Sunday, February 4, 2007

YouTube Takes Down Viacom Content

Search for “Colbert Report” at Google-owned YouTube, and clicking on the individual videos results in a bold red message: “This video has been removed due to copyright infringement.” That’s because, as San Francisco Chronicle writes:

YouTube ... has begun removing more than 100,000 unauthorized clips belonging to Viacom – everything from snippets of Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” to Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

The purge comes after Viacom demanded that YouTube take down the material, accusing the site of violating its copyrights. Viacom says it’s the largest order to delete videos it has ever made.

Because Google Video recently started to link to YouTube videos too in its results, it is also affected by this removal wave. Jason Schramm in the forum comments, “I am starting an effort to find the videos at other sites,” and Jim Moore replies:

Equally interesting is to identify the innocent videos that were taken down by Viacom. TopTenSources has a site up for those who have been victimized and want to mobilize. I am definitely in. My totally innocent – in fact, totally nothing – video was taken down, and it has become a real hassle getting it back up. In the meantime, I realized that my chip card containing the only other copy, was currupted... etc. etc. I don’t think I’m alone in this problem.

[Thanks Jason!]

YouTube Takes Down Viacom ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (7)

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