Google plans to sue conversion site

Google is going to sue YouTube-mp3.org, according to a letter sent to the site's owner.

As the name implies, the service takes a YouTube URL and spits out an mp3 of the audio track. Given that it's sort-of-copyright-infringey (although not of any copyright Google itself owns, for the vast majority of the videos).

As an extra protection, Google has started blocking the YouTube-mp3 servers, which it could have done quietly without drawing attention to the site and the wide range of similar options.

Torrentfreak suggests similar conversion tools are getting letters from Google; but Google surely knows all it means is people will go back to ripping the audio from videos the old-fashioned way, capturing it locally as the music plays out.