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YouTube attorneys send TechCrunch "cease and desist letter" over online tool

November 15, 2006

Tuesday evening,, technology website TechCrunch's CEO Michael Arrington  reported that he's received a cease and desist letter form YouTube's legal firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

The letter accuses TechCrunch of violating YouTube's terms of use, and, as Mike relates on a post discussing the matter,  of “tortious interference of a business relationship, and in fact, many business relationships,” of committing an “unfair business practice,” and “false advertising.”

Mike believes the letter was sparked by his site's creation and distribution of a "small tool" that enables users to download YouTube videos to their hard drives.

Mike writes:

"We created the tool only after a careful review of YouTube’s Terms of Use, which state “If you download or print a copy of the Content for personal use, you must retain all copyright and other proprietary notices contained therein.” The letter, however, states “The YouTube’s Terms of Use also allows users to access videos only through the functionality of the YouTube website via streaming on the Web, and it disallows the functionality of downloading videos.” Not only am I unable to find that language in YouTube’s Terms of Use, it directly conflicts with the language I did find and quoted above."

The actual letter is JPG'd at the bottom of Mike's post I linked to above. Here, let me link to it again.

Arrington is prudent, but is not the meek sort. And it is highly unlikely that YouTube would have had their lawyer send out this letter without acquirer Google's assent.

This one's gonna heat up.

Update: or maybe not.

In a reply to a user comment in the wee hours of this morning, Mike writes:

I have no intention of fighting YouTube on this. If they want it down, I’ll take it down. I don’t want to be put on a black list with Google PR. But first I’m going to have a conversation with my attorney and the attorney that sent me this letter.

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