Is it legal to download videos from the internet for personal use?

You found a video you want to keep, and you want to know if saving it is allowed. Most pages give one of two answers: "for personal use it is fine" or "it is illegal and you could go to jail". Both skip what matters. Three separate rules apply to every download, set by three different people, and each one has its own answer. This page quotes each rule from its source. We read every law and every platform's terms on 10 October 2026.

This is general information, not legal advice. Laws differ by country and change. For a decision that matters, such as publishing, a business use or a dispute, ask a lawyer where you live.

Three different rules: law, licence and terms

Downloading a video touches three rules at once, and they do not depend on each other. Copyright law is made by your country. A licence is given by the person who owns the video. Terms of service are written by the website. A download can be fine under one rule and not under another.

The rules answer different questions. Copyright asks: did the owner, or the law, allow this copy? The terms ask: did you use the website the way you agreed to when you joined it?

That is why a question asked on Quora has a split answer: "Is it illegal to download videos from YouTube by outside downloading tools even if the video creator allows you to?" The creator's yes settles copyright for that video. It does not change YouTube's terms, which allow downloading only through YouTube's own features or with YouTube's written permission. The simplest fix is to ask the creator to send you the file, so the website is not involved at all.

It also explains why guides disagree. One says "personal use is fine" (talking about copyright, in some countries). Another says "it is against the rules" (talking about terms). Both can be true at the same time.

Copyright: personal use is not a blanket pass in the US

In the United States, no rule says that copying a video for personal use is allowed. The law gives the copyright owner the exclusive right "to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies" (17 U.S.C. § 106). A download is a copy. The general way a copy made without permission can still be lawful is fair use.

So what is illegal downloading? In plain words: making a copy of a protected work without the owner's permission, without a licence, and without an exception in your country's law. Downloading a pirated film is the clear case. Saving a public clip to watch later is a grey case that depends on the facts. Music inside a video is often someone else's copyright, even when the video itself is the creator's own.

What fair use actually says

Section 107 of the US copyright law tells courts to weigh four factors:

1. "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes";
2. "the nature of the copyrighted work";
3. "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole"; and
4. "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."

The US Copyright Office says: "Courts evaluate fair use claims on a case-by-case basis, and the outcome of any given case depends on a fact-specific inquiry. This means that there is no formula". A personal, non-commercial use helps you on factor 1. Copying the whole video counts against you on factor 3. If the owner sells the video, or sells a way to watch it offline, factor 4 counts against you too. The Office's advice is short: "in cases of doubt, the Copyright Office recommends that permission be obtained."

So "it is only for personal use" is a good point in your favour. It is not a pass.

The VCR case everyone half-remembers

Many people believe a 1984 Supreme Court case made home copying legal. That case, Sony v. Universal, was about recording TV programmes on a Betamax video recorder. The Court held that "Private, noncommercial time-shifting in the home" was a lawful use, meaning recording a broadcast to watch it at a better time.

Two limits matter. First, the Court decided time-shifting of free TV broadcasts. It did not decide that keeping permanent copies, or copying from a streaming website, is fair use. Second, it was a fair use finding on the facts of that case. A court looking at a different situation weighs the four factors again.

Is downloading a video a crime?

For one person saving a video to watch, almost never. Copyright infringement is mostly a civil matter: the owner can take you to court for money. In the US it becomes a crime only when strict extra tests are met. This is where both camps of guides go wrong: those who say personal use is never illegal, and those who warn of "jail time" without naming a law.

The criminal section adds a sentence that matters for ordinary users: "evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement" (§ 506(a)(2)). Making a copy does not, on its own, prove the willful intent a crime needs.

Breaking the terms of a website is a different thing

A website's terms are a contract between you and the website. The website's remedy is written in the terms, and it is usually about your account: YouTube, for example, may suspend or terminate it if you "materially or repeatedly breach" its agreement.

In the US, the Supreme Court read the main computer-hacking law narrowly in Van Buren v. United States (2021). It warned that the government's wider reading would reach "violations of such restrictions on website providers' computers", and it did not accept that reading. Take this as background, not a promise: other laws and other countries can treat it differently.

Getting around copy protection is its own rule

One more line sits apart from both copyright and terms. US law says: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work" (17 U.S.C. § 1201). To circumvent includes "to decrypt an encrypted work". This applies even if you never share the file. Paid streaming apps with encrypted video are the usual example, and it is why we refuse encrypted (DRM) streams.

Outside the US: the rule changes by country

Other countries answer the personal-copy question differently, and some are stricter than the US. The table shows what the law says in the countries we checked, with what it means for saving a public video.

United Kingdom. The 2014 personal-copy rule only ever covered copies of something you already owned, and the High Court quashed it in 2015, so there is no general private-copy exception today. Two narrow exceptions remain. Section 70 allows recording a broadcast "in domestic premises for private and domestic use" to watch "at a more convenient time". Section 29(1C) allows "fair dealing with a ... work for the purposes of private study", and since 1 June 2014 that covers any kind of work, including films. Private study means studying, not building a collection to watch for fun.

