So in and around the same day Google announced it is holding back some 500 200 million dollars to not only defend itself from lawsuits, it decides to sue bloggers like Mike Arrington over supposed violations of their Terms of Service. Mike provides the details — but its worth reveling in the rich hypocrisy that a company that has an obvious war chest in defending their copyright violations is now sending their legal hounds over supposed intellectual property violations.

Aside #1: Mark Cuban points out the same irony in another lawsuit that YouTube is defending itself in — how can it proclaim safe harbour provisions in the DCMA in one hand as a defence for its copyright violations on one hand, and then start claiming that it “owns” those videos as a prelude to initiating litigation against people?

Aside #2: Sure, the 500 million dollar figure was off — but 200 million is still a lot of coin; if that aspect of the Mark Cuban “rumour” was true, then what else about that posting was true about YouTube acquisition?  Getting its new media partners to sue YouTube competitors into line?  Or how about shutting out artists in deals that aren’t really licensing agreements after all?