OK, so maybe Google did think the whole lawsuit thing through when they bought YouTube. According to the SMH web site they've set aside $200M for settling lawsuits.

That's some serious cash! And as a honeypot I'm sure it'll attract the lawyers in swarms. I suppose the thinking is that you get all the lawsuits out of the way now, tighten up the copyright controls on YouTube and then get on with life.

I still can't figure out where the return for them is, though the article talks about YouTube having a commercial component to it. Maybe that'll work...