YouTube cease-and-desists TechCrunch

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch says that last night he received a cease & desist letter from YouTube's lawyers. Why ever would they do that? Apparently they're upset about the tool and instructions he recently posted that make it easy to download videos from YouTube and put them on your iPod. The lawyerbots say Arrington violated YouTube's terms of use, which they say "allows users to access videos only through the functionality of the YouTube website via streaming on the Web," but he insists he can find no such language therein, and frankly neither can I. Arrington says he will probably end up removing the tool from his site to "preserve his relationship with the company," but that he "honestly believed we were doing nothing to offend YouTube or Google."

In the meantime, TechCrunch's tool was merely the latest in a long line of YouTube downloading tools, most of the rest of which have so far escaped C&D action, so until the lawyers start lashing out on a larger scale, Arrington's misfortune doesn't mean much for the rest of us.

In related news, the AP is reporting that "Google Inc. has set aside more than $200 million in its just-completed takeover of YouTube Inc. as a financial cushion to cover losses or possible legal bills for the frequent copyright violations on YouTube's video-sharing site."

Tags: youtube