Hey all. My recent cartoon called "Screw Google" may help someone who is trying to find a method to download and edit Google, Youtube and other videos. It's available on blip at: http://blip.tv/file/134228 or on my blogger site: hassleheadnews.blogspot.com. The idea behind the video is this: Google has been digitizing NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) videos into a proprietary format. These materials are public domain and instead of making them broadly available, Google is presenting them in a way that allows us to look but not touch. To get these same materials from NARA you have to jump through fiery hoops. If you don't have a screenscraper, you can use the methods presented in the video I referenced above to get footage of, say, the Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima or any other of a hundred thousand Public Domain videos. It's axiomatic that Public Domain material can never be copyrighted by inclusion in another format, so when you convert these videos, the underlying data is yours to use. Hope this contribution is fun and helpful.
-David
