Raw Story
Friday, November 17, 2006

YouTube, the popular online video hosting service, has issued a cease and desist order to blogger Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, demanding he remove a downloadable tool which captures videos from the site, Technology Daily has reported.

Arrington had created the program and maintains that it does not violate YouTube's terms of service.

Excerpts from the registration-required article follow:

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A cease-and-desist letter sent by the video-sharing site YouTube to a well-known technology pundit has rankled bloggers in the last 24 hours.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington received the letter earlier this week from Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati attorney Karin Swope, who accused him of violating YouTube's terms of use, of "tortious interference" in business relationships, of committing an "unfair business practice" and of "false advertising."

Arrington said on his blog that TechCrunch's offense was developing "a small tool that lets people download YouTube videos to their hard drives." The application was referenced in a recent post that told readers how to move YouTube videos to their portable digital devices.

Arrington, who launched TechCrunch in June 2005, said he created the new tool after carefully reviewing YouTube's terms, 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."