The first time the video was the now infamous "Lazy Sunday" SNL video that spread across the internet like wildfire. NBC made YouTube take down the video to ensure they were the only ones providing the video online.
Now, as reported in a New York Times article, C-Span has made YouTube (and iFilm) take down the video clips of Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, which have been the subject of much controversy. They did this to provide the video themselves at c-span.org, and also to sell DVDs of the event. However, they also made a strange move:
And C-Span gave permission to Google Videos to carry the Colbert speech beginning Friday. The arrangement, which came with the stipulation that Google Videos provide the entire event and a clip of Mr. Bush's entire routine as well, is a one-time deal.Why would they make a deal with Google Video over YouTube? It made sense to take the video down from YouTube if C-Span was looking to profit from it themselves (through advertising and driving traffic to their site), but you simultaneously alienate the people who made the clips big in the first place. And how hard would it be for YouTube to make it apparent a video was taken down in the embedded player? I've always thought twice about embedding YouTube videos (not just because they can get taken down, but they can slow the page's load time), but it's ridiculous to see that several old posts now have dead embedded videos.
But Julie Supan, senior director for marketing at YouTube, said officials there were stung by C-Span's behavior, because, she said, the site had helped fuel momentum for the Colbert clip.
"This was an exciting moment for them in a viral, random way," she said. "To take it down from one site and uploading on another, it is perplexing."
She also noted that YouTube had tried to make a similar deal for the clip that Google Video eventually made. "Google will stop at nothing to try to win over the community," she said.
