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We Suspect that this Film was Secretly Financed by the Exploding Fake Blood Packet Industry

Matt Baume — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 12:00:07 GMT

Ho hum. The outside-of-Tahoe location looks pretty, at least. And WTF is up with Atom's videoplayer not letting you fast-forward? Those four minutes of stewing just gave us extra time to think up unpleasant things to write. Oh, speaking of:

Depressingly, this is yet another reminder of the inevitable upcoming Web 2.0 bust -- instead of intruding on the Superbowl, this time the lavishly overproduced videos are attacking from within the very Internet. Oh sure, you can lock the doors and unplug the DSL, but the free-market forces can still chainsaw their way in, just like the last time. Again we find ourselves wondering: how long before the money-people (in this case, Viacom) realize just what they're paying for?

Uploading Jon Stewart And Stephen Colbert Depositions

rita — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 12:42:18 GMT

Here's a Moment Of Zen for you: local company YouTube has indicated (.pdf) in the copyright infringement lawsuit filed against it by Viacom that it intends to call fake news hosts Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert to testify in pre-trial depositions about uploaded clips from their Comedy Central shows (Comedy Central is owned by Viacom). Do you swear that your testimony is the truthiness, the whole truthiness, and nothing but the truthiness?

It's unclear what evidence Stewart and Colbert would provide in the litigation, exactly -- it's not like either celeb's got the ability to say what Viacom allows or doesn't allow to be uploaded onto YouTube, and it's not like it's going to help YouTube for Stephen Colbert to Better Know A District (Court), but we're at least looking forward to all the bad jokes that Jon and Stephen will be making about this for the rest of the week (when they're not mocking Karl Rove, that is).

Picture from the Stewart/Colbert '08 website.

We're Fans of Fans

Matt Baume — Wed, 16 May 2007 11:46:39 GMT

There's only one thing better than absorbing nerdy cultural texts, and that's becoming a nerdy cultural text of your own. Voting on the

First Viacom didn't want its stuff on YouTube. Then it did. Now, once again, it doesn't. So some poor schmos at YouTube are looking at missing the Super Bowl as they have to pull clips from Viacom shows. The guesstimate for the amount of clips on there is about 100,000.

Viacom is, of course, one of the biggest media entities out there, owner of MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central among others. MTV has its own licensing deal with YouTube so it won't be affected (oh boy) but the biggest hurt will be the pulling of clips from South Park," "the Colbert Report," and the mighty "Daily Show." The fact that a lot of people probably watch clips of "Colbert "or "The Daily Show" just online or the prevalence of clips from both shows being all over the internet probably doesn't mean that much to the suits who run the company but our guess is that both of those shows gain popularity and importance because of it. That's why it doesn't make that much sense to kick them off. Even Jon Stewart seems to get it. Besides, how are we going to post hilarious bits from either show?

Of course, this could all be because Viacom wants to create its own version of YouTube. While all the other companies probably dream the same thing, most of them have made their peace with YouTube and have swung some sort of deal with them. Which makes what Viacom is doing that much crazier.

Oh, in honor of it all, here's a great bit from "The Daily Show" featuring the poetry of Dick Cheney. We love Jon's Cheney imitation.

Ganging Up on GooTube

Jon — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 11:11:09 GMT

So here's how the story goes: plucky, fresh-faced tech geeks put together some new web gizmo that quickly becomes one of those things everyone loves. Plucky, fresh-faced tech geeks quickly make a lot of money for doing something that doesn't make a lot of money, but is based on their potential for money. But since plucky, fresh-faced tech geeks run the company themselves with no affiliation to any of the Big Boys, Big Boys slowly lick their chops and move in for the kill, either by buying them out or by competing against them. Say goodbye to plucky, fresh-faced tech geeks and say hello to evil media conglomerate.

Why do we bring this up? Because it's happening to YouTube. Pissed that everyone is watching stuff on YouTube and not one scintilla of a cent of it is going to them, the major media companies are ganging together to gang up on the Tube. The amount of companies bounding together is actually pretty awe-inspiring: News Corp's Fox, Viacom Inc, CBS Corp and General Electric Co's NBC Universal. That's pretty much every TV network except ABC/Disney and a whole bunch of movie studios. Hell, if we were in charge of YouTube, we'd be a little flattered we had those guys going after us. Also a little scared.

What they want to do is create their own web site with all sorts of content on it. Plus a media player to go with it. This way they can figure out ways of cashing in all of this (read ads and monthly fees). Not to mention sue the dickens out of GooTube to keep their stuff from popping up on the site. Like the above video of the Ed Helms’ character singing "Rainbow Connection" in pig-latin to Pam on "the Office" (trust us-- it's brilliant and why aren’t you watching this show?). No word on what this will all mean for Lonely Girl.

Actually, there are skeptics out there who don't think this will work. YouTube has the brand name, a big company behind it, and the community and people on the Web like to stick with the underdog. On the other hand, most people are reading this on their PCs using Explorer while goofing off on finishing a report on Word or Excel. And you know who you are.

GooTube: Not Dead Yet

Jon — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:00:43 GMT

It looks like all those Comedy Central videos are back, well most of them, on YouTube as Viacom and Google worked something out. And so ends the battle that led to a thousand blogger rants.

So now the big question is what made Viacom stand down? Was it Stephen Colbert's mocking that did it (above)? Maybe it was the guy who posted an anti-Viacom rant on YouTube. Or maybe it was just a smart business decision-- in a way, having all those clips works as great free advertising.

Then again, it could also be that searching for things to sue about ain't easy. Not just because there's too many people involved in the legalities of it but because those crafty YouTube denizens are figuring out ways to hide from those pesky lawyers.

Anyways, there's another theory out there about why Viacom got bitchy for a few days, one slightly different than what was guessed at before. This theory has it that the problem was about ad-rolls that go in front of the occasional video clip on the official web sites. For instance, if you go to ESPN.com, you get about thirty seconds of ESPN gibberish before you see anything. Viacom wants people to see the ad rolls, YouTube doesn't. Along those lines, considering you can download all of their shows on iTunes, Viacom had to be thinking why give the milk out for free when they could charge a few bucks for it?

The bigger question behind it all is how will all of this stuff work in the future? After all, for all of YouTube's brilliance, the company ain't making money. And nobody's even sure it can make money. Oh, but who cares. Did you see the lego version of "Thriller?" It's awesome.

Is This the Beginning of the End For GooTube?

Jon — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:34:07 GMT

Remember back to the giddy days of Napster? Remember how everything could be found online and for free and everyone did nothing at work other than download their favorite songs? Remember how there was a feeling that as great as it was, it was not meant to be as it was just too gosh darn great and how when it all came to a crashing end (thanks, Lars), we all somehow knew it was inevitable?

Why are we bringing this up? Because YouTube is now running into problems. Sometime over the weekend, YouTube's new overlords, Google, took down clips from Viacom related shows. Big whoops, right? Wrong. The first things that were taken down were clips from Viacom owned Comedy Central. Which means we'll no longer be able to post clips from the "Daily Show" or "The Colbert Report" or "South Park". That sucks. There are still videos on there but not nearly as plentiful as there was before. And since they're all supposedly going down within days, no time like the present to show off the "South Park" episode that makes fun of us San Franciscans (see above).

Now, before you get all pitchfork and torch on Google, it's not really their fault. Now that Google has acquired YouTube and turned YouTube from cute little Web site to major armament of an Internet Power, they are more than ever a threat. And so Viacom, wanting to crush Google, wants their stuff down so their rival can't make money off of them.

All of which means that Viacom could do what Tom Cruise and Scientology could not-- stop "South Park"