If you've stumbled onto this without infecting your computer with all sorts of viruses and malicious code, you're on the right path. Unfortunately the path to free internet video ends here, because nobody has a good index of what's available on YouTube.
Oh yes, there's a lot of free video on YouTube. You no doubt consider it all stupid and vacuous and made by people who are paid by corporations to pretend to be people recommending you a certain game or lifestyle or product to eat. Some companies made, say, television shows in the 80s and these shows can be found on YouTube for free. I won't name any because I haven't finished watching all the episodes yet myself, but they exist and are relatively unpunished.
Whether the copyright holder gave up or what, I don't know. Entire television series exist on YouTube, uploaded by dedicated fans. Finding these shows is difficult, because most videos that purport to be part of a movie or show are stills that inform you that YouTube can't actually host video and that only some other website (whose url is typically disguised) can.
The trick is to look for things that are not new. Anything that came out lately will not be available on YouTube, and videos that suggest alternatively are lying to you. Or you're lucky. Which brings me to my last point, if you're lucky you can find whatever you want on YouTube, but luck depends on what you are seeking, how the creators feel about it, how their lawyers feel about it, and whether or not the poster of legitimate material has gotten ratted out or discovered.
None of the rules are steady. I searched for the newest season of Entourage and got nothing but links to slag-websites. I tried to find the Fresh Prince, and there was no luck for me outside of a few scattered episodes. Also the YouTube search engine sometimes posts the same links page after page, so going past 15 or 20 on a search is not recommended. As for programs which have been posted under other names, you can only hope to be on the right side of that divide.
You may know something I don't, about cool websites that provide utopian bandwidth and lossless videos (DivX, RIP) but I'll tell you I stopped going to various websites for free video because I was getting tired of reformatting my hard drive and reinstalling everything. YouTube is limited, but it won't cause your anti-virus to have a breathless panic attack.
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