Youtube has quietly started making certain Youtube videos free to download by placing a small “Click to download” text just below the video frame. The download link has appeared on certain political videos notably the weekly speeches of President-Elect Barack Obama. The direct download option gives users a H.264 encoded copy of the video to play offline.

It is yet to be known whether this feature will be expanded to other videos. There are however many less-legal tools which allow you to download youtube videos and we have also written about some of them on this blog.

What is interesting to note here is that videos are being served from Googlevideo and shown on Youtube. We know that Google video is being shut down and no more uploads are being accepted there.

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