I believe the request to the server is the same as if you were watching it. It just runs the file from their server to your browser, with yt-dlp it sends a request to the server file the same way a browser does. You can view the source code which is well commented if you are able to understand python. The function is in yt-dlp/downloader/http.py
this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Dumb answer: Just use a VPN, my guy.
OT but what VPN do you recommend? I hear a lot of back and forth about which ones are trustworthy.
No. Direct downloading from YouTube isn't the same as pirating.
nope. the ISPs track torrent downloads is by leeching off of the popular public ones, and checking if any of the peers have IPs that belong to them. not by analyzing each customer's traffic individually.
downloading a video off youtube makes a simple HTTP download which wont trip any ISP alerts. especially since it's a trusted domain like Youtube
Most ISPs don't do that, content owners do then send complaints to the ISP who forwards them to the user. ISPs aren't going to spend money on losing a customer.
I work for an ISP (smaller, not a nationwide company). We genuinely don't care what you use your internet connection for until we get a legal notice and then we do what's required by law.
My ISP (like most ISPs) will just forward nastygrams from the content owners. Usually big companies like NBC or whatever. My ISP is a local setup (XMission in Utah) and only forwards them as a courtesy. They don't actually do anything. It's nice.
YouTube is going to be better than that since it will be https and thus tls encrypted. The only thing your ISP sees is that you transferred something from youtube.
You should not. The biggest thing that will get you in trouble is the uploading portion of torrenting, which is why it is always recommended to use a VPN when torrenting any copyrighted content.
In your case, the traffic will roughly look like you were just watching the movie on YouTube, just really fast.
Your ISP cannot differentiate between weather the YouTube app is streaming the video or any program is downloading the video.
So don't worry about it.
Your ISP cannot differentiate between weather the YouTube app is streaming the video or any program is downloading the video.
No to be pedantic, but this isn't true. If you're watching via the YouTube app, the content is served via chunks, and not in one continuous stream. I'm sure it would depend on the ISP, but they could potentially be able to differentiate the two.
yt-dlp streams those chunks into the final file tbh so it should be fine.
yt-dlp streams those chunks into the final file
This is entirely incorrect;
--http-chunk-size SIZE Size of a chunk for chunk-based HTTP
downloading, e.g. 10485760 or 10M (default
is disabled).
Chunks are disabled by default with yt-dlp. You're thinking of fragments, which are not how the video file is captured, just how its saved.
First, unless you redistribute the video (esp. for profit), you should have nothing to worry about.
Now, for the educational portion of our program:
Unless your ISP censors internet traffic, it is absolutely possible to pirate without a VPN. Barring censorship, your ISP usually doesn't give two shits about what your traffic is as long as your bill is paid. Those letters they send are in response to a lawyer notifying them that an IP address was found to be distributing copyrighted material.
Companies obtain these IP addresses by "pirating" their own material and recording the IP addresses of any seeders they find. If this IP address belongs to a VPN service that doesn't keep logs, they cannot be in possession of said material. Additionally, they have no way of knowing what traffic went to which customer after the fact. So, any letters sent by lawyers to the VPN service are pointless. Which is why, if you have a good VPN, they can't trace it back to you.
The violation they target users for is sharing a video, and that's usually through a file sharing service like torrenting.
Think of it this way - whatever you watch online via a browser you're already downloading. Or via an app.
You know, it really tweaks me that torrenting is associates with piracy, when it could've become the defacto way to share files between users, if OS devs had just included the protocol in the OS (looking at you Android, but Windows and Apple too).
I've often questioned why it wasn't...
when it could've become the defacto way to share files between users,
But how would mega corpos make money if you don't use their servers all the time
No, I’ve never received one from that, I don’t think YouTube actually knows you’re downloading it. Just speculation though.
Watching a YouTube video and downloading a YouTube video are the same thing. They are indistinguishable. You can not watch the video without downloading it. Just normally you dont keep the file but each part of the video is discarded a few seconds after you watched it. I dont think YouTube ever went after users who watched pirated content, they only ban the channels that upload it.
Your ISP or law enforcement only see you are watching YouTube. They dont know which video and they dont know if you save it or not.
They're not indistinguishable, downloading a video results in the same amount of data being transferred much more quickly. But your ISP couldn't care less either way.
Especially if you have simmetrical speeds for upload and download
It’s not impossible to pirate without a VPN, just use Usenet. Until a couple months ago when I had some free time and was super super bored, I hadn’t even bothered to tell SABnzbd to use a VPN. Over two ISPs and however many hundreds of episodes and movies watched, I never got any letters. Likewise, you usually are pretty safe on private torrent trackers, because copyright trolls don’t like putting in the effort of maintaining access.