Comedy Central clips (but not whole episodes) are back on YouTube

E! Online has the story...Comedy Central seems to have asked YouTube to remove full episodes of its shows (presumably posted in 10-minute chunks, to comply with YouTube restrictions), but is OK with leaving the clips up. And a business deal between Comedy Central (or Viacom, its parent company) and YouTube may be forthcoming. From E!:

Comedy Central sells episodes of many of its top shows, including The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, for $1.99 a pop via Apple's iTunes Store.

In a statement Monday, Viacom clarified that it was trying to strike a balance between protecting its content and pleasing its audience.

"Like our peers in the media industry, we are focused on finding the right business model for professionally created content to be legally distributed on the Internet," the statement read.

"We want our audiences to be able to access our programming on every platform and we're interested in having it live on all forms of distribution in ways that protect our talented artists, our loyal customers and our passionate audiences."

There's also a piece in the Red Herring.