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October 30, 2006
Secret Wars: Comedy Central Takes on YouTube?
According to The New York Times, a battle is being waged in the online universe: Comedy Central vs. YouTube. An article published today titled, YouTube Is Purging Copyrighted Clips states:
[YouTube] last week began purging copyrighted material from Comedy Central, including clips from YouTube stalwarts like "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," "The Colbert Report" and "South Park."The action was "a result of third-party notification by Comedy Central," according to one such e-mail message sent to a YouTube user, Jeff Reifman, who broke the news on the Web site NewsCloud.
We jogged over to NewsCloud to find these allegations by Mr. Reifman:
For a long time, Comedy Central has passively allowed the sharing of online clips of its shows--because let's face it, it's helped them generate the kind of water cooler talk that has made them a ton of money.
Good point, Jeff! We think Peabo Bryson is also employing this passive-agressive stance with YouTube for those reasons as well. Tweet Petite writes:
I don't get it. [The Daily Show and The Colbert Report] are time-specific. There is no market for used Stewart shows outside of iTunes, and YouTube postings can't really be cutting into that market for two reasons: 1) there isn't much of a market there, and 2) downloading from YouTube is so complicated that if you want Stewart stuff on your iPod it's just easier to pay for it.On the other hand, the availability of those clips on YouTube, from which they have been copied to endless blogs, is phenomenal advertisement to those shows' exact target audience...
Queries for Southpark, Colbert, Jon Stewart on YouTube reveal tens of thousands of working results.
So the question is: is Comedy Central really the ones asking YouTube to remove their content? Or is Google behind it? Seriously, Google knows how much free PR Comedy Central is banging out of YouTube, it wouldn't be surprising if the mysterious "third party" was Google.
Posted by The Apiary at October 30, 2006 4:55 PM
Comments
Excellent question. I say yes, Google is destroying YouTube. Two years ago Daily Show ads were on every blog. Now with the free publicity, I have not noticed so many Daily Show ads.
In this post-desktop browser based digital economy Google is replacing Microsoft as the company that wants to take over the world. Of course they want ad dollars from Comedy Central.
Posted by: Mo! at October 30, 2006 7:21 PM
Leave Peabo out of this, you monster!
Posted by: Anthony at October 30, 2006 10:34 PM
Have you noticed that Comedy Central is now offering entire episodes for download on their website. Maybe they just want to be able to better track who is watching their shows.
Posted by: Dinny at October 31, 2006 11:14 AM
My "witty" Peabo crack aside, is it really so hard for cc.com to make their stuff Mac-compatible? I have yet to see anything on MotherLoad because of this. I think it's one of the only sites left that's still PC-only. Except for vh1.com, of course. They hate me too.
Posted by: Anthony at October 31, 2006 11:34 AM
Actually Comedy Central simply wants to grab the audience and keep them in their control. Which is a valid. But my complaint is if they are going to complain about YouTube hosting clips and they host their own clips, how come Comedy Centrals user interface sucks so hard.
The reason people go to YouTube is because it's easy and painless. Comedy Centrals interface makes me want to punch my computer. And I can't do that anymore on account of the restraining order!
Stupid Mac Mini and your lawyers!
Posted by: Jack at October 31, 2006 3:30 PM
I miss the good old days of walks in the park, reading fine literature, and programming the fucking Tivo!
Posted by: Billy Reno at November 1, 2006 11:09 AM
Google is not just destroying YouTube but also the Web.
The YouTube deal once for all shows Google for what it is : a hyper-greedy corporation with pretensions to "Do No Evil".
Let's not forget the deal they cut with the Chinese government.
This will be their Waterloo.
Posted by: Sunil Shibad at November 3, 2006 4:28 PM