In a move that's deeply irritating some of the channel's biggest fans, clips from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and South Park have been removed from YouTube today following a DMCA from Viacom's Comedy Central. Searching for the shows will still yield results, but clicking through to watch the clips results in the message "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation" or "This video has been removed due to copyright infringement". The news first appeared on Newscloud.
Comedy Central owns some of the most popular content on YouTube, and video sharing sites have driven a massive amount of interest in the shows. The hosts will most likely be unhappy about the move: Jon Stewart said in an interview in 2005: "Getting it off the Internet is no different than getting it off TV", while Colbert plays up to the YouTube audience, even demanding his cut of the money when the Google-YouTube acquisition occurred earlier this month. South Park's recent World of Warcraft episode, meanwhile, felt like it had been produced with the online audience in mind.