C-SPAN Makes YouTube Remove Colbert Videos

Posted on May 4, 2006

The videos of Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner have been pulled from YouTube. The videos had been uploaded to YouTube in three parts because of YouTube's 10 minute rule. Now a message where each video used to be reads "This video has been removed due to copyright infringement."

CNET reports that C-SPAN, which owns the copyright to the videos, asked YouTube to remove them. The videos were insanely popular. YouTube told News.com that the videos were viewed over 500,000 times before they were removed.

On YouTube.com, the leading upload site that lets users showcase homemade videos, at least a half dozen clips of Colbert's performance were posted following the dinner. The video, first broadcast by C-SPAN, quickly generated enough traffic and comments to take up a position on both the Web site's most-viewed and most-discussed videos sections.

Combined, the various clips generated more than a half million viewings before YouTube removed them Wednesday at the request of C-SPAN, which said the airing of the video violated its copyright, according to Julie Supan, YouTube spokeswoman.

Technorati's most blogged YouTube videos list shows the Stephen Colbert videos at the top with hundreds of more blog posts discussing them then the next closest videos. It is not clear if the videos will return. They are going to be missed.