>> I don't download pirated *anything*. [Knowingly, anyway.]
> 
>   As I said, that's very commendable, and extremely rare for a computer
> user (and even rarer for a computer nerd).

Really? I wasn't aware of that...

>   But it also explains why you haven't seen divx/xvid videos with good
> quality/size ratios. (That is, because I would estimate at least 99% of
> divx/xvid/h264 videos out there are illegal.)

99% of DivX/Xvid/H264? Surely it would be accurate to say "99% of ALL 
VIDEO on the Internet"? ;-)

Actually, why the qualifier "video"...? o_O

>   An interesting question is whether it's punishable to watch a youtube
> video which contains copyrighted material or not.

Now that *is* an interesting question, actually...

[Presumably the answer depends on where you're watching. Whether it 
*should* be punishable is another matter... IMHO, the person illegally 
posting stuff should be held responsible, but I guess the law doesn't 
always work like that.]

> After all, you can't
> know if the video is copyrighted or not when you click on a youtube link.

Well... if you click on something that mentions the title of a 
well-known film, it's more or less guaranteed to be illegal. (Although 
in a tiny minority of cases, the poster might geniunely have permission 
from the copywrite holder.)

OTOH, videos don't necessarily have helpful captions, and you can't 
possibly know of every copywrited item that exists in the world, so yes, 
there are definitily cases there the viewer cannot be expected to know 
that they are watching pirated material.

> There's no way of knowingly avoid downloading the video (or part of it),
> other than avoiding youtube altogether. (And even that can be almost
> impossible given all the millions of websites out there which *embed*
> youtube videos in them. You would have to stop surfing the web completely.)

Yeah, pretty much...

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