YouTube Removes Comedy Central Clips Due to DMCA

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."

Allow me to be the first to say...

DUH.

While Google has a pretty good track record, there have been a few flops. This may prove to be one of them.

Re:Allow me to be the first to say...

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').

Goole's Plan!

1) Buy YouTube
2) Wait for all of the content to be removed
3) ???
4) profit!

Re:So much for that.

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?

Re:So much for that.

You've kind of missed the point of YouTube. The "You" refers to user generated. Look at the most viewed lists and about half of it is user generated stuff. Look at the most subscribed channels and it's nearly all user generated stuff.

I rarely see MTV videos or "BoobTube" type stuff there. But you do. It seems to me what you think YouTube is full of is the things that you search for and/or are subscribed too.

YouTube is at it's best with user generated content. Removing stuff that is just re-runs of what is already on TV may well improve it.

Re:So much for that.

That's because you are in the minority. YouTube has grown beyond the kind of people who read Slashdot, play WoW, and know what a "roflcopter" is. The mainstream YouTube crowd goes there for music videos, comedy central, and other various TV show clips. My ex-girlfriend would watch project runway on YouTube.

Really, there aren't that many people that want to watch some homemade crap. You might think that, but the reality is that's been around forever on various sites, and those sites have been small. The audience just isn't that huge. While it might seem like even a brookers or lonelygirl video has a massive amount of hits, and that's true, that's only one video. For every one of those viral vidoes that gets 100,000 hits in a day, there are 100 clips of copyrighted material that get 5,000 hits.

Just look at the comparison between YouTube and Google Video. The only real difference is that YouTube has copyrighted material, and for that reason YouTube is probably several orders of magnitude more successful.

Overtime you will see YouTube phase out into just another AtomFilms...or iFilm...or Google Video. The only thing that ever made YouTube different was the massive amount of copyrighted material.

Umm, "due to DMCA"?

Don't you mean "due to the basic law of copyright that the US has had for over 200 years and is embedded into the Constitution"?

Why the DMCA?

I don't get what this has to do with the DMCA...I mean, I think the DMCA is as much a piece of crap as everyone else, but Comedy Central would still have the right to force YouTube to take the content down even without the DMCA. It's just a copyright law violation. Just because they "passively allowed" it for a time doesn't make it impossible for them to change their mind sometime down the road...

Re:Why the DMCA?

I don't get what this has to do with the DMCA...

The DMCA isn't just about copy protection, it also includes sections that detail the way a copyright holder is to notify a service that hosts user-uploaded content and the way such a service must respond to those notifications. Check out 17 USC 512 [cornell.edu].

Re:D'oh

Though really, do 5-minute clips of the show threaten Comedy Central's revenue model, or help it?

Now that YouTube is owned by a company with serious money, they're probably trying to negotiate a deal where Google pays X amount per view or something. They can't do that while they're allowing their content to be downloaded for free. My guess is it's all political maneuvering.

Re:D'oh

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.

Uhh, no they haven't.

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.

Or..

Google could just pick up Comedy Central for a fraction of the cost of YouTube, if the clips were really that important to people.

This is the actual email

Dear Member:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Comedy Central claiming that this material is infringing:

Steve Wozniak on Colbert Report 09/28/2006: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSIfYgbajpk [youtube.com]

Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to avoid future strikes against your account, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube's copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.

If you elect to send us a counter notice, to be effective it must be a written communication provided to our designated agent that includes substantially the following (please consult your legal counsel or see 17 U.S.C. Section 512(g)(3) to confirm these requirements):

(A) A physical or electronic signature of the subscriber.

(B) Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled.

(C) A statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.

(D) The subscriber's name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if the subscriberis address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that the subscriber will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person.

Such written notice should be sent to our designated agent as follows:

DMCA Complaints
YouTube, Inc.
1000 Cherry Ave.
Second Floor
San Bruno, CA 94066
Email: [e-mail]

Please note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification may be subject to liability.

Sincerely,
YouTube, Inc.

$15/month to watch a single TV show?

So correct me if I'm wrong, but to download "The Daily Show" via iTunes, it costs $9.99US for up to 16 episodes. So per month, that'll add up to over $10. Maybe something around $15US/month. Now who'se the person that thought charging this much was a good idea?

I mean can you imagine the bill of using iTunes vs. Tivo? Buying the Simpsons... Family Guy... Daily Show... The News... Daily Planet... Let's see... that adds up $75/month. For 5 shows. No wonder people pirate this crap!

Re:$15/month to watch a single TV show?

