What large multimedia corporations can't seem to grasp.

Or they do grasp it, and just don't care. I, for one, think Sheriff Andy would be profoundly disappointed.

Reason Magazine - Hit & Run > CBS Nixes Mayberry Civics Lesson:

"Last January, I posted a YouTube clip taken from The Andy Griffith Show. It was a charming bit where Sheriff Taylor explains to Opie that it's illegal to eavesdrop on conversations between criminal defendants and their lawyers, and how in a free society any conviction resulting from such tactics does more harm than good.

The clip has since been pulled from YouTube after complaints from CBS Broadcasting.

I see this as a huge problem with copyright law. The Mayberry video wasn't posted so users could 'steal' clips from the Andy Griffith Show that they otherwise would have purchased. Its presence on YouTube wasn't going to prevent anyone who would have otherwise bought the DVD of the show from doing so. Rather, it was posted to make a political point; either to allude to a time when civil liberties were more than mere formalities, or to poke fun of those naive enough to actually believe what Andy Taylor was lecturing Opie about.

I'd argue that a pretty substantial portion of the copyrighted material uploaded to YouTube serves the same or a similar purpose. It's splicing together clips from different sources, excerpting clips, or otherwise mashing different forms of media to make a point. That point can be something grand as the wholesale erosion of our civil liberties, or something a bit more mundane, like the fact that Carlos Mencia steals his jokes."

Speaking of joke-thief Mencia, here you can watch him steal from the late Sam Kinison...



...and incredibly, Bill Cosby Himself.