After demanding that YouTube remove all of its copyrighted videos last week, Comedy Central has given YouTube the okay to continue hosting video of its TV shows.
YouTube replaced the clips that were taken down last week after getting the green light from Viacom yesterday. Viacom, Comedy Central’s corporate owner, wrote a letter to YouTube last week demanding that the site remove any videos containing its copyrighted content, which includes the Daily Show, the Colbert Report and South Park.
After some deliberation, however, Viacom reconsidered its position and said that it wants to adjust its business model to keep Comedy Central clips available to YouTube users. As the company doesn’t want all of the revenue from those clips to stay in YouTube’s coffer’s the whole debacle could result in a revenue-sharing deal like those YouTube has formed with Warner Music Group, Sony, Universal and CBS. A spokesperson for Viacom commented on the matter yesterday:
Like our peers in the media industry, we are focused on finding the right business model for professionally created content to be legally distributed on the Internet. We want our audiences to be able to access our programming on every platform and we’re interested in having it live on all forms of distribution in ways that protect our talented artists, our loyal customers and our passionate audiences.
Sites such as YouTube have been under fire of late as they struggle to find legitimacy in the online universe. The primary roadblocks for such sites is that while their operations are prone to copyright violation, media companies see the enormous opportunity for advertisement and growth that such online viewership poses. The result is a hailstorm of mixed opinion, as some companies seek reparations through lawsuit, and others seek to capitalize with partnerships and revenue-sharing.
Related Articles
YouTube Buddies Up With Warner, Dukes it Out With Universal
YouTube Clone Pays Cash for Clips
Untouchable YouTube Deletes 30,000 Videos
Google and YouTube Could Ink Deal This Afternoon
Warner Partners with Brightcove, Mimics YouTube
Google May Purchase YouTube for $1.6 Billion
Master Chief Meets John Cleese
YouTube Infiltrated by White House
YouTube to Feature Video from Universal, Sony, CBS
Universal Hammers YouTube Clones
*Originally published at TechFreep
Mike Zazaian is the Editor-in-Chief and Webmaster of TechFreep.com, an online publication dedicated to daily technology and science news. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he majored in Film and Video studies with a sub-concentration in screenwriting. While only a minority of Mike’s formal education encompassed the technology field, he has worked as a web developer, a freelance web designer, and has been a tech enthusiast for the better part of his life.
