C-SPAN Releases Statement About Colbert Videos

Posted on May 9, 2006

C-SPAN has released a statement regarding the very popular videos of Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner. The speech ignited a blogstorm that we have been covering for the past week. The videos were viewed over 500,000 times while they were on YouTube.com -- before C-SPAN asked YouTube to remove them. C-SPAN says the videos can be viewed for free on c-span.org. The videos were also placed on Google Video.

In response to the significant interest in this event, C-SPAN also entered into a non-exclusive arrangement with Google Video in order to increase the Colbert event's free availability. We worked with Google because they agreed to post both dinner segments in their entirety with links to c-span.org.

The statement also includes a paragraph about why they asked YouTube to remove the videos.

We asked Web sites to remove the Colbert video when they posted it without our permission and we will continue to do the same with other Web sites who violate our copyright. It is important for online video providers to understand that C-SPAN-produced programming is protected by copyright in the same way that the video of any other news network is protected. Our goal in enforcing our copyright has been and continues to be to ensure that C-SPAN's reputation for unbiased coverage of the political process is maintained.

As of this writing Colbert still holds the second and third top search terms on Technorati. He has been passed by David Blaine. A Colbert search generates over 45,000 English language posts -- many of these posts have been made over the past eight days. And the Thank You Stephen Colbert page now has over 54,000 thank yous as well as thank you map powered by Frappr.