9 min read
This is not legal advice
Copyright law differs substantially between countries, and nothing on this page is advice about your situation. If a decision carries real consequences — a commercial campaign, a publication, a dispute — talk to a qualified lawyer where you live.
What follows is the framework that applies in most places, so you can tell a safe case from a risky one.
Question one: who owns the video?
Copyright attaches to a video the moment it is recorded, with no registration needed. The person who made it holds the rights unless they assigned them to someone else — an employer, a client or a label.
If you made it, you own it and you can keep as many copies as you like. If a company paid for it, the company probably owns it, even when an employee posted it from a personal account.
Question two: what do the platform's terms say?
Every major platform's terms restrict downloading content through unofficial means. These are contractual terms between you and the platform, separate from copyright law. Breaching them is not usually a criminal matter, but it can cost you your account.
Some platforms provide sanctioned routes: YouTube Studio for your own uploads, offline playback inside their apps, or an explicit download button on certain posts. Using those routes avoids the question entirely.
Question three: what will you do with it?
Watching a clip offline on your own phone is the lowest-risk use there is. Nobody is harmed, no copy is distributed, and no market is displaced.
Re-uploading the same clip to your own account is the highest-risk use. It competes with the original, it is trivially detectable, and 'credit in the caption' is not a licence. Everything else falls somewhere between those two poles.
Where fair use and fair dealing fit
In the United States, fair use may permit limited use for criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research. Courts weigh four factors, including how transformative the use is and whether it harms the market for the original.
The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and others use fair dealing, which lists specific permitted purposes rather than applying a general test. Both are narrow exceptions decided case by case — not a blanket permission.
Cases that are generally fine
Downloading your own uploads. Saving a video under a Creative Commons licence that permits it, with attribution. Keeping content you have written permission to use. Using a platform's own offline feature.
Archiving an organisation's published video assets, where you work for that organisation and it holds the rights, is also normally straightforward.
Cases that are clearly not
Bypassing a private account, a closed group, a paywall or any technical protection measure. In several jurisdictions, circumventing an access control is a separate offence from infringement itself.
Re-uploading someone else's video, monetising it, or using it in an advertisement without a licence. Bulk scraping to build a dataset or a rival feed also sits firmly on the wrong side of the line.
A practical rule
Ask yourself whether you would be comfortable telling the creator exactly what you are doing with their video. If the answer is yes, you are probably fine. If you would rather they did not find out, that instinct is telling you something.
And when you want to repost, just ask. A short message is faster than a copyright dispute, and most creators say yes.
Quick answers
Can I get in trouble for downloading a video for personal use?+
Enforcement against private, non-commercial offline viewing is extremely rare. The risk rises sharply as soon as you distribute, publish or monetise the copy.
Does crediting the creator make it legal?+
No. Attribution is good manners and is required by some licences, but it is not a substitute for permission.
What is a Creative Commons licence?+
A standard licence creators can apply to let others reuse their work under stated conditions, such as attribution or non-commercial use only. YouTube shows it in the video description when it applies.