Back in June of 2016 as we were developing the newest version of Song Surgeon, we began to tell our customers that we would be discontinuing the downloading modules in all of our major products due to concerns over liability and how that would impact our business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the past, Google among others, have sued to block some products that perform downloading functions. However, it\u2019s important to remember that many uses of copyrighted material are considered legal under the fair use doctrine to U.S. copyright law. The fair use doctrine makes exceptions for non-infringing purposes like news reporting, research, education \u2014 or just for laughs. Consider YouTube\u2019s first big legal copyright challenge, a 2007 video of a baby dancing to the Prince song \u201cLet\u2019s Go Crazy\u201d. Universal Music Group, the copyright holder of that hit song, sued the baby\u2019s mom for copyright violation. A judge ruled in favor of the mom and the baby, citing fair use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two things happened back in 2016 that concerned us. One is that Google terminated one of our Adwords account for Video Surgeon citing the downloading module as the cause. <\/strong> A few months later Google has sent a cease and desist letter to a company that sells a YouTube Downloader application, similar to what we provide in Video Surgeon and Song Surgeon.
Then as recently as last year (2019) Youtube banned one of our training videos on an older version of Song Surgeon that contained a discussion of the use of the YouTube downloading module. Subsequent to this we removed all videos from our YouTube accounts that referenced downloading and moved our entire video library for Download Surgeon from Youtube to Vimeo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n