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YouTube Removes Comedy Central Clips Due to DMCA

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the less-tube-more-goo dept.

Jeff writes "In March, an earlier Slashdot post asked if iTunes sales of the Daily Show would make it harder to share clips online. Well, apparently with the $1.65 billion YouTube acquisition by Google, the answer is now yes. Today, YouTube removed all of its Comedy Central content. Google knew this was coming but you have to wonder if YouTube will be worth that $1.65 billion on Monday. The take down request comes a year after a Wired interview where Daily Show Executive Ben Karlin encouraged viewers to download: 'If people want to take the show in various forms, I'd say go.' Maybe the New York Times Company would have been a better acquisition for Google after all."

4 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Uhh, no they haven't. by mcg1969 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I just watched a couple of South Park clips. One was brand-spankin' new, just from tonight, but the other one was quite old---and there are quite a few copies at that. Try it yourself: my search term was "south park" "steve irwin"

    Sounds like they have some work left to do, if they're actually serious about doing it.

  2. Re:D'oh by interiot · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Presumably some consideration would be given to YouTube for the fact that 1) YouTube is paying the bandwidth costs, so comedycentral.com's clip service doesn't have to, and 2) much like radio playing singles from an album, it's free advertising to hook people into being interested in the larger work. Granted, TV shows don't sell for $15 a pop, but the "best 5 minute" clip from each show is still a good advertisement... advertisers typically don't get even 20 seconds of someone's attention to sell their product... having a 5 minute ad show up every couple days on Digg has to be very valuable free marketing.

  3. Re:Allow me to be the first to say... by rtb61 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It really has more to do with Google video not wanting to be seen losing against Youtube. A defensive purchase to protect a rather high share price that is not based on revenue but upon the perception of Google being a winner.

    For Google to be seen losing in a market against a new competitor would have damaged that perception of being a iwnning competitor i.e. if a new upstart can beat Google in one area, how many other new players are there out in the market place that can beat Google in other areas (forget the microsofties, they have trouble beating them'eww').

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  4. Re:So much for that. by ImaNihilist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is what I've been saying for a while now. YouTube is over. 6 months from now all the illegal content will be gone and YouTube might as well just divide the sight into two sections: BoobTube and MTVTube, because that's the only content it's going to have. Thing is, we already have BoobTubes all over the internet, and music videos...eh. You can usually find the video you are looking for from the artists website, and it's not in shitty Flash format. If that fails, it's on MySpace.

    I really liked YouTube too. It was nice to be able to watch Comedy Central shows, and older Adult Swim stuff that isn't on Fix. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

    I still don't get why Google bought YouTube. It's just a giant liability. It's like buying the The Pirate Bay. Sure we all love it, but who actually wants to own that?