YouTube Kicks Gawker Media Off The Island
Feb 13th, 2007 | By James Lewin | Category: Digital Video Downloads, Strange, Streaming Video 
CNET News reports that YouTube has removed videos posted to the site by blogging firm Gawker Media, many of which featured clips from top TV shows that appeared between advertisements for Gawker’s blogs.
More than 50 clips were removed, and the YouTube user account “belowtheradar,” employed by Gawker to post the videos was deactivated sometime over the weekend, according to Lockhart Steele, Gawker Media’s managing editor.
Some copyright owners said that Gawker was using their material without permission. Entertainment lawyers predicted that Gawker would have a hard time justifying the use of copyright material to promote its Web sites. Since October, the company has posted clips from such shows as The Colbert Report and Good Morning America at YouTube. The videos were also embedded on Gawker’s blogs.
Gawker Media is a publisher of several popular gossip blogs, including Valleywag, which covers Silicon Valley,  Gawker, which focuses on New York City gossip, and Fleshbot, a blog about sex and pornography.
I’m hoping YouTube continues to take a solid stance on this. I’m a big YouTube fan, and don’t want it taken over by these ads.
I’ve been reading Media 3.0, which talks about where the media-universe is headed. They seem to think this is just the tip of the iceberg for “bootleggers bootlegging bootleggers” for advertising purposes.
We’ll see. Hopefully, YouTube will protect their site. But, what about legitimate in-video advertising? It can’t be far off. Hopefully, it won’t be too offensive.
– Becca