Yowzer! YouTube pulls Comedy Central video clips to appease DMCA claims.
Google also recently made a pledge to play the straight man on copyright protections. BBC: Andrew Mclaughlin, Google’s head of global public policy, told the Commons culture committee that if material infringed copyright on Google Video service, “we take it down”. But he added: “I just can’t say anything about YouTube since it’s not our company.”
The committee chairman John Whittingdale asked Mr Arora if Google had “put aside a very large pot of money to settle copyright infringement” when it took over YouTube. Mr Arora replied: “There is not a lot we can say about what we will do with YouTube because it is still in the process of due diligence and we haven’t closed the acquisition.” But he added: “We intend to uphold copyright. We believe it is very important as part the creative process. It’s evident from our policy as part of Google Video, Google News or Google Books, and any acquisition in the future is not going to change Google’s view on copyright.”
All this despite that, in a Wired interview, Jon Stewart and Daily Show Producers previously encouraged fans to watch them on the internet. Daily Show and Colbert Report fans without cable, take to the streets across the nation, to mourn.
(John adding commentary here) This feels a bit like Google taking the easy route. I wish it had stood up for the rights of fans to post their favorite clips, and I also wish it did the hard, but ultimately worthy work of convincing the major networks and Hollywood studios to follow their own customers and learn how to profit from their actions.
Then answer me this — why is there still so much CC vid on YT? Yes, some is missing, but there’s still a lot there.
As I just posted in a blog entry: Something doesn’t add up.
Not only is YT still got CC vid, DS and CR have been very down with YT. Though I realize this is really a Viacom play, if it’s for real.
The big media companies shouldn’t worry that people will post their copyrighted material on YouTube. They should worry that people will post their own stuff on YouTube, and audiences will watch that instead. — Paul Graham.
The future as I see it can be embraced by GooTube or carried out by someone else. But it is this…
A deal where YouTube serves up all of the video on the Comedy Central site. Just as Google provides search for sites, YouTube should become the video host/provider.
But more, YouTube’s been thought of as a promotional vehicle for content; that’s the wrong construct. The real deal is IT’S THEIR TECHNOLOGY that we use. We, the audience, do the promoting.
If YouTube embeds the player, the entire player can become the ad. No more interruption or ad clutter. And think of the opportunities for adwords like synchronization of product and content!
I’d allow remixing too. Comedy Central and YouTube are demonstrating their takedown muscle. If a remix goes outside the bounds, they send the letters. I’m wondering if that’s not what Google had in mind all along.
I never thought Comedy Central or other large broadcasters will really go ahead to request their videos to be taken down from YouTube but I am getting very close to eating my words now. If I am going to eat my words, I want to see some hard data before I do it. (sad face)
To gather some hard data, I’ve created a very imprecise way to keep track of the general progress of this Comedy Central video clips take down thing. And I’m tracking it on my blog under the entry “Comedy Central vs YouTubers – Progress tracking”. The measures are simple, I will simply search for the following terms every few hours and record the progress or changes in my post.
* “Jon Stewart” (JS)
* “Colbert Report” (CR)
* “Comedy Central” (CC)
Here is the first report. I will keep searching and adding more entries to my blog.
Oct 29 21:00 MST & 22:18 MST update: searching JS returned 1283 results, CR returned 727 results, and CC returned 1656 results.
If the searches results go to zero, this experiment will be short.