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I am currently in a state of panic right now, because of a mistake I've just made.

I bought time-limited access to a website with video content for a year and now and my access is about to expire. Therefore, it crossed my mind that I should download the content, and I did so using the plugin Video Downloader Plus. And while downloading, my friend asked me if it was legal, and I suddenly realised it most certainly wasn't - I know it was very dumb of me, but I'm not used to considering these kinds of things - I actually never download any videos or movies.

So my question is: what is the chance that the owner of these videos realises that I downloaded his content with the ability to prove it? And is there anything I can do about it? Knowing the following:

  1. I launched the downloads without watching the videos, just opening several tabs in parallel and started downloading the videos

  2. According to their content, this person seems to be fond of checking their website's statistics and there are very few users that are part of his programme so I have no hope that the strange behavior of my account will be left unnoticed (I know, my situation is very bad)

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  • Welcome to the community. Whereas it is technically possible, I doubt it would be feasible for the website owner to pursue such kind of actions. Now writing the website owner is a bad idea in my idea, because you would only incriminate yourself, but this is not legal advice
    – Sir Muffington
    Commented Apr 2, 2023 at 17:30
  • @SirMuffington thank you so much ! This is kinda reassuring, I am so stressed out !! Is it the case even if they use google analytics and I have to log in to their website ? I'm sorry to ask even more questions...
    – Dara88
    Commented Apr 2, 2023 at 17:45
  • Unless EULA explicitly stipulates that you can only watch/download a single video at a time, you're safe. The only way they can only hold it against you if they prove that you downloading files resulted in an excessive load which ended up causing a downtime or other problems for other legitimate users which is extremely difficult to do because they must prove that you had a malicious intent in mind.
    – Artem S. Tashkinov
    Commented Apr 2, 2023 at 20:09
  • We can only address the technical aspects, not the legal aspects here. And this question has been asked/answered a few times.
    – schroeder ♦
    Commented Apr 2, 2023 at 20:17

1 Answer 1

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The traffic pattern of viewing the video vs. doing bulk and parallel downloading of the files is clearly different. Even simple access log files which only show the start of a download and how long it took can be used to find out that you are dealing with multiple video streams in parallel.

If this kind of technical evidence is sufficient for an actual prove is a legal question though.

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    If a user has right to view the video, it does not matter how the video is transferred from the server to the user - as a sequence of small chunks over a long time or as a continuous file within a shorter time, or if multiple segments are downloaded within even shorter time.
    – mentallurg
    Commented Apr 2, 2023 at 17:56
  • @mentallurg, sorry, what does it imply for me then ? That there is no problem in the fact that I got the files in parallel within a short time ? I am sorry, my english is not that good so I may misunderstand some things :(
    – Dara88
    Commented Apr 2, 2023 at 18:04
  • @Steffen Ullrich thank you. More precisely, even if they get the information that there were several video downloads launched at the same time, can they tell the difference between the videos being played in parallel or downloaded in parallel ?
    – Dara88
    Commented Apr 2, 2023 at 18:06
  • @mentallurg: "If a user has right to view the video, it does not matter ...." - what actual right is given and what matters is purely a legal question. The question was if it can be distinguished - and it can.
    – Steffen Ullrich
    Commented Apr 2, 2023 at 18:08
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    @Dara88: Some video players and browsers can download video sequentially in small chunks, to prevent traffic and storage wasting. This can be important, if you pay for Internet depending on traffic used. Other video players and browsers can offer an option to download video completely, e.g. for the case that you are going to watch it offline. In such case there is no difference, if you used a player to download it or a special tool.
    – mentallurg
    Commented Apr 2, 2023 at 18:48

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