There's an interesting story on Slashdot this morning about why (possibly) Google may have been spoiling for a YouTube fight, rather than hoping to avoid it. As the theory in the article goes, Google may have wanted to get sued to protect the viability of YouTube, rather than leaving the copyright fight to a company less able to fight back (financially and strategically):[Google's P}lan A was to hope people woul There’s an interesting story on Slashdot this morning about why (possibly) Google may have been spoiling for a YouTube fight, rather than hoping to avoid it. As the theory in the article goes, Google may have wanted to get sued to protect the viability of YouTube, rather than leaving the copyright fight to a company less able to fight back (financially and strategically):[Google’s P}lan A was to hope people would be nice and look the other way. That worked for a year so far, and Google hoped it would continue. Plan B was to get sued. This isn’t any ordinary “get sued and win” plan. Waiting to get sued so you can win in court is a defensive move for most companies. But for Google, this is preemptive. This is about Google defending YouTube, instead of YouTube defending YouTube…. What’s the next big thing on the net? Video. Google cares what happens in video sharing because it wants a slice of the video ad market. It doesn’t want to just be in the market, it wants to own it like it owns text ads. But that’s not the whole answer. Google bought YouTube because it wanted to make sure of three things:Google has first dibs for video ads on the biggest video site on the Internet YouTube remains legal Expand and protect current fair use related provisions involving copying intellectual property.In short, Google may have been willing to accept a legal fight in order to protect its ability to mine video for money, yes, but also to protect fair use rights for video on the Internet. If true, very laudable. And very different from Novell’s actions vis-a-vis Linux. Novell claims to want to sell and proliferate Linux. But it has taken the exact wrong strategy to do so. Instead of protecting Linux and standing up for its integrity, Novell has slandered its reputation with its dubious Microsoft pact. However Novell may want to color it, the agreement implies that Linux is “Unclean!” A better strategy, then, would have been to stand up to Microsoft, rather than to lie down and grovel before it. This would have made Novell a champion, rather than the pariah it has become. There is precedent for this, too, as Novell stood up to SCO in a similar situation several years back.You can do better, Novell. Open Source