YouTube Threatens TechCrunch; TechCrunch Blinks

YouTube has sent TechCrunch, a popular tech blog that covers emerging Web sites, a cease and desist letter over TechCrunch’s YouTube Video Download Tool. YouTube claims ‚Äútortious interference of a business relationship, and in fact, many business relationships,‚Äù of committing an ‚Äúunfair business practice,‚Äù and ‚Äúfalse advertising.‚Äù

While there does not appear to be anything in YouTube’s terms of service that forbids using tools like this, TechCrunch plans to remove the download tool anyway to avoid creating problems with Google/YouTube.

“I have no intention of fighting YouTube on this,” said TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington. “If they want it down, I’ll take it down. I don’t want to be put on a black list with Google PR.”

While TechCrunch may be planning to remove their tool, the tool isn’t unique. There are dozens of other sites that provide similar services.

     

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 15th, 2006 at 9:38 am and is filed under Digital Video Downloads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.