diff --git a/youtube_dl/__init__.py b/youtube_dl/__init__.py
index 9de8ca270d..a91a379f86 100755
--- a/youtube_dl/__init__.py
+++ b/youtube_dl/__init__.py
@@ -901,7 +901,7 @@ class FileDownloader(object):
 		# possible. This is part of rtmpdump's normal usage, AFAIK.
 		basic_args = ['rtmpdump', '-q'] + [[], ['-W', player_url]][player_url is not None] + ['-r', url, '-o', tmpfilename]
 		args = basic_args + [[], ['-e', '-k', '1']][self.params.get('continuedl', False)]
-		if self.params['verbose']:
+		if self.params.get('verbose', False):
 			try:
 				import pipes
 				shell_quote = lambda args: ' '.join(map(pipes.quote, args))
@@ -1381,10 +1381,9 @@ class YoutubeIE(InfoExtractor):
 			lxml.etree
 		except NameError:
 			video_description = u'No description available.'
-			if self._downloader.params.get('forcedescription', False) or self._downloader.params.get('writedescription', False):
-				mobj = re.search(r'<meta name="description" content="(.*)"(?:\s*/)?>', video_webpage)
-				if mobj is not None:
-					video_description = mobj.group(1).decode('utf-8')
+			mobj = re.search(r'<meta name="description" content="(.*?)">', video_webpage)
+			if mobj is not None:
+				video_description = mobj.group(1).decode('utf-8')
 		else:
 			html_parser = lxml.etree.HTMLParser(encoding='utf-8')
 			vwebpage_doc = lxml.etree.parse(StringIO.StringIO(video_webpage), html_parser)