European Union. The Directive lets each member state allow copies "made by a natural person for private use and for ends that are neither directly nor indirectly commercial, on condition that the rightholders receive fair compensation". Every exception must also pass a three-part test: "certain special cases which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work or other subject-matter and do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rightholder." The details, and the levy, are set by each country.

Germany. The official English translation of section 53(1) says: "It is permitted for a natural person to make single copies of a work for private use on any medium, insofar as they neither directly nor indirectly serve commercial purposes, as long as no obviously unlawfully produced model or a model which has been unlawfully made available to the public is used for the copying." This is why people ask whether downloading Instagram videos is illegal in Germany: the source of the video decides.

Pakistan. In the text published by WIPO (as amended in 2000), section 57(1)(a) allows fair dealing "with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work for the purpose of— (i) research or private study". Section 2 defines a "cinematographic work" to include "video films of every kind", and that kind of work is not in the list. So the private-study exception does not clearly reach videos.

Other countries have their own lists. India, for example, has a fair dealing clause in section 52 of its Copyright Act; we could not load the official text when we checked on 10 October 2026, so we do not quote it here.

Videos you may download freely

Some videos come with permission already given, and then copyright is not the problem. If you want free video downloads without copyright worries, look for these cases. The licence is usually named next to the video or in its description. Keep a note of it with the link.

The Creative Commons deeds add two warnings worth reading. One is good news: "You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain". The other is a limit: "No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use." A video under CC BY can still contain music or other material that the licence does not cover.

What the platform terms say

Every big platform's terms limit downloading or scraping, whatever copyright law says. We read the current terms of four platforms on 10 October 2026. These are the versions for US users; people in the EU and UK can have different terms.

YouTube

YouTube's terms allow downloading in two ways only: through YouTube's own features, or with written permission from YouTube and the rights holder. The legal way to download YouTube videos for offline viewing is therefore YouTube's own download option in its app, which comes with YouTube Premium. Any other downloader, ours included, is outside YouTube's terms. The terms also forbid getting around features that "prevent or restrict the copying or other use of Content". Our YouTube article covers whether downloading from YouTube is allowed in more detail.

YouTube also refuses our server, so YouTube links do not work on our website. Our Windows and Mac app and our browser extension can save them, because they use your own connection.

TikTok

TikTok's terms are the most open of the four. They give users a licence to download each other's videos, "Depending on your Platform usage, including your sharing activities and settings". The route fully inside the rules is TikTok's own Save video button, which adds TikTok's logo and the username to the copy.

Why are some TikTok videos not downloadable? Because the creator turned downloads off, and then TikTok's own button does not offer a copy. Our downloader does not check that setting: it fetches the public playback copy that every viewer gets. If the creator has said no to downloads, treat that as their answer. TikTok's terms also ban using "another user's content" for commercial purposes unless TikTok or that user allows it.

X and Reddit

X and Reddit both ban scraping without written consent. X's terms say you may not access the service "other than through our currently available, published interfaces", unless X has agreed to it separately. Reddit refuses our server, like YouTube, so Reddit links work only through our app and extension.

Saving a video is not the same as reusing it

Keeping a copy to watch yourself is the weakest case for an owner to complain about. Most real trouble starts when a video is posted again, edited or used to make money.

Reposting puts the copy in front of the owner's audience, which is exactly what fair use factor 4 (the effect on "the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work") weighs against. Credit is not permission: writing "all rights belong to the owner" under a repost does not make the repost legal. On TikTok, commercial use of another user's content needs permission under the terms quoted above.

What helps:

• Ask first. A short message to the creator, and a yes in writing, settles copyright for that use.
• Link instead of copying. Sharing the original link gives the creator the views and needs no permission.
• Check the licence. A CC BY video can be reused with credit; a CC BY-NC-ND video cannot be edited or used commercially.
• Keep it private. A copy you watch yourself and never post is the lowest-risk use, though a site's terms can still forbid how you got it.

What Raptor Downloader will and will not do

We built our rules around the three layers on this page. Here is what that means in practice, with the words from our own terms.

• Public content only. We refuse private posts, anything behind a login, paid content and copy-protected (encrypted, DRM) streams. Our terms say: "The site is built to refuse such content."
• What you download is your responsibility. "Download only content you own, content you have permission to use, or content where the law allows your use." (terms, section 1)
• Platform rules still apply. "You are responsible for following the terms of any platform whose content you download." (terms, section 3) As the table above shows, many platforms do not allow third-party downloading at all.
• We keep no videos. Our copyright page says: "This site hosts no videos and keeps no copies." Each file is deleted within about an hour.
• Rights holders can stop us. An owner can ask us to block specific links, accounts or posts from being processed. Here is how to send a request.
• YouTube and Reddit refuse our server, so they work only through our Windows and Mac app and browser extension, from your own connection.
• TikTok's download setting is not checked by our downloader, as explained above. Respect it yourself.

A downloader that offers to get around a login, a paywall or copy protection is a reason to leave, not a feature. Our guide on what no downloader should do for you explains where that line is. Whether a downloader is safe for your device is a separate question again: see why safe is not the same as allowed.