The latest Conspiracy Theories and fodder in the blogosphere – The Great YouTube Purge of 2006

Stephen Colbert and Colbert Report fans are already going “underground” via fan sites and e-mails, spreading the news about YouTube videos that have yet to be yanked. HowardOwens.com has written some theory as to what is happening to the YouTube videos and why some are visible and some are not:

Possible explanations for the disconnect between what I’m seeing on YT and what the news reports are telling us:

• Google attorneys are studying the matter without further action
• The mass removal of video from YT is far more difficult than I can imagine (and I imagine it’s pretty damn easy, knowing what I know about web programming)
• Reifman jumped to an incorrect conclusion about the meaning of the e-mail [on NewsCloud.com], since it references only one specific video
• That specific video contained an interview with Steve Wozniak, and Wozniak or an associate didn’t want the video on YT, and that’s the mysterious third party involved here

Look, here’s the deal: YouTube did two searches for TCR videos, from what I can tell: “Colbert Report” and “Stephen Colbert”. It’s almost impossible to find a decent video with those two tags. However, many of the “saved” videos have obscure tags, or simply say “Funny” or “Comedy”. Those videos are much harder to find in the system. You pretty much have to know they are there. Those are the videos that have survived, and the videos that are circulating among fans.

Also, I’m not saying where, I’m just saying I’ve seen it (so as to protect the identity of the innocent), but Colbert fans are putting the videos right back up, but are using “code” tags, so that if you want to do searches you have to know the code tag. But once you are given a code by another Colbert fan (in a very stealthy manner, of course), you can find a bounty of videos.

I feel so dirty and shameful knowing these things. But fans have to do what fans have to go to get our Colbert Report fix. You made us addicted and took away our drug. Shame on you!

But, you say, Comedy Central has Motherload! Yes, they do, and I will give them credit – Motherload is MUCH better than it was even a couple of months ago, and it’s search engine is fairly thorough. However, as The Unreasonable Blog points out, there are quite a few down sides to Motherload:

1. You have tiny little videos that can’t be resized. It’s like watching TV from the next room through the keyhole of a closed door. [Note: You can make the videos full screen, but the quality isn't any better than YouTube. I'll give this one to Motherload]
2. You use javascript to launch a popup window. Therefore, I can’t send a link to my friends or put a link on my blog to direct people to the video highlight I want them to see.
3. Your popup window can’t be opened in a tab or resized. Give me control of my browser back.
4. Your popup window has an obnoxious background that I’m afraid is going to give me a seizure.
5. Next to your video, there’s an ad that’s bigger than the video. Firefox blocks it, but I can’t decide which is worse: the hole that remains in the background, or the background.
6. When I open a YouTube page, the video starts to play. Isn’t that cool? On your page, I sit and think about how much you suck while the video buffers. The video plays for about 3 seconds until it over-runs and starts buffering again. …and that’s with DSL. It must be completely useless at slower connection speeds.
7. With YouTube, I can embed the videos in my own website. When I visit a site I’m more likely to watch a video if its right there and I can just push play. You’re at least five years away from developing that technology.
8. YouTube’s search feature also works, conveniently allowing me to find what I’m looking for. At your site I end up looking through a list of videos. [Again, this works fairly well, and you can actually search for key words in the video description, which doesn't work in YouTube nearly as well. I'm giving this one to Motherload again.]

Please don’t get me wrong, I do understand why Viacom pulled the clips. The clips are technically their intellectual property, the “it’s great advertising” logic does not easily translate into Touch Data for marketing departments, and Comedy Central does technically have a competing video software. But it doesn’t change the fact that the YouTube videos are one of the reasons that Colbert fans are so rabid, and why so many of the classic Colbert sketches have gone viral. Psst … Comedy Central … let me tell you a little secret. MotherLoad videos can’t go viral. No embedding, you see.

Let’s face it, kids, we’re not getting YouTube back, no matter how hard we whine. All I ask is that some really big blog or newspaper find this story, either here or on the Web, and in response to the story explain to Comedy Central that without the ability to save clips as favorites or embed them into blogs, they have essentially destroyed the one tool that has made The Colbert Report the hot water-cooler talk commodity that it has become.

EDIT: HowardOwens.com called me out on the fact that searching for “Colbert Report” on YouTube finds 859 results, and searching for “Stephen Colbert” finds 1148 results, as of this posting. I really didn’t pull this fact completely out of thin air. When trying to figure out why certain videos were deleted while others were not, I looked at the videos in My YouTube Favorites and compared the ones that were deleted verses the videos that survived. The characteristic of almost all of the videos that were deleted (which I cannot see on my Favorites list, but which are still visible on my Playlists) is that they had a combination of “Stephen Colbert” or “Colbert Report” in their tags. I also noticed that many of the videos that survived often only had “colbert” or “funny” in the tags and none of them had the combination of “colbert report”

I also suppose I should have clarified what I meant by “decent.” I have a modest list of YouTube saved favorites – maybe about 50 or so, all of which involve Stephen Colbert in some way. The “Exit 57″ clips are still there, my “Strangers with Candy” clips are there (both also owned by Comedy Central, btw) but most of my TDS/TCR favorites have been deleted:

The Colbert Report

Charlene (I’m Right Behind You) – Gone
Filliam H. Muffman – Gone
Interview with Anderson Cooper – Gone

The Daily Show

Banana sketch – Gone
Ted Hitler – Gone
Responsible Drinking – Gone
Stephen as a pirate during the Toss – Gone
Olympic Ice Skating Scandal – Gone
I Know What You Did Last Summer Of The Shark – Gone
Wynona Ryder trial verdict – Gone
Red, Yellow, Blue, and Black Like Me – Gone
Pet Sedentary (Mr. Whiskers died from a blunt force trauma to the back of the head …) – Gone
Cruisin’ for a Boozin’ – Gone
Classic Colbert 5/1/06 (Newscasting School) – Gone

Now, there’s no denying that there are still tons of TDS/TCR clips out there. I mention that earlier in this post, and how the links to these videos are quickly being publicized “underground” between Colbert fans and in fandom communities. My point is that I had one idea of how videos were being purged (simple searches, then Cease and Decist letters coupled with mass deletion per Viacom legal department) whereas HowardOwens.com had another (only partial removal of clips as a negotiating tactic by Viacom). Since neither of us, I’m assuming, works for Viacom, it’s possible that either of these theories could be correct. I personally know multiple people who have received these Cease and Desist letters, and I can promise you it’s happening all over, and often, and with no discrimination. It seems to be that Viacom is trying awfully hard to pull all of the clips down, even if they haven’t done so already. People who are getting their clips pulled are getting ALL of their clips pulled, not just a select few.

I haven’t heard any word as to whether Viacom and YouTube are planning on purging even more clips. My point was that many of what I consider “decent” and “classic” are now gone from my Favorites list, and seem to be much harder to find. For example, if I do a search for the Colbert Banana sketch, and do a search for “Colbert Banana” I get 91 hits. Out of those 91, 1 is the actual video, and its tags are “Colbert Banana Charles”. But the one that I originally saved to my Favorites list, the one with 300,000+ views, is gone.

• Google vs. Viacom: The Summary Judgment Chronicles
• Stephen Colbert in the Zeitgeist – March 13, 2010
• Stephen Colbert in the Zeitgeist – March 3, 2010
• Please don’t sue us – An open letter to Tony Fox, PR rep for Viacom