Personally, I don't have cable. At $60/month, it isn't worth it. Everything I watch is on broadcast for free: local sports, news, reruns and what have you.

Everything, that is, except for the two channels I would pay for: Comedy Central, and Cartoon Network. I don't watch a lot of TV. I don't have time to watch a lot of TV. But I'd love to catch the Daily Show for 20 minutes of my life every day. And you're telling me I should shell out $60 to Comcast for 30 minutes per day + lots of crap I don't have time for, instead of $10 to Apple but be limited to what I actually want? (It's only on 4 times a week, so it really is only $10 a month.) I don't think so.

You Tube without copyright content is WORTHLESS.

Virtually every link I have ever followed to there has been some clip of television that was far beyond "fair use". The whole point behind You Tube is like the point behind the original Napster; Free access to proprietary content. Remove the desired content, and it will not matter if it remains free. Charge for it what it costs to pay for rights, and it won't matter that the content is still there.

Google got had.

Re:You Tube without copyright content is WORTHLESS

Google got had.

I think not. Google's plans for YouTube and are bigger than most people imagine. They now control THE internet video domain name. Nobody went to Google Video, so they changed their strategy. They will undoubtedly negotiate mutually beneficial deals with various copyright owners to host TV content. I for one will happily watch my Colbert Report on YouTube, on demand, legally, in higher def with guaranteed quality, rather than have to hunt down a torrent or wait for somebody to upload some fragment of the show with inconsistent quality and unpredictable keywords. Heck, they can still allow people to upload snippets of the shows as long as they've negotiated ahead of time. So as long as I have Internet access, I don't need cable anymore, and I won't need to download shows illegally.

I think the Google acquisition of YouTube is actually a big win. Think about it -- Google knows you intimately based on your searches, even more so if you have a Google account and gmail. Tie that to your video viewing habits, and Google effortlessly blows away the whole Neilsen rating system. They can provide cheaper bandwidth and hosting than the networks themselves, and they can track everything you watch and every ad you see. And you won't see ads for things you wouldn't want to buy anyway. This represents a potentially huge efficiency/productivity gain for advertisers, and they will pay well for it.

Google has big plans to be a major player in the media industry, whose future is increasingly Internet-based. Don't underestimate them.

Or do you really think they bought YouTube cuz it was "cool" and they had the spare cash? Google isn't stupid. You can believe Page and Brin and Eric Schmidt do some deep thinking about companies they choose to acquire, and what they plan to do with them.

In other news..

Comedy central is asking all viewers to stop watching their channel since well.. nobody does anyways. What idiot in their marketing department said "hey, all these people in our target demographic who don't or might not currently watch us are getting interested in our shows... lets stop that from happening!" Another wonderful example of brick and mortar media looking a gift horse in the mouth. I'm sure Jon Stewart is excited that his total viewership just dropped by 80% ovenight :-/

So it begins....

I guess this is just the start. So I guess Google paid $1.65M for lonelygirl15 and cats flushing the toilet videos. Outstanding!

Breaking news:

Dateline, 7 Dec. 2042: Media launch suprise attack against Free Internet.

In a stunning turn of events today, the forces under the command of the Greater Hollywood Control Sphere launched a suprise attack against the Free Internet Alliance servers stationed at port 80 on the island of 208.65.153.242. The attack left the port in ruins, and many of the FIA systems completely offline or suffering serious information loss. Reports are coming in from the main server on #c_n_c that as many as 60% of all system resources are currently lost to crashed daemons, and that in going down, at least one F.I.A. system may have crashed into a scanning transport beam, rendering whole parts of the system unaccessible. The latest packets from the scene of the tragedy indicate that possibly as many as several thousand user processes may have been lost in the attack.

Currently, the Free Internet government is in a state of panic. Previous to this time index, all signs had been indicating that a lasting peace might be achieved with Imperial Hollywood. Now, with this blatant betrayal by the GHCS after they claimed to be nearing a peace agreement with the FIA, it appears that the forces and nation of the Free Internet will inevitably be dragged into the battle already raging on large parts of the Network. Within a hundred microcycles of the GHCS' unconscionable attack against 208.65.153.242 and subsequent declaration of war, dictator-superuser Bill Gates of the Eighth-Generation Empire declared war against the FIA. The government of the FIA, operated out of restricted IRC channel #fia_gov hosted at 63.161.169.137, has now reciprocated, declaring war against both the GHCS and the Empire and their allies.

