I use Youtube every day of the year. Youtube is one of the ways that I find music. Music is kind of my life, I don't really know what I would do without it. The only thing that Youtube doesn't have going for it is the fact that you need an internet connection to be able to get to it, this is what makes rippers relevant. MP3 rippers are for the most part technically illegal, but they also technically aren't. Ripping anything from youtube and converting it to an MP3 file is legal as long as the material isn't claimed to be copyrighted anywhere on the page of the video. This doesn't mean that it is okay to upload music to Youtube without mentioning the copyright, because one is making people assume that whatever material they are uploading actually is there own creation. This of course can lead to getting the video taken down, or someone can just get sued for 150,000 a week. I don't upload anything because I only want to upload music, and I need 2,000 dollars before I can get the studio equipment that I am eyeing. Call me a perfectionist, but I don't want to record anything with my iPod, the scratchy mic quality bothers me.