Acceptance
By using YDL you agree to these terms. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the
site. They apply to the website at ydl.rjoshi.net and its staging deployment.
What the service is
YDL is a client-side downloader. It reads publicly available metadata and media streams from YouTube, saves them to your own device, and combines separate video and audio locally. Nothing you download passes through or remains on our infrastructure.
The service is free of charge, needs no account, and is run by an individual developer as a side project rather than a commercial product.
Acceptable use
You agree to use YDL only for lawful purposes. In particular, you will not:
- download material you do not own, have not licensed, or do not otherwise have permission to keep;
- circumvent paywalls, access controls, DRM or geographic restrictions;
- redistribute, sell, re-upload or publicly perform downloaded material in breach of copyright or of the platform's terms;
- run automated scripts, scrapers or bulk jobs against the service, or make it serve traffic for another application;
- probe, overload or attempt to gain unauthorised access to the service or its infrastructure;
- use the service in a way that breaks the law where you live, or that harms other people.
Access may be rate-limited, blocked or withdrawn at any time, in particular when traffic looks automated or abusive.
YDL is not intended for children. If you are below the age of majority where you live, use it only with the involvement of a parent or guardian.
Copyright and takedowns
You are solely responsible for the material you download and for what you do with it. The fact that a file can be fetched does not make it legal to keep, copy or share.
Because YDL stores no content, there is nothing for us to remove from a media library. If you believe this project itself infringes your rights, for example through documentation, branding or example links in the repository, send a notice to ydl@rjoshi.net with your contact details, the work you believe is infringed, the exact URL or file in this project that you object to, and a statement that you have a good-faith belief the use is unauthorised. Valid notices are reviewed and, where justified, the material is removed or amended.
Availability and changes
The service is provided on a best-effort basis and may be unavailable, slow or broken: YouTube changes its internals frequently, infrastructure limits get hit, and the maintainer may be asleep. There is no uptime or support commitment, and no guarantee that a given video, format or quality will work.
Features may be added, changed or removed at any time. Where a change is significant, it is noted in the repository's release notes.
Third-party platforms
YDL is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by YouTube, Google, Cloudflare, Vercel or GitHub. Your use of those platforms is governed by their own terms, including YouTube's Terms of Service. If those terms and these terms conflict in relation to a platform, the platform's terms apply to that platform.
No warranty
The service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy and non-infringement. No advice or information obtained through the service creates a warranty.
Limitation of liability
To the maximum extent permitted by law, the operator is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, nor for any loss of data, files, device storage, revenue, profits or goodwill, arising out of or related to your use of, or inability to use, the service. That includes files that fail to download or merge, data lost when browser storage is cleared, rate limiting by YouTube, and any consequence of downloading material you had no right to download.
Where liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the amount you paid to use the service, which is nothing.
Indemnity
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the operator from any claim, demand, loss or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising from your use of the service or your breach of these terms or of a third party's rights.
Changes to these terms
These terms may be updated as the service changes. The revised version is published here with a new date at the top. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the updated terms; if you do not accept them, stop using the site.
Disputes
If something has gone wrong, contact ydl@rjoshi.net first and give us a reasonable chance to resolve it informally. If any part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, that part is limited or removed to the minimum extent necessary and the remaining parts stay in force.
Contact
Questions about these terms: ydl@rjoshi.net. For anything that can be discussed in public, the issue tracker is the faster route.