Now, Mike is pretty good at attracting attention, but I'm with him on this one -- I don't quite see the point of this cease and desist note from YouTube. Of course, the fun of it is as Mike notes: "Of course, the irony of YouTube accusing others of copyright infringement is delicious. But I won’t go into that right now."
On the topic of YouTube (and Google) What's even more interesting is what appears to be a pretty big disconnect between what Eric Schmidt said at Web 2.0:
BATTELLE: Now, after the [YouTube] purchase, it came out, and I'll allow you to address the accuracy of these claims, that a very large sum of money in the acquisition was set aside to in essence buy peace with the media companies. How is that going?
ERIC SCHMIDT: Well, the former is not true. The latter, we have talked to all of the -- visited with as many of the media companies as we can, because we have to respect copyright. And in many cases the exposure to video gives us an opportunity if we can construct the right partnerships, which of course is the goal, to actually get the correctly licensed content into the right places. And it could ultimately result in a much larger set of viewers for that content, viewers, listeners, and so forth.
And what was reported shortly after:
UPDATE: Google Sets Aside $187.5 Million For YouTube 'indemnification'
Dow Jones Business News
(c) 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
By Ben Charny
SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones) -- Google Inc. has set aside about $187.5 million of the approximately $1.65 billion it's paying for video-sharing site YouTube Inc. for unspecified current or future losses, it said Tuesday.
The language in a Google (GOOG) statement, which also discloses the deal has been closed, only describes the funds as being earmarked for "certain indemnification obligations."
While the language is very general, it does hint broadly that the money to be held in escrow for the next 12 months is meant to cover expenses related to copyright-infringement lawsuits, or content licensing fees YouTube already has agreed to pay, or may be forced to pay, in the future.
Of course, maybe if you are Eric a mere $187.5m isn't "a large sum of money." But it sure does look like someone forgot for a minute about the "don't be evil" thing...