Ach so, but therein lies the rub.

I wasn't able to search (and should I really have to if I already have the URL) the video since everything was in Chinese (it was a music video about Tiananmen massacre) and initially I didn't even know any details about the video except its URL.

Well I did manage to open the direct youtube URL in the browser and get the author's ID (in ASCII) which then allowed me to search for videos and somehow decipher which one I was supposed to watch.

Still, considering that people often send direct youtube URLs it would be nice to be able to use those in mYTube.