YouTube cleaning up its act+some free advice

Content owners don't get that kind of control because they are guaranteed to abuse it.

Say Cheney goes off the deep end on Meet the Press. It's a story with massive political implications. You upload a specific exchange to YouTube which falls well within fair use criteria: non-profit, in the public interest, and a reasonably small sample of the whole work. Gong. NBC will knock it down. They'd pray for that kind of control, because they wouldn't have to argue their case when they do something that goes too far. There must be a disinterested party involved in these situations, and today, they're the ones wearing black robes.

So, okay. The Lazy Sunday thing was a copyright violation. The increased audience that NBC received for the work doesn't excuse that. But fair use rights do exist, and they are not subject to whims of the rightsholder. Let them flag content for immediate review by a third party? Sure. Let them delete content unilaterally? Never.

Well, there's the abuse thing, and there's the fact that in the case of SNL NBC's legal department was demanding the removal of content that had been uploaded by NBC's PR department. Maybe a requirement that your corporate left hand know what your corporate right hand is doing before you fire off the legal nastygrams would be good...

If youtube starts checking anything (which would include nbc/abc) they become responsible for everything - I don't think they want that kind of responsibility. Imagine the lawsuits that could follow...