YouTube has been removing all copyrighted content from the Comedy Central Network after a request was made for them to take them down. The removal includes clips of “South Park”, “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report”, among a few others.
I watched a few videos with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report yesterday on Google Video so I’m guessing they haven’t been asked to remove anything just yet, but Comedy Central wants you to visit their site to view the shows, instead of the sites that are most popular for video viewing.
The site, Comedy Central, is offering the clips for free, just like YouTube did with an advertisement just to the side of the video. YouTube claims that they don’t control the content on the site, that the users post the content and they will promptly remove the clips as they find them, but it sounds like they are doing a little shifting on that position since many of the clips still remain.
YouTube did say that it would allow suing people who post videos on the site for copyright violations by providing the copyright owners with user identification if needed for cases, but only with a subpoena, of course. In fact, Robert Tur was one case, with his footage of the LA riots, that YouTube complied in this manner.
I have a feeling once lawsuits and threats come into YouTube, Google, the new owners, will limit the content so much that many will turn to other sources. I know, in most cases, I go directly to the sites that offer the videos/shows (NBC and other networks offer free viewing, just no downloads, of shows) to watch. Where do you go? Do you feel YouTube will get enough copyright issues in their hands that they will crack down on the content submissions?
I’ve watched the daily show on the comedy central site.its sucks
there is a lot of lag and buffering compared to hulu or youtube.