Uploading and downloading

Uploading and downloading are related terms used to describe the transfer of electronic data between two computers or similar systems.

Its primary usage is as a verb: to download is to receive data from a remote or central system, such as a webserver, FTP server, mail server, or other similar systems. A download is any file that is offered for downloading or that has been downloaded.

Increasingly, websites that offer streaming media or media displayed in-browser, such as YouTube, and which place restrictions on the ability of users to save these materials to their computers after they have been received, say that downloading is not permitted. That is, "download" is used to mean "receive and save" instead of simply "receive".