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Comments: 150 + -   YouTube Restores Comedy Central Clips on Thursday November 02 2006, @01:12PM

Posted by kdawson on Thursday November 02 2006, @01:12PM
from the i-want-my-TDS dept.
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ColinPL writes, "Though YouTube has removed Comedy Central clips, their corporate parent Viacom has confirmed that it wants to find some way to keep the clips available. Viacom has apparently given the green light for YouTube to put the material back up." Update: 11/02 20:49 GMT by Z : We received an email from DB Ferguson at the No Fact zone, letting us know things are a little more muddled than we might otherwise prefer. "This letter contains a link to Jeff's Idealog post where he had evidence that even more clips are disappearing, and I have copies of two Cease and Desist letters that were sent yesterday night from YouTube. The purge continues, despite the news reports that it has stopped or that videos are being put back in."
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  • A good start... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by grub (11606) <slashdot@grub.net> on Thursday November 02 2006, @01:13PM (#16690599) Homepage Journal

    Comedy Central's clips are a start. A more serious matter is the misuse of the DMCA in efforts to stifle criticism.

    An offshoot of the Scientology cult known as The Landmark Forum is using the DMCA against YouTube, Google and The Internet Archive because of a scathing French documentary about Landmark being shared on those sites. It aired in France to 1.5 million people, a month later Landmark pulled out of France. Story at the EFF's site [eff.org] and other news sources.

    The video with English subtitles is available via BitTorrent at PirateBay [thepiratebay.org], search eMule for "Inside Landmark Forum" or view it online at DailyMotion [dailymotion.com].

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by DocSavage64109 (799754)
      I don't see why we should spend time educating ourselves on some cult very few have ever heard of when the cults of Christianity and Islam are everywhere and are significantly more powerful.
      • Because Scientologists are everywhere now. Their "religion" allows you to lie if you feel you are justified, without consequence. They avoid paying taxes, they brainwash themselves and others, they use pyramid schemes to make their money, they suppress freedom of thought and action that doesn't benefit the church, they trap their own practitioners and build files for blackmail on them through their own version of confession called auditing, they are required to shun anyone that disagrees with their religi

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by chuck (477)

          They avoid paying taxes,

          Now you've got my attention. Where can I sign up for their newsletter?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nofx_3 (40519)
          They avoid paying taxes, they brainwash themselves and others, they use pyramid schemes to make their money, they suppress freedom of thought and action that doesn't benefit the church
           
          Wait, so how does this differ from Christianity/Judaism/Islam?

          -Kap
      • Chritianity is the following of christ works. this by itself is not a cult.

        Some relgion have turned there version of christinity into a cult.

        For example, If a catholic was to marry a non catholic, the churge could(but wouldn't) disallow you from attending service, but they don't send people to attack your spouse. They also don't tell you not to talk to your family anymore, and you dn't have to pay a dime to attend there service. Yes, they willask for a donation, but you don't ahve to give and you can still
      • Insightful? Troll is more like it.

        Scientology harrasses and/or kills anyone that is not a member of scientology. Unlike killings supposedly done in the name of Christianity, Ron L. Hubbards notes to his followers [planetkc.com] explicitly tells them to lie, cheat, steal, and kill!

        Anyone who actually reads the Bible will find, "Thou shalt not kill", "Thou shalt not steal", etc, etc.

        Lastly, remember the Xenu (sp?) spat with Slashdot a few years ago? How they fired off a Cease and Desist because a user posted their "copyrigh
        • I consider all of the miracles in the bible to be lies (or incorrectly attributed natural events) along with all of the references to god. I would also assume that many in the Church of Scientology are just as firm in their beliefs as you are in yours.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by 2short (466733)

            Give me a literal interpretation of this then:

            "thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them."

            Hint: It isn't the Qur'an
      • Christianity and Islam never sued anyone for copyright infringement.
    • An offshoot of the Scientology cult known as The Landmark Forum is using the DMCA against YouTube, Google and The Internet Archive because of a scathing French documentary about Landmark being shared on those sites.

      On what basis? They aren't the copyright owner, nor are they the appointed representatives of the copyright owner. Until and unless the French documentary makers complain, what case do they have?

    • Um. I'm hardly a cultist, and Landmark is hardly a cult. I've done 3 seminars with them over the years, for a net of about $1500 for 10 days of group work. It was by far the best money I've spent in my life. It's not for everyone, and there are unsavory aspects to the viral propagation that Landmark (and virtually all seminar-type self-help and training programs) use, but none of it is mandatory or dangerous.

      I took my classes, got what I got out of it, and stopped. No one hassled me about it. No one c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by frenchs (42465)
      As much as I see the similarities in Landmark and CoS, I don't think it's accurate to say that Landmark is an offshoot of Scientology.

      I actually had a roommate a few years back that got sucked into Landmark. Turned him from a very cool guy, to a very weird guy.
      • Thanks to you and GP for the links. I have a friend who got involved in this and tried to suck us in. Now she's disassociated herself with anyone in her life that doesn't walk the Landmark walk. It's sad really as it's taken over her life and probably a good portion of her retirement funds.

