The YouTube thing doesn't sound right. They had a ¿10? minute video limit for a long time and it was really annoying to watch pirated stuff on there. Google Video had a lot of full movies before they bought YouTube and shut it down.
Still remember those times watching movies or documentaries by parts. Sometimes I started watching just to discover that part 8 was missing :(
edit: in previous years some anime communities uploaded episodes to photo sites. They chunked the episodes in small JPGs with the video data encrypted. Just download hundreds of photos, join them and you got the episode :)
I think it was 15 minutes? Or maybe it was upped to 15 mins? But yes, it was super annoying when part n of something was missing.