Looks like someone has been reading up on Tesla.  I think his plans for that device were published about 1908, but I could be off by a few years. I never was able to find a copy.

I can't wait to get one of these in my house... better yet, on a trailer so I can take it with me. A smaller version in an electric car would be pretty cool too.

Ok, how about this for free energy: using the tides. Why hasn't that been done yet?

Probably eco-terrorists.

Oh come on. Guys; I expected a little more skepticism here. No device has EVER been built which produced energy over unity. Period. Thermodynamics is inescapable, at least on the macro scale.

The idea of some brilliant inventor working in isolation and building a device that will change the world makes for a compelling story, but is rarely true. Go read the innovation myth.

As for these devices, I'll believe it when GE buys the patents.

I've seen plenty of people recreating John Bedini's online, free schematics to reproduce his experiments. Here is the Yahoo group to get started: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Bedini_Monopole3/messages

I've also seen plenty of people online reproduce the schematics with mostly success, sometimes because of the parts they use weren't the ones he recommended, or they thought they knew better than he did about how it should work.

Historically, when a large company bought the rights to such devices it was to put the idea in storage.

And, with skepticism one has to be careful and not tip toe into absolutism, especially when one hasn't tried to recreate such experiments for themselves to have sound judgment on such matters. But, then again...I could be playing the Fool's part.

That is one way to do it, you could also use the waves and a float to move the generator arm up and down. There are many applications that would work and water is so much heavier than wind, it would definitely produce more current... no pun intended.

First Rule of Thermodynamics Club = No such thing as a free lunch

I've seen similar devices built as projects but usually they don't really qualify as a perpetual motion machines, they basically run for a large amount of time slowing down and ultimately stopping as load is applied and begins to pulling current. 

If you search on youtube there are a few of these but I've yet to see one running anything more than a small light bulb.  I've seen a guy hooking up a synchronous motor to a CMOS switching circuit that lets large capacitors power it between cycles, he used a heavy flywheel to help it keep moving even after the power supply was removed, it appeared as if the thing was spinning without a power supply but after a while you start seeing the rotor slow down.

Don't get me wrong, I believe there is a combination of concepts out there that will one day help us generate super cheap energy but you still can't violate the laws of physics...to me all that means is that I need better proof than some guy running a funky looking motor without giving an explanation of how it works.  I know he would say he's protecting his invention but if I ever came up with something cool like that, I would just put it out there for everyone to have access to it.

Is there such a thing as an open source patent?

Now I actually haven't done the research on either of the videos, YET, mainly because its 1 am and I have work in a few hours but theoretically I can see the concepts shown in the first video working. I'm no electrician or physicist but I like to think I have a pretty good head on my shoulders.
Now I could be way off base here but If I got what I think I did outa how that first machine works, with esentially the pushing/pulling of magnets to turn the turbines (or whatever you call the spinning parts of the generator) That energy could be captured and transfered to wherever. I'm assuming they're using electromagnets because of the jumpstarting with the battery, but once its started there's no reason it couldn't take a percentage of that energy and send it back to the electromagnets powering the entire thing. It would obviously then take that power and, depending on the percentage sent, would either maintain its current energy output to provide a constant, balanced flow of electricity. Or if you up the percentage slightly or not so slightly it would create an ever-increasing flow of energy. If They've built the machine right, all it would take is a simple math equation to figure out how much energy you create with that one jump start, how much of that energy your going to put to an outgoing source and how much your going to re-route back to the magnets.
 I imagine that they haven't quite got that formula down yet, so its either producing too much power cuz the power is constantly increasing and ends up overloading the curcuitry, or too little power going to the magnets and therefore dies after a period of time.
Now because its not mainstream yet I'm just guessing that they are trying to create some hardware, a computer chip or some sort, to create a stopping point for the energy increase. Ex: They want to start the thing with a AA battery but have the energy output grow to power a house in a matter of minutes, but once it reaches the right output the formula would have to change... hence a need of some sort of hardware or software to accomplish such a task.

Or I could be totally off my rocker cuz its now 1:30 a.m. and I'm in the beggining stages of sleep deprevasioin...