TVSquad

I recently linked to a comedic short featuring Will Ferrell and Adam McKay (Anchorman, Talladega Nights). The short comes from FunnyorDie.com, a new comedy video site from Ferrell and McKay's production company, Gary Sanchez Productions.

The short, titled "The Landlord," has received over two million hits, and other vids from established comedians and actors will also begin to pop up on the site. However, most of the videos will be uploaded YouTube-fashion by regular folks like you and me. The main difference between this site and YouTube is that only those videos deemed worthy by other users will survive, and the ones that aren't so funny will be banished to a section of the site known as "the Crypt."

We all know that CBS has its own channel on YouTube, and in what seems to me like a pretty smart move, CBS News is removing user-uploaded content and replacing it with the same (but authorized) clip.

In a perfect world, it would actually be cool if everyone did this, e.g., take down that crappy dub of The Simpsons and replace it with a FOX-authorized full episode. Yeah, I know that's really not possible, but it would be in my "perfect world." Also, cars would be made out of chocolate.

Really though, I hope others follow CBS' example. Protecting your content is fine, but this is Web 2.0, after all, and sites like YouTube aren't going to go away.

[via Lost Remote]

David Spade will spend Sunday night doing what he does best - making mincemeat out of Hollywood's elite. Comedy Central's The Showbiz Show is hosting its first Oscar Blog. You'll be able to log-on and read real-time Oscar commentary from Spade and the show's writers. You'll also be able to comment and upload your own videos to the site by registering. This is, of course, also a great big publicity push for The Showbiz Show, which has its third season premiere on March 15th.

Whatever you may think of Spade, blogging may be the perfect outlet for his celebrity-aimed snark. Of course, I'm counting on him to avoid drawing urine dribbling out of Ellen's pants leg. That's Perez's gig.

[Via Press Release]

There hasn't been much talk about NBC's broadband video site DotComedy, and I've only poked around it a little bit myself, but before the end of this year, NBC plans to kick the site into high gear with clips of old shows, including Late Night with David Letterman, Coach and Dream On, and classic TV shows like Leave it to Beaver and The Munsters.

In an effort to woo viewers, the site will take on an aesthetic more akin to Comedy Central's Motherload site and feature both original and viewer-submitted content. The original series include "Hot Tub in Space," about a group of friends, in a hot tub, in space; "Untitled Comedy News Show," a parody of news programs that will actually pay viewers for jokes; "Easter Bunny Begins," a prequel to "The Easter Bunny Hates You" (video after the jump); "Triumph the Insult Comic Dog: Live In Las Vegas;" and "Kyle's in a Coma," about a guy named Kyle, who, funny enough, is in a coma.

The improved DotComedy will also feature clips from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Saturday Night Live. What, they can show classic Letterman, but not Carson?

[via Market My Monkey]

I've mentioned the recent kerfuffle surrounding YouTube, copyright, and other assorted legal mumbo jumbo before, but being a layman I can't really speak about such things with any real authority. Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation has an informative piece in the Hollywood Reporter about YouTube and its rights and responsibilities when it comes to copyrighted material. It's an interesting read, but what jumped out at me, and also jumped out at Amid over at Cartoon Brew, is Lohmann's statement that content owners who remove "noninfringing content" could be sued by either YouTube or its users, an idea that adds a whole new dimension to this ongoing discussion. Check out the article here.