The top story on Techmeme right now is that Google is attempting to mitigate legal problems it may experience now that it has purchased the popular Internet video sharing portal YouTube for $1.65 billion.  Hoping to stave off a potentially disastrous wave of lawsuits alleging copyright infringement on the part of YouTube, Google is now talking with several mainstream media companies and trying to get them to voluntarily offer their content to YouTube.

On the one hand, mainstream media companies enjoy an added measure of popularity thanks to YouTube and other video sharing sites.  On the other hand, many user-uploaded videos contain copyrighted material that these companies have not given permission to be copied or distributed.

Pete Cashmore at Mashable! predicts several months of legal messes for Google before the situation is resolved.

Cynthia Brumfield at IP Democracy thinks this story is overblown, saying, "more than likely, Google isn’t 'frantic' but is being aggressive in trying to land content deals that take YouTube to the next level."

I think both are right.  Google obviously thought carefully before spending more than $1.6 billion on YouTube, and must have considered the prospect of legal trouble in advance.  But the road for "Gootube," as for other similar combinations, might not be smooth all the way.