Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

Nowadays there are lots of websites out there that will extract the audio from a YouTube video and save it as an MP3 file on your computer. Some people say this is illegal because you are stealing from a copyrighted video, but others say that it is no different from a DVR. There are lots of music videos on YouTube from which I would like to save the audio to my computer to listen to as an MP3. Before I do this I need to know...is this legal or not??


Asked on 11/10/10, 11:26 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Kristen Browde Browde Law, P.C.

I don't know if there's ever been a court case on point, but I'd treat it as a copyright violation. You're making an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work...and although there are decisions allowing time shift viewing, what you're doing with an Flash to MP3 conversion is not viewing the original program, but creating and storing a new form of a work.

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Answered on 11/15/10, 11:41 am


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