YouTube Downloads (again!)

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Question: I agree that teachers should be able to use appropriate YouTube videos in their classroom. However, on their website, YouTube appears to indicate that downloading is not acceptable. Please clarify! Thank you. – Rosemary

The IT Guy says:
Well, nuts. Rosemary is indeed correct, and if you read the user agreement on the YouTube page (which I obviously did not), it does specifically state that you may only access their content through the YouTube player, either through their website directly or by using the version that can be "embedded" in your own web page.

So while the pages I mentioned previously will technically work, and while I don't see that they violate district policies that directly block YouTube itself, they do violate the YouTube Terms of Service. I can't recommend violating those terms, not because there is any threat of the Internet Police coming after you, but simply because that's the way the rules are set up. YouTube provides the service, so they get to set the rules!

An alternative is to look for alternate sites with good videos. You might start by looking at TeacherTube and the Internet Archive. There aren't as many movies, but there are still tens of thousands of choices available to use.

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