Stephen Colbert, YouTube, C-SPAN, and Fox News

A few days ago, Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report spoke at the 92nd Annual White House Correspondents' Dinner Dinner, and no one was safe. In case you missed it, here's the clip, because no one watches C-SPAN.

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Of course the facist pigs at Fox News took offense. Colbert attacked the President! Oh no! The sky is falling! He must be stopped! Here's a clip from Fox and Friends, Fox's morning show.

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Initially, I found these clips over at crooksandliars.com (where you can download the Colbert clip, and keep it), and I wanted to post the nice embedded clips in my blog. So I check Google video with no luck, just 1 clip from The Colbert Report. So next I tried YouTube (not even remebering that MySpace has videos), and discovered something very strange. Running a search for Colbert, I discovered 15 pages of clips, mostly from The Colbert Report, and a few from the dinner. Trouble is, all clips from the dinner were removed due to "copyright infringement," but all Colbert Report clips were still up. Now, what is going on here? Is YouTube a bunch of facist pigs censoring anti-Bush comedy? Interesting, it's no secret that C-SPAN (the network who aired the dinner) protects their intellectual property, but they are non-profit. Comedy Central is for-profit, but those clips are readily available. C-SPAN is also streaming the entire dinner, for free at thier website. So what's the harm in someone putting a clip on YouTube?

Ultimately, I'm wrong because it's a copyright issue. Likely C-SPAN contacted YouTube and told them to take down any C-SPAN realated links, and Comedy Central has not. But my feeling is, C-SPAN isn't selling the clip (yet, they probably will in the future), so what's the harm in putting a less than broadcast quality clip (not even the whole dinner) on a website? The issue does change if C-SPAN was selling the clip, but they are not.

I decree that YouTube is an establishment of The Man, to be avoided at all costs; C-SPAN is only good for live House & Senate (C-SPAN 2) coverage, and is to be avoided if they show anything else; Fox News is only good is you want to know what the neo-cons are thinking; and Stephen Colbert is to have 200 ft. tall platinum statues placed every major metropolitan area, as he is just that awesome.