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NBC blasts Google's YouTube over copyright

Elinor Mills Former Staff Writer
Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service and the Associated Press.
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Elinor Mills

More trouble for Google's video darling YouTube. The new chief executive of NBC Universal criticized Google and YouTube for dragging their feet on deploying technology to protect copyrighted material that gets posted to the site on a daily basis by avid fans.

Google has the ability to block pornography and hate speech and does so, Zucker told reporters Tuesday, his first day on the job, The Financial Times reported.

"YouTube needs to prove that it will implement its filtering technology across its online platform. It's proven it can do it when it wants to," he said. "They have the capability. The question is whether they have the will."

After being asked to pull NBC content from the site last summer, YouTube reached a deal with NBC under which NBC would post promotional clips from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Saturday Night Live.

Google was widely rumored to be negotiating content deals with traditional media companies after it agreed to a acquire YouTube last October for $1.65 billion in stock. But things are taking longer than expected, prompting media companies to take action.

Last week, , which included snippets from The Colbert Report and other popular Comedy Central and MTV shows. YouTube was forced to remove Comedy Central clips in October, as well.