I know YouTube is a terrible provider of pirated content and also that it is almost impossible to pirate without a VPN, but I would like to know: if I download a movie from YouTube (directly from it, of course) without a VPN, will I receive “that type of message” from my ISP?
No, I’ve never received one from that, I don’t think YouTube actually knows you’re downloading it. Just speculation though.
Watching a YouTube video and downloading a YouTube video are the same thing. They are indistinguishable. You can not watch the video without downloading it. Just normally you dont keep the file but each part of the video is discarded a few seconds after you watched it. I dont think YouTube ever went after users who watched pirated content, they only ban the channels that upload it.
Your ISP or law enforcement only see you are watching YouTube. They dont know which video and they dont know if you save it or not.
They’re not indistinguishable, downloading a video results in the same amount of data being transferred much more quickly. But your ISP couldn’t care less either way.
Especially if you have simmetrical speeds for upload and download