Yeah, I should have worded that better. I was referring to Youtube's license with the RIAA, since Youtube doesn't provide a copyright license to its users for content licensed from third parties.

If the license between the RIAA (or other licensor) and Youtube allowed visitors to make permanent copies of Youtube streams, then downloading a Youtube video would not be a copyright violation. But generally, having entered into streaming and downloading licensing agreements with the RIAA before, I would be extremely surprised if the RIAA would enter into such a license with Youtube, as it would kill sales of digital music downloads if people could just download permanent copies of Youtube videos instead for free.

If you own the copyright and upload a video to Youtube, then it wouldn't be a copyright violation to download that video from Youtube.

Really? Why don't you enlighten us instead of making ad hominem attacks...

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a legal violation when you're downloading a copy from YouTube even though you're the original copyright owner of the video. Youtube has a license to distribute the copy according to their TOS. That license will be subjected to specific terms (streaming + DRM protection). It might not include allowing creators to circumvent those terms for archival purposes.

"legal violation" is pretty vague. You might be disobeying their ToS, but it's not copyright infringement, since you own the copyright.

It's very possible to have a TOS violation but not a copyright violation if you're the copyright owner of the video being downloaded.

Owning the copyright means you don't violate the copyright in making a copy, but that doesn't mean you get to make that copy through any means; you still have to use legal means, and for a website, that means methods that are acceptable under the TOS of that website.