One of the Biggest Violators of YouTube's TOS Changes Its Tune

As I shared in a post earlier this month, downloading videos from YouTube via a third party tool is a violation of YouTube's terms of service (TOS). Despite that fact there are many teachers who do attempt to use third party tools to download YouTube videos. One of the most popular of those tools, KeepVid recently changed its tune. KeepVid no longer supports downloading videos from YouTube, Vimeo or other video sharing sites where the terms of service don't allow it. A visit to KeepVid today will just give you a bunch of information about why you shouldn't download videos illegally.

The new information on the KeepVid homepage strikes me as being hastily thrown together to comply with a legal request. But that's purely my speculation based on many years of filing DMCA take-down notices and dealing with the legalese of an online business.

If you'd like to learn more about copyright issues as they relate to classrooms, watch this free webinar that Beth Holland and I hosted late last year.



H/T to Make Use Of for the update on KeepVid. 

Chockadoc - A Catalog of Online Documentaries

Update: March 26, 2018 this resource is no longer available.

Chockadoc is a place to find full-length documentaries that you can watch online for free. Chockadoc, like sites similar to it, pulls most of its content from YouTube. The benefit of using Chockadoc over YouTube is the categorization of the videos. The categorization makes it easier than searching YouTube to find documentaries about a particular topic or theme.

Applications for Education
I'm sure that for readers working in schools that block YouTube will not be able to view most of the content on Chockadoc. If that is the case for you and you really want to use a video that you find through Chockadoc, you might want to consider using a tool like KeepVid to download the video at home then display it directly from your laptop. Bear in mind, that using KeepVid may be interpreted as a violation of YouTube's terms of service so use your discretion.