YouTube removes “I Can't Believe You've Done This” video from 2007
This isn't a great specific example (it's "just" a meme and not even a particularly culturally significant one in the grand scheme of things), but in general this is why projects like youtube-dl are important.<p>It might not be glamorous, and it might be a little stupid, but damnit this is our culture, for better or worse! And we should preserve it.<p>Private companies seem to be the only ones with the resources to store all the video content we produce, and they're also exactly the wrong ones to be hosting our collective shared culture for posterity.<p>It's a shame a torrenting-based youtube wouldn't really work for various reasons, both legal and social.<p>So, short of that, at least being able to download stuff important to us as individuals is an important right to preserve.<p>My personal stake in this fight is a video of "Scotland the Brave" that I used to listen to a lot, which featured an older Scottish gentleman standing in the beautiful highlands, loudly and proudly calling down through the glen.<p>It got randomly copyright-removed recently and I've been unable to find it elsewhere. I don't even know who the person in the video was.