A few days after YouTube
yanked a bunch of copyright-infringing clips at the request of Viacom-owned Comedy Central, Adweek reports that
the two companies are getting chummy, and YouTube has reposted an unspecified number of the offending videos. Quoth a Viacom rep: "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." Viacom hasn't yet entered a licensing agreement with YouTube, as other companies including CBS, NBC, and a few major record companies have. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. As I've
said before, video sharing (i.e. the kind people can embed in their web site or blog) is one of the most powerful promotional tools available to media companies right now, and ignoring that opportunity becomes more and more suicidal every day.
Tags: comedy central, ComedyCentral, copyright, google, viacom, youtube
