Official Youtube Downloading

YouTube in the past few days has cleaned up their UI. Although their font is a little small, it seems overall to be an improvement. Anyway, I was watching a video by KipKay (who is really amazingly awesome), when I noticed a new button on the "Favorite -- Share -- Playlist -- Flag" bar: "Download ($0.99)". Apparently, YouTube partners can now provide the option for viewers to download the videos for a dollar.

YouTube, this is idiotic. Here's why:

1. It's too narrow.
I can only download videos in MP4 format. What about MOV? AVI? FLV?

2. It's too late.
Is YouTube somehow oblivious to the existence of hundreds of websites that already do this? Here are just a few websites that let you download a YouTube file:

• http://www.kissyoutube.com/
• http://keepvid.com/
• http://vixy.net/
• http://kej.tw/flvretriever/
• http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php
• http://idesktop.tv/

The last website is my personal favorite, due to ease of use and variety of download formats.

3. 99 cents? Are you kidding me?
First off, all the websites I list above are free to use. Second, who pays a dollar for media anymore? Movies are pirated, music is internally recorded, and YouTube videos can be downloaded in a bazillion other ways.

I can hardly see anyone paying for YouTube videos anytime soon. YouTube, go back to ads. This won't work.