Now is the time to fight back for freedom! As of today, #fia_gov has issued the results of a unanimously-supported poll ordering full mobilization of all Alliance forces. We shall recover, we shall recompile our executables, and we shall strike back at the enemy wherever his code may be. No longer can we hide from the reality of the threat all forces for freedom on the Network face! Already, all attack programs and bandwidth we can spare are being sent to our ally, beleaguered Great Computer, to assist in it's fight against the tyrranical control of the Eighth Empire's palladium war-recognizers.

And so with our parting datagram, we urge you to fight! In the words of SysAdmin Roosevelt, We shall never surrender to the forces of fascism and tyranny! We shall fight them, server-by-server, partition-by-partition! Hear this, Occupied Routers: We shall be back!

*** END OF LINE

Other leading stories:

• DMCA is extremely badly written and poorly thought out law
• Media execs found to have heads up asses with regards to Internet
• Copyright inexplicably incompatible with ability to effortlessly duplicate information.

Someone better get a kick out of this. I spent enough time writing it. ;P

Doesn't devalue YouTube in the slightest.

Yes it was sort of handy being able to see whole shows on YouTube. And I don't think that will actually change much in the future as people create new accounts, upload content, and it gets removed in an endless cycle where YouTube acts as a short-term cache.

For me and a lot of other people the value of YouTube is really in all the user created videos. What people have not thought about is that whlile a lot of the content is drek, with some editing some of it from various sources could actually produce some compelling video - and YouTube has the rights to everything put on the site.

As long as people keep coming to YouTube the value will hold, and it really will not change because where else are they going to go to find user-created internet video? Not Google Video!

Lawyers vs. technology, YouTube vs. another model

The internet with its vastly improved communications technology is doing two things at least. First, it's making the things people used to do locally under fair use a global threat to the value of the traditional distribution schemes. Secondly, the seriouslness of the threat is causing all those lawyers who thought they were protecting content with their licenses to realize it wasn't their work at all that protected content. It was the difficulty of distribution. So lawyers are being taken to the mat everywhere and they're doing what they can. In this case, I doubt it's going to have much effect. There are other sites and even on YouTube the volume of uploads would overwhelm any number of people they put in charge of looking for copyrighted content. They could moderate all video posts to deal with the traffic but it's all just a sideshow. YouTube isn't competing against another couple of large video sites with similar constraints to them. It's competing against another model...one of thousands of smaller video sites, all indexed, and rated by the community. YouTube's challenge is to demostrate that they are providing value even to those whose copyrighted content they are distributing. The happy medium may be one where best of clips are allowed but no complete works without a subscription. Guess we'll all see how it goes...

Really?

YouTube [youtube.com] pulled [youtube.com] all [youtube.com] of [youtube.com] (wow, that's boring to do) the Comedy Central clips? I think not. Go enjoy yourself some Colbert Report. [youtube.com]

I think a more likely case is that Comedy Central files a bunch of DMCA requests, and a bunch got taken down. But a "bunch" is hardly "all." And more will be uploaded. The DMCA is a deeply flawed tool (the mandatory takedown window even if you challenge the takedown is nothing less than an infringement of the first amendment), but in this case it's a copyright infringers friend. YouTube is not legally required to police for Comedy Centrals content, only to take content down when informed. Google (YouTube's new owner) has a very slow DMCA processing system (as someone whose used it, I can confirm this). So just don't worry about it. The total amont of infringing content may go down, and older stuff might be harder to find, but there will be lots of Comedy Central on YouTube for a long time.

YouTube sold me on both the Daily Show and Colbert

The reason that YouTube is such a good venue for the Daily Show and Colbert is that you can search clips from the shows by subject. You can't do that in iTunes. The other problem with using iTunes for all TV content is that a daily 20-minute show is not worth the same amount of money as an episode of Studio 60 or Battlestar Galactica. Charge 50 cents per episode and iTunes would probably increase its revenue, especially now that YouTube is dead. That is, dead beyond sharing baby videos and promoting Chinese lip-syncers.

Re:What happened to "safe harbor"?

If you RTFA "I received a couple of emails from YouTube this afternoon (see below) notifying me that a third party (probably attorneys for Comedy Central) had made a DMCA request to take down Colbert Report and Daily Show clips.". There is no mention whatsoever of a lawsuit.

Re:What happened to "safe harbor"?

"...as long as google removes any content when requested by the copyright holder, they are safe legally..."

This is the part I don't get. Comedy Central [comedycentral.com] itself links to Daily Show [comedycentral.com] and Colbert Report [comedycentral.com] clips on Youtube. So who, then, issued the DMCA requests, and why didn't they let the webmaster know?

This makes no sense.