We all know that YouTube is one of the Largest video sharing portal where we can almost watch any video which we think . But on the other hand YouTube do now allow us to save video officially. ie) one can view but cannot store the videos to his/her computer.

But the situation is that there are so many Sites today that allows you and me to save those you tube videos . We can get the Link from the Official Youtube site and we can give to these third party sites and they save their videos to our computers in Flash format.

Now The Question is ...

Why YouTube by itself allow its viewers to save the videos?? It is obvious that they know people are using third party sites to do that.

That do know that many people use stuff to download videos but I don't think they themselves will make downloading available because maybe they don't want to lose visitors eg. after you get your favorite clip from you tube, you ain't going back there for the same thing, right?There are probably many more reasons but I'm too lazy to think about them

While they won't facilitate the downloading, I don't think they care. If you saved all the videos you liked, you could fill up your hard drive in no time. But why do that? How often do you go back to look at the same clip? I don't. It is easier and better to send a link to a clip than use bandwidth or drive space to save the clip.

saving is not a better option if you will save all you like and will fill up your hd space. And the internet nowadays is fast compared to 5 years ago so there's no problem loading it again.( except in some countries) it will be piracy maybe.. if they will allow it.

i dunno if its on the terms on conditions when you make an account that what you uploaded in youtube will be their's or your copyright

Well they dont own cpyright to the videos that are uploaded. These belong to the people who made the so downloading them free with out permission is illegal, just because its free to watch doesn't mean free download. Also they make money from advertising.

It's unnecessary, why download it and waste hard drive space when you can just go back to the website? The only reason I ever download them is to use them in other videos I'm making, (for random funny ones.) or to put on my PSP since it can't view youtube with the web browser. It would also eat up extra bandwidth, something which they're already using up a ton of. Besides, if you know of the third party sites that do it, why do you need to have a little button on the official site to do it there?

I believe they don't want you to download/save the videos hosted on YouTube because then you wouldn't need to go back and view it again. They are getting more people on the site if they go back to watch it again resulting in YouTube earning more money in the long run. So pretty much instead of just watching a video their once they want you to go back and watch their videos several times. This makes it difficult for us to save this videos unless we go to third party sites like you said, which is a downside to YouTube.

Veoh Ftw

This post has been edited by Nick5020: Apr 13 2008, 11:27 PM

Not everybody knows that youtube videos can be downloaded by third party sides or other software. Like what many of the others believe, I think they don't want to lose visitors through allowing downloads of videos. Remember that even a couple of clicks and revisits matters for a free website that thrives on online commercials. also, direct downloading takes up a lot of bandwidth.

Now for the question of why they 'allow the videos to be downloadable'. Previously, we also thought that with some well-made scripts, we could prevent people from ripping websites and pictures. But a lot of people have come up with tricks and software to overcome the issue. The same goes for videos. Perhaps in future, youtube will change their scripts and codings to prevent videos from being downloaded. But then again, technology experts will come up with new ways to overcome the problem.

Hmm.. Shouldn't people be able to choose if they wand their video to be downloadable or not O_o