Guides · 5 min read
Is It Legal to Download Videos from Social Media?
Downloading is legal in most places for personal use, but reposting someone else's content is a different question entirely.
Copyright belongs to the creator, not the platform
The moment someone uploads a video, they generally own the copyright to it. The platform hosting it — YouTube, Instagram, TikTok — is just the distributor.
Saving a personal copy for private, offline viewing is treated very differently under most copyright laws than republishing, monetizing, or redistributing that same file.
What's usually fine
Downloading a video you made yourself, content that's explicitly licensed for reuse (like Creative Commons), or a personal copy for offline viewing in regions that recognize personal-use exceptions.
What crosses a line
Re-uploading someone else's video to your own channel, stripping out credit, or using downloaded clips commercially without permission. Platform terms of service also separately prohibit scraping content at scale, even where personal-use copying is legally tolerated.
When in doubt, ask the creator or stick to content explicitly marked for reuse.