Viacom will sue bloggers who post unauthorized 'Daily Show' clips

March 03, 2010

Viacom will sue bloggers who post unauthorized 'Daily Show' clips

By Eriq Gardner

Hulu announced yesterday that Comedy Central was pulling "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" from the popular video website. The decision will impact the many downstream websites that have relied on Hulu's embedded player to gain access to these shows.

We checked in with Comedy Central to see whether it will now target websites and bloggers who post unauthorized clips from the show.

"Yes, we intend to do so," says PR rep Tony Fox. "My feeling is if (websites) are making money on our copyrighted content, then that is a problem."

Fox says bloggers are free to use Comedy Central's embedded player to post clips, but they'll be restricted to the network's choices. If the network chooses not to post a particular clip, a viewer would be out-of-bounds to post their own digital copy.

This is sure to be somewhat controversial. As others have pointed out, "Daily Show" relies extensively upon "fair use" to take content from other networks such as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC for nightly commentary. We expect that whenever Viacom files its first lawsuit against a blogger for an illegal video posting, this will trigger cries of hypocrisy from those who don't understand how copyright law allows Jon Stewart to show another network's clip but prevents bloggers from doing the same.