The much-blogged video of Stephen Colbert's searing presidential roast was yanked from popular video-sharing site YouTube this week, after CSPAN complained of copyright infringement.
Today, I learned that the clip has now popped up on Google Video — evidently, with CSPAN's consent. Huh? This makes no sense.
I asked Google for an explanation, and a spokesperson replied to BoingBoing:
Google Video enables content providers of all sizes to submit videos to
Google Video, as long as the user owns the necessary rights (including
copyrights, trademarks, rights of publicity, and any other relevant rights
for the user's content). This is the case with the "Colbert Roasts
President Bush – 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner" on Google Video.
Google is always interested in making relevant content available to users –
in line with our mission to make all of the world's information universally
accessible.Like other content providers we work with, C-SPAN wanted to be able to air
its content in its complete context and in line with their copyright
policies. Google Video allows upload of all content that meets our stated
polices – regardless of length – and that made the availability of this
particular segment possible.
Link to copy on Google Video (Thanks, Glenn Otis Brown!). It's still available all over the place on blogs, USENET groups, and via BitTorrent (all of those methods = without permission), and via CSPAN's own website. I still don't understand why CSPAN won't let YouTube users upload copies to that service, but it does appear to be well within their rights to make that decision.
Previously:
– Why was Colbert press corps video removed from YouTube?
