SoundCtrl – YouTube MP3 founder seeks meeting with Google brass

via Chase Hoffberger – The Daily Dot

Philip Matesanz has racked up 871,000 supporters in his fight to keep YouTube conversion site YouTube MP3 open in the face of Google’s cease and desist demands, but he can’t get a meeting with the global corporation’s brass.

Matesanz, 21, told the Daily Dot via email that Google’s Berlin office took notice of his popular Change.org campaign demanding that third party recording tools be allowed on the video sharing site after the petition exceeded 200,000 signatures. The company contacted Change.org to get in touch with Matesanz, and when they did, promised a meeting between the two parties.

But Google has yet to follow up on the meeting, and despite Matesanz’s efforts, all he’s received in return has been a phone call with Google’s legal counsel in which he was told that his case carried little weight.

“He insisted that my service is illegal and users that record content off YouTube engage in illegal activities as well,” Matesanz wrote. “I told him that our [Department of Justice] publicly stated that recording content off YouTube would just be a ‘private copy,’ which is protected by federal law and therefore legal.”