A co-worker of mine noticed that YouTube has removed some copyrighted videos from their website (including Natalie Portman’s Rap SNL short). But, we noticed that several other potentially copyrighted materials of the same sort are not removed, like Natalie Portman on the Inside Actor’s Studio. Since then, the Natalie rap short has been uploaded again by another user. It’ll probably be a game of whack-a-mole as YouTube tries to please the copyright holders while keeping the users at bay.
Is this the beginning of the end for the free exchange of videos over these web 2.0 sites? I still get my daily fix of short clips from the Simpsons and Family Guy from Google Video and other similar video services. Will YouTube start being a copyright police as it gets larger? I surely hope not.