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Viacom's Messy Relationship With YouTube and The Rise of Stephen Colbert

Posted by samzenpus on from the birth-of-the-nation dept.

Presto Vivace writes with this story about how Stephen Colbert became a YouTube Megastar. "Clips from The Colbert Report soon became a staple at YouTube, a startup that was making it easier for anyone and everyone to upload and watch home movies, video blogs, and technically-illicit-but-increasingly-vanilla clips of TV shows from the day before. And Colbert’s show was about to find itself at the center of a conflict between entertainment media and the web over online video that’s shaped the last decade. In fact, The Colbert Report has been defined as much by this back-and-forth between Hollywood and the web as by the cable news pundits it satirizes....A year after The Colbert Report premiere, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. Five months later, Viacom sued YouTube and Google for copyright infringement, asking for $1 billion in damages. The value of these videos and their audiences were clear. The Colbert Report and “Stephen Colbert” are mentioned three times in Viacom’s complaint against YouTube, as much or more than any other show or artist."

4 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Lost His Balls by Kunedog · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Colbert sacrificed his integrity and actually did fluff piece on Anita Sarkeesian. Comments are disabled on the interview vid; has that ever happened to any other Colbert vid?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    1. Re:Lost His Balls by retchdog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      yeah, Viacom probably didn't want to deal with subpoenas and a federal investigation from the comments of people like you.

      pretty wise of them, really.

      --
      "They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
  2. Re:CBS doesn't own Colbert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Dude, chill. Believe it or not, you're not the first person to find something wrong on the internet.

  3. PROTECT BALLS FROM SARKEESIAN! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    BUT ETHICS1!!111ONEONEONE! Yes, it's kind of amazing how this bunch of obnoxious gamergating cunts have been whipped up into such a misogynistic frenzy by fairly tame documentaries making relatively obvious observations about the formulaic and trope-ridden world of popular gaming. Maybe heavy cannabis use among dudebros is a contributory factor in the spectacular levels of paranoia on show.