Academy Takes Oscars Off YouTube

Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has asked YouTube to take down clips of its Oscarcast and the user-gen video giant has complied, reports Variety. “Ric Robertson, exec administrator for the Academy, said the organization had its content pulled “to help manage the value of our telecast and our brand.” The article goes through all the ways the Academy could create a business with the video clips that had been taken down from YouTube, and Robertson denies plans for any of them. In a lot of cases companies ask YouTube to take down clips because they plan to sell them, but this doesn’t seem to be the case here. Robertson even notes that the miniscule content currently available on Oscar.com will eventually disappear in order to “whet people’s appetite for next year’s show”, which seems counter-intuitive.