News written by Matti Robinson (February, 2009)

YouTube has introduced free and paid downloads -- maybe an another step towards a more commercially viable service. Both of them are currently in a test phase which means that only approved YouTube partners can add downloadable videos. Also a new "Purchases" tab has been added under "My Videos".

YouTube partners are allowed set a small download fee for their submitted videos. In addition, the author can choose a license for the video from several options, including Creative Commons and Public Domain. The money transactions are handled by Google Checkout.

All the downloaded videos are in MP4 format and the paid videos are not protected by DRM. Therefore both free and paid videos can be played on variety of media players and devices.

Purchasing videos is currently limited to the United States but free downloads are available worldwide.

If you'd like to save other than YouTube partners' videos to your HDD, this is the guide for you.

The government-driven Operation Higher Education and Operation Safehaven are coming to an end as the last defendant has pleaded guilty to copyright infringement. The member of Fairlight group Greg Hurley admitted that he had supplied illegal copies to the warez group.

"I had access to numerous FTP sites where titles were stored and downloaded," said Hurley in his guilty plea. "I also conspired with others that uploaded copywrited works to FTP sites that would otherwise be further accessed, reproduced, and distributed by other co-conspirators."

He could face up to 26 months of jail time for the crime, but will probably get away with court supervised probation just like the other 18 sentenced defendants. He will be sentenced later this spring.

Hurley became a member of Fairlight in early 2002 and contibuted until he was arrested in 2004 as a part of the international operation Fastlink.