  • Colbert Report (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AKAImBatman (238306) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday November 02 2006, @01:14PM (#16690623) Homepage Journal
    If this video from Stephen Colbert [youtube.com] is any indication, then Comedy Central may have felt different about the clips than Viacom did. Based on my observations of the situation, the YouTube clips were generating a lot of free advertisement for Comedy Central. Especailly some of their news commentary, which is quite good despite the humor. For myself, I had no inkling of Comedy Central's news commentary until I bumped across Jon Stewart's commentary on Internet Tubes [youtube.com]. Their followup with Senator McCain [youtube.com] was brilliant, and John Hodgman's analysis was an example of razor sharp wit. (And hey, you've got to love the, "I'm a PC" [youtube.com] bit.)

    Had it not been for YouTube, I never would have found out about Comedy Central. I'd start tuning in, but I've disconnected my cable. Yet I recently noticed that Jon Stewart's show is up on iTunes. Hmmm..... ;)
    • All of this week's full episodes are on comedy central's own site [comedycentral.com]. I got the impression they told youtube to remove the videos so they could test demand on their own site.
    • Ten years from now, when every PHB who spent a decade trying to prevent people from sharing culture with each other has seen the light and starts issuing press releases about how they've discovered that filesharing is a cost-effective loss leader, etc.

      Meanwhile I suppose the geeks will begging the corporate & government tag-team to "allow" things like GNURadio, spectrum sharing, etc. And the beat goes on...
      • I disconnected my cable because I'm tired of paying Comcat megabucks for a service I barely use. Everything I want to watch is on iTunes. I can get ala carte content cheaper, faster, and on my own schedule. If anything, I'm watching more TV than I watched when I had cable. No more worrying about when a show is on. Especially if you just want to test the waters by checking out the first episode or two. That's not possible on cable. (Yes, you can time shift with a VCR or PVR, but you have to remember to setup
          • Where did he say that his computer has a 4 inch screen?
          • I don't know about him, but I watch it on one of the following.

            my 18"LCD
            my 19" CRT
            or my new 23" widescreen LCD.

            at the resolution supported it's as good as regular lo def TV. so nothing spectacular for the wide screen, but as good as regular TV.

          • How is that working out though, watching your entertainment on a 4" screen?

            I thought you said this was a legit question?

            Oh well, just to clarify: My computer was already my television. I've been using a TV Tuner card to combine the two into a single display. (Saves a lot of space, as you might imagine.) It has provided a lot of advantages, including the ability to use my PC as a PVR.

            With iTunes, my viewing experience has actually improved. The quality is better than a PVRed show (even at max quality; which

      • Here's the Daily Show Clip [youtube.com]

        This is exactly the sort of coverage that makes Daily Show and You Tube important to our political process. Instead of Kerry's odd responses, I think this clip should be forwarded to anyone spouting off about how "offended" they were.
      • I've always liked Comedy Central, and them taking this stance really hits home that they want to keep in touch with their target demographic. If other Corps. started doing this, and releasing the strangle-hold on clips on Youtube, I might consider watching more of their programming as well.

        I notice that CBS is all over YouTube: they post clips, trailers, and so on, for their shows, under the member name CBS (age: 78).

        Of course, this doesn't tell us what they do when other people post things from their sho

  • I wonder.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SkankinMonkey (528381)
    if this has anything to do with Steven Colbert's veiled attack against Viacom on his show last night?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by garcia (6573)
      if this has anything to do with Steven Colbert's veiled attack against Viacom on his show last night?

      "veiled attacks" on The Report mean great things for everyone who's being attacked. If anything, the major media outlets are beginning to realize that Internet content distribution is nothing but great for all parties involved.

      I'm sure it has something to do w/the money that they see with Google floating in the background but that's for another story...
  • This is great PR for Comedy Central. I wonder if their ratings will go up.
    • Actually it's part of a pattern and I'm glad they're continuing it. Anyone else remember back in the 90's when Fox was going around agressively handing out Cease and Desist orders to anyone on the web hosting any kind of Simpsons related material? Meanwhile Comedy Central welcomed people to its material and freely let them host, download or share pretty much anything they wanted. I think this helped greatly with channel's overall popularity and acceptance in the web community.

      And as for FauxH^H^H^H^ Fox
  • I'm glad my rights to watch Comedy Central on the net have been restored. Yet another defeat for the fascist anti-Comedy police state. Free at last.

  • Think twice before you react (Score:3, Insightful)

    by no_pets (881013) on Thursday November 02 2006, @01:32PM (#16690899)
    Perhaps YouTube should have made an example of Viacom and not restored the clips on their own. This would be useful in making future requests from other parties think twice before requesting clips be pulled.

    YouTube could have just told Viacom that the clips were pulled and that Viacom were free to upload them again assuming they specified that it was okay for the clips to be made available.
    • Right. And the next time Viacom found some of their content on YouTube, they'd file an expensive lawsuit instead of sending a polite takedown request letter. Somehow I don't think Google/YouTube really wants to go out of their way to piss off content owners, however much their customers might wish they did.
  • For now, at least, the clips are back--even the long ones, so get your Colbert fix on before Viacom has another change of heart.

