Youtube Good Or Bad

I admit that I've gone to Youtube to view the videos on their website. But mostly it's the ameture videos that people make, like their pet doing something funny, or maybe a documentry of someone's collection or something very common. The one thing I've noticed about Youtube is that there are tons of nostalgic videos that had been posted that often makes me tempted to view it, like various videos showing what had aired on Saturday mornings in the 1970's, or a commercial for a long forgotten product that is no longer in production. I have been searching the internet for the lost and found of my youth, and had no luck, untill I somehow find it on Youtube. The only problem is that there are tons of legality issues that had risen with alot of the videos that had been uploaded. Most people tend to get creative and do things like voice overs with their favorite episode of a tv show, or maybe create fan based things of their favorite cartoon shows.
I have laughed at one video that had been animated of a very funny family from a very funny movie. True it was hilarious, but my concerns are that will I get into legal trouble for viewing it, let alone downloading it to my Ipod? You never know who is watching your internet actions and maybe looking to take action when you least expect it. Nobody wants to get fined thousands of dollars and or do time in prison, just for viewing or downloading a copyrighted video from youtube. Some people are going through their old collection of video recordings, and if they find something nostlagic, they will upload it if it's exciting enough for them, even if it's an added feature on a commercial DVD movie. True that since most tv programs had been cancelled at one point, and had not yet been availavle on DVD, they figure that it should be uploaded to Youtube to better remember the show and keep it going.
What they don't realize is that the original company that made those shows and movies still have the copyrights on them, and maybe they had plans to release it to DVD. But because it's been uploaded to Youtube, it spoils it for the company, and they may decide not to publish it onto DVD. Plus they may attempt to track down the original person who uploaded the video and charge them with heavy fines and imprisonment. Think about it that if a copyrighted video on youtube had been viewed lets say 16,000 times, then they could get fined $100,000 for everytime that video had been downloaded, which could run into millions. So is Youtube really that bad? Well it's hard to say, as the videos are very tempting it watch, but most of them are ameture videos and can be fun to watch, but maybe to play it on the safe side, stay away from Youtube, and view the videos on the websites offered, as chances are they are legal to watch.
But be warned as sometimes youtube videos are placed onto websites, which is just as illegal as watching them on youtube itself.