What's the point of viral videos?

To pass them around, of course. Hence the name "viral", root word "virus", which means an unstoppable force that either messes you up for a long time or gives you super powers, like Spiderman and Aquaman. NBC is now offering what they call Web favorites, here's a snippet:

"Now, instead of searching the web for "borrowed" NBC highlights, you can go to the source! We've taken your viral favorites and gathered them into one convenient location. Watch. React. Tell a friend."

When NBC says "borrowed", what they're talking about is the incipient YouTube junkies who keep recording and uploading Saturday Night Live skits up to the service to share with the Web at large. There's been a couple of tempests in teapots about this in the last few weeks, most notably with the Lazy Sunday Chronicles of Narnia rap (it's not on YouTube anymore, but you can view this NBC protest) and the Natalie Portman gangsta rap, which has "been removed due to terms of use violation."

Okay, so long story short, NBC wants you to come and view their copyrighted material at their site, which is reasonable, but the whole point of "viral videos" is that they are VIRAL, you know, passed around like crazy. So the fact that NBC threw a hissy fit over the SNL skits becoming viral, yet asks you the user to start the process all over again from their site, is confusing.

Here's my personal opinion on all of this - wouldn't it just be easier, public relations wise, to let a sleeping dog lie? Why pitch such a fit over material being passed around and becoming popular? Surely the fact that the Chronic video was on YouTube's most popular list (I'm a YouTube junkie myself) for a looooong time should have made NBC execs happy rather than sic their lawyers on the service; basically, they had a gazillion YouTube viewers doing their PR work for them.

Viral Videos: Here's a few of the most popular Viral Videos that have all come to my email box over the past year.

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