Nope, they don’t. Youtube is all user submitted content and there is no easy way to distinguish a Colbert Report clip from say a clip of me pretending to be Colbert. Especially if I label my video to say it is a genuine Colbert Report clip.

Youtube has no way of knowing how many of it’s clips belong to Comedy Central so there is no way for them to calculate how big of a cut do they owe them, or who is eligible for the cut.

I that Comedy Central got pissed that people go to Youtube to watch their clips, instead of using their crappy website with 3-4 “official” clips per show. I think one of the dumb executives just developed a traffic envy:

“If youtube didn’t have Colbert clips, all these millions of people that visit it would be looking at our website and clicking out ads instead”

Unfortunately the internet doesn’t work this way.

It is my understanding that copywrighted content is allowed on youtube because they will give a cut of the ad revenue to the company that produced it.

Google has been trying to give all companies the same deal, however Comedy Central (or the parrent company) recently declined the agreement because they thought that their content was drawing more viewers, so they should get a better piece of the pie. Therefore, Colbert and Daily Show videos have begun disapearing from Youtube.