Master Becomes the Apprentice

Today I had a rather unique experience as a professor whom I respect very much asked me how to download videos from youtube.com. He knew that there was ‘some trick’ to doing it. He wanted to know because he can find content there that relates to course content. Streaming this content has a distinct disadvantage in that once the youtube.com user deletes the video from his collection, it is no longer available for reference. I basically drew up a simple two step rundown on how to download and convert the video to a format more palatable. Despite the legal grey area youtube.com wallows in regards to copyrighted content, I figure it is okay to offer this advice. Under the Fair Use doctrine in copyright law using copyrighted material in an academic setting is 100% legal. I hope I have contributed to someone else’s classroom learning experience.

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