While Viacom’s $1 billion copyright-infringment case against YouTube rages on (MTV clips? The Daily Show? Get orf our land!), others continue to take the BBC’s lead and simply create their own mini-branded “channel” within the video-sharing site. The latest to surrender are Monty Python.

At uk.youtube.com/user/MontyPython, Cleese, Gilliam, Idle, Jones and Palin explain emphatically that they’re fed up with being ripped off. While they considered “going to war” with illegal uploaders — “we could come after you in ways too horrible to mention” (the Spanish Inquisition perhaps?) — they instead opted to remain the extraordinarily nice chaps they are and open up their vaults in high-quality definition.

The trailer for this panoply of Pythonesque pleasure also shows the ageing stars’ mock-horror at being told that the clips will be subscription-free. So they demand “none of your driveling, mindless comments . . . Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies and shows, and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.” Yeah OK, we get it.

These brief interview clips suggest that further Python musings will be posted in the future. Already there is Eric Idle recalling his co-writing experiences. Working with John Cleese was apparently “one of the most exhausting processes of my life”; as for Michael Palin, they’d just guzzle red wine, get drunk and fail to get anything done.

Another bunch of 1970s legends who have taken the “if you can’t beat ’em . . . ” approach is Led Zeppelin — rather ironically, given the band’s hostility to bootleggers back in the day. The Zep’s channel serves up a once-inconceivable treasure trove of free concert footage, organised by career periods. The scratchy Super8 snatches of, for example, a 1971 concert in Houston or the 1973 Kezar Stadium SF gig, pan across the arriving crowds before offering audience-eye views of Zep in full flight — great vérité snaphots of the period and, for Zepheads, rarities from heaven.

You really have to pity your local hairy bootleg-seller.

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