How legal are music/video download apps?

Question

Copyright

The Internet is full of different programs, browser extensions, etc. that allow you to download media files.
For example 100500 chrome extensions for downloading songs from VK.
The question is - are such applications legal? Do they violate at least one current law of the Russian Federation?
After all, in fact, they do not store content, do not distribute it.
Logically, if they violate something, then browsers also violate, because they provide the technical ability to download.
Interested in the opinion of experts, preferably with links to regulatory documents.
Thank you)

Answer 1

they don’t violate until there is nothing to take,
in general, the detection is this: listening - you can, downloading - you
can’t take regulatory documents from the Rutraker case))

Answer 2

What in Russia, what in the world as a whole, the situation is twofold:

1. Reproduction (= reproducing) of audio and video recordings for personal purposes is expressly permitted by Art. 1273 GK.
   
2. Since rights traders are unhappy with the ease with which a digital representation of a work can be reproduced, they are trying in every possible way to artificially hinder this possibility by applying measures to restrict user rights (digital restrictions management, abbr. DRM).
   As usual, they mean something more significant than simply not providing the “download” button. However, Art. 1299 of the Civil Code, where DRM is called "technical means of copyright protection", allows the maximum broad interpretation: "[TSZAP -] any technology, technical device or their components that control access to a work, prevent or restrict the implementation of actions that are not authorized by the author or other copyright holder in relation to the work” (emphasis mine).
   However, since DRM is a priori ineffective (everything that can be read can be copied), law traders lobbied around the world for laws establishing liability for bypassing DRM, in some places even up to criminal, but in Russia - in theory only up to civil (stst 1299, 1301). However, practice shows that the courts love to pull DRM bypass on Art. 273 of the Criminal Code on the distribution of malicious programs, although it was obviously written about something else.
   So, it is easy to see that the first contradicts the second. And here the Civil Code previously explicitly stipulated (the same paragraph 3 of Article 1299) that bypassing DRM, “when this Code allows the use of a work without the consent of the author or other copyright holder”, is not a violation. It is not difficult to understand that this reservation applied to almost all works. That is probably why I have not heard about the Russian analogues of the North American repressions against the famous DeCSS and others like it. (And what I said about the 273rd referred to circumvention of restrictions on computer programs.)
   However, in 2010, the right traders ensured that this clause from the Civil Code was simply removed (259-FZ), leaving the user only the right demand observance of his rights to free use of the work from the copyright holder (ha ha!).