    Does all this mean that Youtube never 'really' deletes any clip a user deletes?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by iabervon (1971)
      They probably really delete clips that the users delete, but only disable clips they're requested to take down, in case it turns out that the entity requesting it doesn't have the authority or something.
  • ... is the sound of Comedy Central's head leaving it's corporate sphincter [wikipedia.org]. Now if only if the rest of the sountrack was "Constipation Blues" [datacomm.ch] by Screamin' Jay Hawkins, my day would be complete.
  • Viacom is the parent company of Comedy Central, not YouTube (owned by Google), as the grammatical error in the summary implies.

  • Any publicity is good publicity (Score:3, Informative)

    by kabz (770151) on Thursday November 02 2006, @01:55PM (#16691321) Homepage Journal
    What next? Microsoft releases hax0r4d Vista to Pirate Bay?

    It looks to me like Comedy Central subscribe to the axiom 'any usage is good usage'. ;-)

  • CC gets it! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Thursday November 02 2006, @01:56PM (#16691345) Homepage Journal
    When it comes to stuff like "The Daily Show" or "Colbert," these are programs that get shown once, rerun once, and then are mostly never seen again purely because of the topical nature of the shows. This isn't the sort of thing that fills out a DVD box all that well, they aren't really going to continue to profit directly from the old content once it's been and gone. This is why clips that get "youtubed" or rerun by CC on their own site and occasional "best ofs," are really the only way for people to continue to dig the old clips and drum up enthusiasm for the next episodes.

    CC has realized that either they work the "best of" angle solely on their own site, with however much manpower and costs that would entail, or let the fans do it themselves on YouTube. With YouTube, not only do they not deal with the workload, but the fans themselves are in charge of what is or isn't a "greatest hit." That's as it should be, and something that the content producers rarely if ever get right, since all they'd have to go on are surveys, focus groups, and other troublesome hit-or-miss schemes.

    1. Let the fans do the work of hyping up the shows.
    2. More hype = more audience for the next ones. There are no ???s.
    3. Profit!
      • Because more hype created by the clips on YouTube also creates more audience for the next ones on TV or iTunes. This doesn't concern the full episodes people upload to YouTube, it's about the shorter clips from the show.

        From TFA: Numerous short clips did remain available on the site, fueling speculation that Viacom was only concerned about longer clips.
  • Run over here doggie. Now run over here. Good doggie!! Now pay me.
  • I'm pleased to hear the Comedy Central stuff will be reappearing on GoogTube. Comedy Central has clips available on their own Web site, but the player is absolute crap. I never got it to work. YouTube's works, so this is a happy thing.

    Schwab

  • I think the ArsTechnica report is wrong (Score:3, Interesting)

    by reifman (786887) * on Thursday November 02 2006, @02:26PM (#16691893) Homepage
    There was another bigger purge last night: 78% of Daily Show Clips Missing from YouTube [idealog.us] I wrote a script to analyze this ... Of 897 Daily Show videos on YouTube sampled, 699 were missing or broken. That's nearly 78% of Daily Show videos now taken down for alleged copyright infringement without any regard for fair use from what I can tell. More commentary on the week's events here: Truthiness is scarce at Viacom and YouTube this week [newscloud.com]
  • I'm not surprised that they decided to make them available again. I'm surprised, though that they didn't leave them off YouTube and instead put them up officially on Google Video. I'd guess they have better encodings of their videos than are on youtube (at least based on how the copies of Weird Al's videos that he put up himself are so much better than the copies put up by other people). And if they put it on Google Video, they could probably work out a deal similar to this one [slashdot.org] and get some of the revenue f
  • Youtube seems to be down.

    here [utube.com]
  • I just noticed yesterday that comedycentral.com has redone their entire web site, so that it now actually works. I even got several of my browsers to give me URLs for their clips.

    So it's now not necessary to have them on sites like youtube. They finally wised up and realized that their idiotic site mis-design was driving people away to the copycat sites, and losing them all the eyes that they were obviously trying to get looking at their ads.

    This is a disappointment in some circles, actually. Namely, the
  • I saw in the news a company named Utube that is or is considering suing YouTube to "force YouTube to change its name or to get YouTube to help us find a new domain name", so I heard in the news.

    One would think that companies with conflicting names would have an arbiter or someplace to submit their name so that a heuristic or some-such program would be Google-like and display as screen saying:

    "Your request is remarkably similar to the name of a valid company that is receiving an extraordinary number of of ir

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by revery (456516)
      1. Threaten to sue YouTube if they don't remove your materials from their database.
      2. Offer money to YouTube to restore your materials to their database.
      3. ???
      4. Profit!

      I think Viacom is banking on the fact that there is no step 3.

    • No, not just full episodes, an interview with Eleanor Holmes Norton [youtube.com] was pulled which is a shame, because it was one of the best bits of Colbert and I was just telling a friend of mine that he should watch it.... Hopefully they will restore that - if anything can sell Colbert Report, its that clip.

      -Em
    • According to some videos I saw on YouTube (can't find the link right now), it looked like only clips over 5 minutes were pulled.
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