How come there has been "maintenance" going on on YouTube Converter for the last week?

Like I said, selfish trolls.

People that created content and own it are selfish that they want to be paid for their work?

Has it always been legal to record from a source? I'm not so sure.

Maybe the issue is the conversion from one file type to another file type. The MP3 is obviously to be used on another device so you can listen to a song without streaming (non-ownership). Thus, you end up "owning" the file without buying it.

I don't know the legality of DVRs. Probably it is only legal to record and watch on that device or one home network. You can't copy the video to use on another device, because you are "distributing" it to yourself. Do DVR recordings expire, like when you rent a movie from Amazon? I don't know. I'm not rich or smart enough to own one.

DVR recordings... not really. I have several on my box that are more than a year old. However, I have cued stuff up from the "On Demand" section and it leaves my box after a set period of time, regardless of whether it's a paid or free show. I lost several episodes of TWD that way. :,( So sad.

No, you don't have the right to copy things for personal use unless it's granted by the owner. 

Copyright laws are so strict that automakers actually copyrighted the software used in cars and made it illegal for anyone else to access or update the files. It was huge news in the auto industry when the laws were rewritten to allow people to take their cars wherever they wanted and the mechanics could fix issues if they weren't part of the maker's company. Until then, people owned their cars, but they couldn't touch the software. 

There are allowances made in general under the fair use guidelines that allow things to be shared for educational or journalistic purposes, but only parts.

Heck, I played Simon and Garfunkel's Red Rubber Ball in the background of my tutorial on how to embed videos on answerMug. It got nixed in some countries for violating copyright... and rightly so. I was ok under American laws, as far as I can tell. I had maybe 30-45 seconds of the song and it was used in an educational way, but yeah, shame on me. I didn't even think about it.

They scan everything as it goes in. Odds are, if you even share a video with a pic of you and Mickey Mouse in it, it'll get pulled by YouTube for copyright.  It's that serious. 

I don't remember any of this being announced in advance, WW. Why didn't they announce all this three years ago? Have I overlooked something?

Winged Wonder, if there was no formal announcement then to me it is not valid. I accept the original rules as they were first announced, but I do not adapt to new ones, and I adapt to new ones even less if they are unannounced. I mean, why didn't they announce it three years ago instead of deliberately and maliciously taking people by surprise simply because we refuse to adapt to changes in the rules?

If the copyright owners really wanted to stop us using YouTube Converter, they would make sure every track is readily available to purchase on an easily affordable CD, which would enable everyone that wants a specific track to purchase it in a simple manner from a conventional shop and at the same time avoid all these so-called legal complications. The record companies wouldn't lose out, they would gain from CD sales, which is the reason for their business in the first place. How come none of the powers-that-be possess such pure and simple logic as that?

There wasn't any change to any rules.

Well, they'd better start giving a million flying Fig Newtons in the next couple of weeks if they don't want to see a side of me they won't like.

Youtube file converters aren't officially supported by YT and Google doesn't really like them.   The converter browser add-ons and websites are third party and every now and then Google/Youtube does things to make them not function correctly and the developers have to go and make changes.  Can't announce what is not foreseen.

I agree that fair use needs and should be expanded and that copyright laws are archaic and need to be changed, but it is what it is right now.  

If Google/Youtube does things to make them not function correctly, then Google/Youtube should announce what they are going to do well in advance of actually doing it. That way it wouldn't catch unsuspecting people unawares. It wouldn't hurt them to announce in advance, would it?

They don't owe you or anyone an announcement.   It isn't that they ever allowed it as you are seeming to assume.   Third parties just found ways to do it,  google/youtube are trying to patch the vulnerabilities being exploited to to do it.   In fact announcing it would counter-productive to their goal.


Dude welcome to the digital age.   Chit needs maintenance, overhauls, recoding, and patches from time to time.
If it's that big of a PITA for you then learn how convert your own MP3/MP4 files from media streams.  It can be done. This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at October 30, 2016 1:32 PM MDT

If it's affecting me in even the slightest way, then yes, they do owe me an announcement because that's the kind of guy I am, and just to prove that I'm fair and not selfish, they should treat everybody the way I expect them to treat me. If they never allowed it in the first place, they should have zapped the third-party sites before anyone else even became aware of their existence, then nobody would feel thwarted after three years of using them regularly. How's that for a fair solution?

What does smoking have to do with YouTube or Google or downoading? If for some reason you are comparing all this with the smoking ban, at least they had the decency to announce that in advance before it became law. Still, that was invented by Tony Blair and he only did it for Tony Blair, so all you are saying by comparing the two is what I said all along - that the powers-that-be are selfish and spiteful. If that's not what you meant, why else did you post that picture?

GLis, what are you getting at? Can you say what you mean, please?