The nonprofit TV network demanded that popular video hosting sites Youtube and iFilm remove clips of Stephen Colbert’s roast of President Bush–because of alleged copyright infringement.

(Google Video made a deal with C-SPAN to host the video.)

N.Y. Times:

Stephen Colbert’s performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner nine days ago has already created a debate over politics, the press and humor. Now, a commercial rivalry has broken out over its rebroadcast.

On Wednesday, C-Span, the nonprofit network that first showed Mr. Colbert’s speech, wrote letters to the video sites YouTube.com and ifilm.com, demanding that the clips of the speech be taken off their Web sites. The action was a first for C-Span, whose prime-time schedule tends to feature events like Congressional hearings on auto fuel-economy standards.

“We have had other hot ? I hate to use that word ? videos that generated a lot of buzz,” said Rob Kennedy, executive vice president of C-Span, which was founded in 1979. “But this is the first time it has occurred since the advent of the video clipping sites.”

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