YouTube-MP3 Settles with RIAA, Site Will Shut Down

You can use youtube-dl, VideoDownloadHelper .. so many other tools that can be used. This was more of a tool for the non-tech person.

The settlement kept this away from court, so we avoid the much bigger issue. YouTube is sending you their video/audio. Your browser plays it. Depending on which browser or tool, it could play it differently, alter it as it plays it, cache the video or even save it to disk for permanent archive.

There's Hooktube which lets you view videos without the YouTube cookies; pulling straight from Google's CDN.

At what point can companies bind the end users on the Internet for the means by which we accept their data? Can they ban greesemonkey scripts like Facebook did with unfriendfinder?

http://penguindreams.org/blog/discoverying-friend-list-chang...

The big companies are challenging the way you represent the data they give you and what you can do with it. That's not the free web. That's not what Tim Berners-Lee envisioned.