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KeepVid.com is back again, but should it go down at any time, you can also find similar functionality at YouTubeDownload.nl.



Behold! SpudVision, Steve Purcell's nook on the web.







Hopefully, yes! They seem quite good about keeping the Eurovision Song Contest files up for a while, but that might all be separately managed from the general business of Eurovision itself. (Wish they didn't require the use of that funky Octoshape plugin, which in turn requires Flip4Mac to implement WMV, and usually the very latest version.. all rather silly, given the show appears on a multitude of torrents anyway, usually with your choice of commentary. ^_^ I admit, I've grown to like the commentary-free Eurovision feed they provide - Terry Wogan's a fun chap, but there are times he could and should just stay quiet)

It's a little odd KV would go down and then return without any explanation, but so it goes - I'm just relieved it's back. Trying to play many YouTube clips while they're downloading often results in framedropping - and if it's something I know I'll want to watch again, I might as well fetch it once and have it available, whether I've got a connection at the time or not.

Oh, handy. Wonder if LJ provides any way yet to check for the existence of feeds for a given URL.. sometimes they're easily guessed, but it'd be so much simpler if you could just run a search within the ones currently around. Wonder if anyone's come up with S&M avs.. must have by now. =:)

Indeed, a return to much more well-contained copyright periods would also be a highly welcome step. The public domain is a reality, but one that's under increasing commercial pressure, with corporations wanting to reap the benefits of a concept being part of everyday culture, but also maintaining special privilege thereon. Ooh, and an escrow for source! I do like that. Might be quite embarrassing for some authors, though. ^_^ I'd also say the duration of such privilege would depend on the nature of the work - moderate for music and movies, briefer for software, given the lifecycle there's so much shorter.

Mmm... the CERN page actually says that webcasts are available in "Flash format", too, so hopefully, you won't need anything beyond that.

And yeah, it's weird about Keepvid. It seems they're now routing all downloads through their own server, too - which seems pretty silly, given that the only thing they'll get out of it is bandwidth consumption (and tons of it!), but I guess it's up to them. The old bookmarklet doesn't work anymore, either, but at least there's a new one (although I haven't tried that yet).

As for feeds, there is a way; go to http://livejournal.com/syn and copy the feed URL into the input field at the bottom ("Add Feed by URL"). It works both with direct link to the feed (RSS or Atom) or regular HTML pages that contain at least proper <link rel="alternate" ...> tag in the header that points to a feed. :) Blogspot etc. all do this, I think, so most of the time, you can just directly paste the blog's URL.

Of course, if no syndicated account exists yet, you'll be asked to create one, but only if you've got a paid/permanent account (or maybe a sponsored one; I'm not sure, but it definitely doesn't work with basic accounts, or at least used to not do so). But that's really as easy as chosing a name that is neither too long nor taken yet.

As for copyright... yes, things are definitely skewed these days. For example, William Patry, a lawyer specialising in copyright with 26 years of experience under his belt, recently announced that he would shut down his widely-read and highly-acclaimed copyright blog, and one of the reasons he gave is that the current state of copyright law is just too depressing:


But who knows? There may be hope after all (never say never). And yeah, having shorter terms for software would certainly make sense. ^^

'Course, if nothing else, you can be fairly sure geeks amongst the audience (watching a massive particle accelerator turning on? Nahhh =:) will be capturing and transcoding the best feeds available. ^_^ Flip4Mac does actually work quite well - seemingly better than WMP ever did. Possibly due to not having anything to do with Microsoft beyond the license? =:)

I'd imagine the way they're doing it is to circumvent any IP bans YouTube may have - the Dutch site claims they do block such downloading sites, which seems plausible, if they're to maintain the façade of "watching only, no downloading". All rather needless, but so it goes. (Mind you, for quality and features, YouTube's fairly bad anyway.. blip.tv's quite a lot better, offering much higher quality compression, and the option to easily permit downloading. Actually, even Google Video did, but YT gained the momentum)

Ah, it checks for duplicates? I thought LJ just went ahead and blindly created the syndication regardless. I should nose around that section of the site sometime - didn't they add some kind of showcase of feeds a while back?

Sadly, that summary does feel rather correct. One need look no further than Disney for a perfect example, where the copyright period's been progressively telescoped out, all in order to avoid anything of their output from falling into the public domain. And every time Disney asks, they're given just what they requested. (Particularly ironic, given how much of their cinematic work's drawn on traditional stories, long since public domain)

Apropos of nothing, did you notice this story in this week's MC Stories update? Imagine being able to gain those kinds of TF abilities, whilst retaining your sense of free will.. ^_^
In a world where copy protection has become far more important than copyright, is it any wonder that the laws regarding the latter are in the state they are?
I guess not...