Thanks for sharing your findings on downloading things from YouTube.<p>I tried writing a script to download videos with specific tags and convert them to MP3s a few months ago and found getting the videos off YouTube was the hardest part by far.
I wasn't aware that youtube had counter measures. I use the 'clive' program (which is in the standard ubuntu repositories) to download youtube videos by simply giving it the normal URL. I've never had it stop working, which seems to suggest that Google is not trying to block downloads (as re-active counter mesures would have a delay before the app gets updated).<p>Combine this with the fact that their is an API for third party players, and they are effectivly on the honor system to not 'download', and to show adds where appropriate.