October 27, 2006
Pete Cashmore
In
a move that’s deeply irritating some of the channel’s biggest fans,
clips from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and South Park have been
removed from YouTube today following a DMCA from Viacom’s Comedy
Central. Searching
for the shows will still yield results, but clicking through to watch
the clips results in the message “This video has been removed due to
terms of use violation” or “This video has been removed due to
copyright infringement”. The news first appeared on Newscloud.
Comedy
Central owns some of the most popular content on YouTube, and video
sharing sites have driven a massive amount of interest in the shows.
The hosts will most likely be unhappy about the move: Jon Stewart said
in an interview
in 2005: “Getting it off the Internet is no different than getting it
off TV”, while Colbert plays up to the YouTube audience, even demanding
his cut of the money when the Google-YouTube
acquisition occurred earlier this month. South Park’s recent World of
Warcraft episode, meanwhile, felt like it had been produced with the
online audience in mind.
When YouTube’s CBS channel
received a warm welcome, I suggested that an agreement between YouTube
and Comedy Central would provide a big boost to all parties involved:
the network, YouTube and the fans. This over-reaction from Comedy
Central doesn’t mean that won’t happen, however: we’ve seen Universal
threaten to sue YouTube before changing tact completely. With some of the site’s most compelling content now missing in action, YouTube may driven to seek out an agreement. Let’s hope so.