  • Regarding violating YouTube's terms of service, it may be theoretically possible to download a video from YouTube without ever going through their clickwrap agreement, but in practice, let's be realistic ─ you have already agreed to YouTube's terms of service at some point in your life.
    – kaya3
    Commented May 21 at 19:56
  • technically the TOS does not prevent downloading the video, just accessing outside of youtube's video page. (for your browser to show it to you it must download it which involves creating a bunch of .tmp files for the streamed chunks) To do what you want to do, though, you should see if their official API meets your needs: developers.google.com/youtube/v3
    – browsermator
    Commented May 22 at 20:02

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If the end result is fair use, you would not be infringing the copyright.

However, you may still be liable in other ways. If you break into a computer system you'd probably be violating federal and/or state laws against computer misuse. If you circumvent DRM, you'd probably violate the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. And violating the ToS of the site is a contract violation.

I'm also not sure I agree that using a YouTube downloader means you can ignore their ToS. Using most websites in any way implicitly agrees to their terms, regardless of whether you have an account.

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  • If violating the ToS is a contract violation, how can you implicitly agree to them? A contract requires a meeting of the minds, and if I am never even presented with a copy of the ToS then surely I cannot be considered to have agreed to them?
    – preferred_anon
    Commented May 20 at 15:40
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    As long as the site makes the ToS reasonably noticeable (e.g. via a prominent link), you don't have to explicitly signify agreement.
    – Barmar
    Commented May 20 at 15:47
  • @preferred_anon Contract of adhesion: by using the escalator you agree not to sue the store for the escalator doing escalator stuff.
    – Trish
    Commented May 20 at 16:16
  • "If the end result is fair use, you would not be infringing the copyright." ─ This is definitely not a given. If you obtained it via BitTorrent or some other peer-to-peer network, then most likely you have not just downloaded the content, but also uploaded it to others. The latter is copyright infringement even if you have a fair use defense for the former. I realise the question doesn't mention peer-to-peer file-sharing, but it's relevant for the broader question in the title "does it matter how you obtained it?"
    – kaya3
    Commented May 21 at 19:54
  • @kaya3 That seems like a separate issue.
    – Barmar
    Commented May 21 at 21:43

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