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CBSNews.com replacing clips on YouTube

Posted by Cory Bergman on March 8, 2007

This from CBSNews.com SVP/GM Betsy Morgan, speaking at the Online Publishers Association conference: “We’ve got a team of lawyers that goes through pirated CBS News videos on YouTube and calls up YouTube every day and says ‘you’ve got to take down these clips’. Every pirated 60 Minutes clip that goes up on YouTube, we’re putting up the authentic, authorized version of that clip. We’re sensitive. If we’re going to take down that illegal video, we are certainly going to give you the experience of that piece [by supplying a new clip] and often the quality is considerably better.” Morgan said CBSNews.com has been focused on providing video to its syndicated partners without worrying if it will cannibalize visitors to the main site.

  • http://www.insignificantthoughts.com Vinny

    Color me stunned!!! CBS actually has an enlightened worldview when it comes to YouTube!

    Now if only parent company Viacom was that “enlightened.”

    It’s a start. A damned good start. I can’t wait for more.

    WOW…

    (/end gushing)

  • http://www.lostremote.com Safran

    OK, I think it’s fine that they’re allowing clips on YouTube. It’s even fine they’re replacing the clips with better-quality clips. (Unnecessary, but fine.)

    But why are they paying lawyers to find pirated video they are then going to replace? Isn’t this work usually given to interns?

    They need to pay an attorney to do a YouTube search and write a cease and desist letter — just so they can replace the video with something of marginally better quality?

    Seriously – what am I missing?

  • Steve

    I don’t think it’s going to be very long before CBS or whoever can submit an “official” clip to YouTube and Google automatically searches for pirated files that have the same audio or video and deletes them.

  • Dan

    What you’re missing, Safran, is that in the near future Google will begin monetizing video clips on YouTube by integrating some sort of advertising (not pre-roll, I hope). CBS, like any content owner, wants to make sure that it is the one who shares that revenue with Google, not some guy named Jimmy from Toledo who pirated the clip and posted it on YouTube.

    That seems perfectly reasonable–CBS owns the copyright to that content, so they are entitled to be compensated for it, not someone else. Compared to Viacom, NBCU, and News Corp (FOX)–who are either suing Google or refusing to participate in YouTube and starting their own video site–CBS is taking a very enlightened and lenient approach, in my mind.

    The whole thing about the official clip being of better quality isn’t CBS’s motive. It’s just their way of saying to the YouTube community “Hey, don’t be mad at us, we’re not like Viacom and removing all our copyrighted content from YouTube–if anything, we’re actually improving the YouTube experience a little by providing the same clips with better quality ones.

    Vinny, FYI Viacom is no longer the parent company of CBS. They split over a year ago and are now independent companies.

    Steve, that technology pretty much already exists, I think. In fact, that’s one of the main reasons Viacom is suing Google. Their argument is that YouTube should be proactively preventing pirated material from being posted on the site, instead of making copyright holders waste resources constantly searching YouTube for their content.

    Don’t know why I just wrote all that since this is an old post and probably nobody will ever read it…oh well!

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