SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE - WILL NBC BUY WEBSITE IT LOOKED HORNS WITH?

For the second time in less than a month, NBC has demanded that the video website YouTube.com remove a skit from Saturday Night Live that had been uploaded to the website. The latest skit, featuring a rapping Natalie Portman, was reportedly uploaded onto YouTube moments after the show aired but was yanked as soon as YouTube received a demand to do so from NBC (however, not before the skit had already been downloaded thousands of times). Indeed, the website has been giving the network a ton of free publicity for its shows and has been garnering an equal amount of publicity as a result of the network's legal actions against it. (The website says that it always complies with requests for deletions when they come from copyright holders.) A column by Ben Charny in the online trade publication eWeek,speculated Wednesday that NBC might very well decide to buy YouTube, indicating that an NBC spokesperson had suggested as much during a recent interview.

09/03/2006