It is no secret that Google is pushing the boundaries of what is permitted under existing copyright law, and is willing to take some significant risk and expend significant financial resources in establishing its right to do so.  It is a little surprising then, to see Google/YouTube aggressively attacking TechCrunch for makeing a utility available for people to easily copy YouTube videos onto their hard drives, Ipods and similar devices for personal use, on the basis of contributory copyright infringement, among other things.  It would seem as though Google understands that YouTube has its own issues of contributory copyright infringement (it reportedly reserved in excess of $200 million to cover copyright infringement issues relating to the YouTube acquisition).  Yet YouTube, the business that is built on other people's copyrighted works, apparently does not want someone else doing the same.  Interesting.