Unsought Input

Just last year I wrote a little bit about why YouTube works. Since then, two major things have happened: YouTube was bought by Google, and large copyright-holding corporations finally noticed it. The almost inevitable result? Billion-dollar lawsuits.

I’ll let The Daily Show explain the situation better than I can:

But really, who cares?  Two multi-billion dollar companies duking it out in court surely doesn’t effect you or I.  But there are at least two reasons why it does matter.

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It has taken five years and two wars, but finally, author Dinesh D’Souza has found the real cause of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.  Saddam Hussien?  Nope.  Lax airport security?  Sorry.  Osama bin Laden and the extreme religious conservatives who plotted and carried out the attacks?  Not so much.

The real culprit is gay marriage and Fear Factor.  D’Souza explained on the Colbert Report.

Now, some might say that advocating that we become more like the terrorists in order to avoid terrorist attacks is sort of like giving in.  But that’s just silly.  Let me explain why with a simple analogy everyone can understand :
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One of the most shameful facts about the United States of America has been in the news lately.  No, I’m not talking about the Iraq war, teen pregnancy, urban poverty, or even election fraud.  I’m talking about the fact that U.S. citizens who live in Washington DC have no Senators and no Congressmen.

DC has more people than Wyoming, and almost as many as Vermont.  So why are they treated like felons?  The problem, at least right now, is that a majority of DC residents are black.

Now, this isn’t old school Jim Crow racism; the real issue is that blacks tend to vote overwhelmingly for the democrats.  Giving DC the vote would be giving the Democrats two Senators and a member in the House.
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A few days ago news broke that Comedy Central had requested YouTube take down a bunch of video clips from their shows, including The Daily Show, South Park, and The Colbert Report. They have the right to do so under copyright law and the DMCA, of course, but the fact that they hadn’t bothered for such a long time made me think that maybe they understood why YoutTube works.

Did the takedown notice mean they didn’t get it after all? Were their lawyers just procrastinating? It looks like they do get it, after all - YouTube and Viacom have reached a licensing agreement.

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