Okay so who hasn’t seen the pretty cool Lazy Sunday video (aka Chronicles of Narnia Rap) produced by those comedy guys Lonely Island? It has essentially taken the net by storm (even professors were telling me about it), and has demonstrated the potential positive effects of the viral effects of the Internet.

Well, NBC just doesn’t get it. Although YouTube has probably done wonders for NBC and SNL by hosting the clip with 5+ million views, NBC has decided that it just cannot go on. They sent a takedown notice this week to YouTube claiming infringement of copyright and prohibiting them from continuing to host it. Now my bet is that SNL and the Lonely Island people don’t think this is such a good idea (after all, Lonely Island released some great shows under Creative Commons licenses), but NBC seems to be adhering to an ever-increasingly outdated model of content lockdown, even when doing the opposite would be more advantageous in many respects.

NBC is allowing users to watch it on their site—but only Windows users can reliably access it. They also now want people to buy it on iTunes for $2. As BoingBoing so pointedly put in their post on the issue:

It took NBC a while to get the video there in the first place, and when the internet loves your work, it doesn’t
wait. That’s why NBC should be sending flowers and chocolates to YouTube, not love notes from lawyers.

The New York Times has even picked up the story, reporting on the lack of foresight of NBC in the move:

Several online commentators noted that NBC’s response to YouTube, while legally justified, may have been short-sighted. The online popularity of “Lazy Sunday” has been credited with reviving interest in “Saturday Night Live” at a time when it is in need of some buzz.

To quote the ever-so-eloquent BoingBoing, “NBC, you can’t have your cupcake and eat it, too.”

This entry was posted on Monday, February 20th, 2006 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Unreasonable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.