Saturday, October 28, 2006

YouTube Yanks Comedy Central Clips

It really isn't a surprise to me that video clips are being yanked off YouTube within days of their purchase by Google. One can imagine Google's attorneys wailing and warning about copyright lawsuits -- something I'm sure they did before the purchase. And I imagine the meetings ended with "we'll deal with that AFTER we buy them."

Via Digg today, reports claim YouTube is yanking clips from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show", The Colbert Report" and "South Park."

I did a bit of checking today and found that many older clips are currently available, but many recent clips are now gone. Given that thousands and thousands of clips are available, it may take them some time to remove them all.

Lawyers cited the dreaded Digital Millenium Copyright Act as justification for the removal. The far-reaching law can also prevent industry professionals from even speaking at conferences about issues related to digital research. More here.

So until the clips are all gone, here is a fine conversation between Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of the Real Threat in America - bloggers:

4 comments:

  1. Well, crap.
    I wonder if the Googler had anything to do with it.

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  2. I'm wondering just how long this video will be available!!

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  3. The only winners from this whole thing were the 2 guys who walked away w/ 1.6 Bil, for the sale of YouTube. Google is about to be hit by bigtime class actions, because they have the deep pockets. What a shame that we lost this venue for sharing film clips, etc.
    Now we'll be stuck w/ Lola from Long Island's amateur strip clips.

    Loved this clip! (yours, not Lola's)

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  4. This is sad, but inevitable. It's really too bad because the Report has been using YouTube to its advantage (the Green Screen Challenge, for one example)for a while now. Also, I like to watch Colbert and Daily Show clips on YouTube when they're on hiatus, to get my fix. Because I'm a fakenewsaholic. This is just stupid of Comedy Central. Not the first stupid thing they have done, and not the last, but stupid all the same.

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