YouTube (which never seems to respond to e-mail from customers) sent out a cease-and-desist letter to top tech blogger Michael Arrington of TechCrunch:

Buried in my email this evening I found a cease and desist letter from an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, representing their client YouTube. We’ve been accused of a number of things: violating YouTube’s Terms of Use, of “tortious interference of a business relationship, and in fact, many business relationships,” of committing an “unfair business practice,” and “false advertising.” The attorney goes on to demand that we cease and desist in from engaging in these various actions or face legal remedies.

Well, crap.

The offense we committed was creating a small tool that lets people download YouTube videos to their hard drives. We referenced the tool in a recent post that walked people through the process of moving YouTube Videos to their iPod.

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…

Arrington has posted the entire letter and his analysis, and notes wryly:

Of course, the irony of YouTube accusing others of copyright infringement is delicious. But I won’t go into that right now.

Indeed: Pot. Kettle. Black.

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