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!

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?

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)