Youtube is a wonderful thing. Once upon a time, and by this I mean the distant year of 2004, I used to have to scour Google for videos of commercials I liked that had long passed. I kept a folder in my bookmarks designated “videos,” and kept it proudly bursting. Full of whims, it was, but hard-fought and battle-ravaged whims, proud of the flights of fancy which were so well-earned. What a collection it was, in the best sense of to collect, the search and struggle to acquire, not only for the thing itself, but for the very triumph of acquisition. And I have always been a collector, from the 1993 Fleer X-Men cards to the whole first generation of Monster in my Pocket.

Then Youtube came around, and now it has everything anyone has ever filmed or animated or recorded. It has Renato Carasone’s “Tu vo’ fa’ l’americano.” It has every Simpsons couch gag in one big, long, reel. It has that Pizza Hut commercial that ran in front of the first Ninja Turtles picture. It has the original opening theme to The Electric Company right alongside the Apollo 8 Christmas broadcast and the Betty Boop adaptation of Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher.” It has Nancy Sinatra and the intro to Disney’s Gummi Bears. It has Bruno Bozetto’s Italians vs. Europeans. It has everything. It’s all right there, in a big burlap sack for you to dig through. Collaborative collecting, if you will, makes it easier to get what you want, but it steals all the thrill away.

Now, that stuff ain’t stuck online anymore.

I’ve always wanted to be able to swipe those videos offline for my own personal use, to stick them on my new iPod classic and watch them between classes or when I got bored with the lecture, to share them at lunch with friends, to simply be able to be moved or amused with a simple button push wherever I went, without even needing an iPhone that can get to all that stuff where it is. Unfortunately, every Youtube downloader I’ve ever used didn’t work.

This one does.

It’s called Kickyoutube, and it’s the easier thing in the world. Just go to youtube, watch a video, and type the word “kick” in front of “youtube.” Then select your format, click “Go” and download. There it is, an MP4 or FLV or whatever else you want, ready to be stuck on your portable device, and all of it for free.

So when does this become illegal?