Downloading Online Video (and Audio)

In this era of legal wrangling its hard to get a straight answer to this question--what are we allowed to download off of the internet?--but downloading videos does NOT require any fancy software or hacking anymore. Its just sitting there, often with a search engine and a download button.

For example, a search for Zimbardo on Google Video yields this low-hanging fruit:

Discovering Psychology: The Power Of The Situation with Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8673118115997325318&q=zimbardo

Click on the download button and you are offered the options (Windows/Mac or Video iPod/Sony PSP) and its yours for excerpting in PPT files in your next class. Moreover, last November Colleges received an explicit exception to the DMCA, which had forbid circumventing copyright protection--translation, excerpting any audiovisual material in the classroom--so its is now officially approved by the Copyright Office and the Library of Congress.

1. Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university’s film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors.

Because google now OWNS youtube they return youtube results when you search at

http://video.google.com

You get many of the original movies from the Stanford Prison Experiment as well here, when you search for Zimbardo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KXy8CLqgk4

To download these you would just have to drop that URL into one of many online sites.

http://www.dubayou.com/mytube.php

This site looks suspicious because it lacks ANY fancy graphic design or advertising (what a sad standard of legitimacy!) but many other sites are basically doing the same thing that this MyTube started. I know many students use:

http://www.ripzor.com/youtuberipper.html

Youtube's file format is flash video, and you may need a .flv player to watch the download, but the site offers you an excellent player, and a converter if you want to change it back to a .mov or .avi

BUT are we ALLOWED? You will probably not get a direct answer to this question, not even from a lawyer, as the answer still depends upon the content's own complicated copyright status. SULAIR now provides a way of determining the copyright status of books, but there is no equivalent for online videos. Many homemade videos, which had Warner music on them, were recently approved by Warner, and other Music companies are following suit when there is no obvious downstream revenue stolen.

But because Google is reputable, we can get SOME IDEA of what is allowed just by using their site. A search for Darwin brings up MANY TV broadcast shows, like Charlie Rose's Interview with Watson and Wilson (a high quality version of which can be downloaded for 0.99: but what about the low-quality one we are viewing without paying?)

http://video.google.com/url?docid=-6927851714963534233&esrc=sr2&ev=v&q=Darwin&vidurl=http://video.google.com/videoplay%3Fdocid%3D-6927851714963534233%26q%3DDarwin&usg=AL29H20ww6Hxp4u3blzJ0sF81HYgeB2LTA

You can download for free Stanford Experts on Climate Change and Carbon Trading (Stephen Schneider and Thomas Heller)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2226061573523196174&q=Schneider+Climate

Closer to home, Stanford has its very own iTunes service. Academic iTunes can be connected to Coursework, so you can password protect it to stream content for your classes. Public iTunes streams campus events, classes and other lectures, and you can even have your own classes taped and streamed (with the appropriate releases). They just reorganized and made much more friendly this Public iTunes site, and it would be worth revisiting it if you have not in some time:

http://itunes.stanford.edu/ (Please don't use Firefox: Apple hasn't got that working yet.)

It will open up iTunes on your computer and show you what's available from Stanford in 10 major categories.

I find in Stanford >> Science and Technology >> Environmental Science: Audio many talks, including one by Paul and Anne Ehrlich and Gretchen Daily, entitled: "Nature's Economy, Population, Consumption and Sustainability" (1:37)

Available for Download (just push the button GET)

There are literally MILLIONS of videos online for download. Let me know what you find.