Ask HN: Liability of Video Downloaders?
There are tons of websites out there that offer this functionality already, and they’ve existed for many years already. What I’m wondering is the legality of it all.
Lynda.com TOS: https://www.lynda.com/aboutus/website-use-policy
Vimeo.com TOS: https://vimeo.com/terms
Now I know there is a difference between something being illegal vs violating a company’s TOS agreement. Let me explain why I ask this though.
I’ve created a browser extension that allows users to download videos from Vimeo and Lynda.com. You of course aren’t able to access and download videos you haven’t payed for, but if you have paid for them, you can download this content for watching later. I plan on implementing some extra paid features and displaying ads in the free version.
There are legitimate reasons for wanting to download these videos including but not limited to…
1.Constant buffering due to slow internet connections
2.Limited data plans and/or bad coverage in your area
3.You want to be able to view the videos on devices that may not have a dedicated app for the service you’re using, or lacks internet
4.Watching media on the go where you may not have internet access
5.Content that gets removed over time
With all that being said, I think the legality of it all would fall on the end user. Since this is a browser extension, everything is done and handled client-side in the user’s browser. The browser extension isn’t downloading anything from any of these services itself, it’s simply finding the urls of the content, (which is automatically requested by web browsers whenever you stream a video normally anyway), and supplying them to the user to download.
Anyways, I’m mainly just wondering what you guys think about it, and as a developer just creating the tools, do you think this is something I should worry about?