- Steve McClellan

NEW YORK Google-owned YouTube has pulled a Barack Obama ad from its site at the insistence of NBC, which charged that the spot infringed on its copyrighted content and that it did not give Obama's campaign permission to use the material.

The ad, titled "Bad News," is designed to get out the vote by appealing to voters and potential voters who do not want John McCain to win the election. At one point, NBC's Tom Brokaw and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann are shown -- with Olbermann announcing that McCain has "won."

NBC has demanded that Obama stop using the clip altogether. But his campaign balked and instead attached a disclaimer to it that said, "NBC and MSNBC did not cooperate in the making of this video."

An NBC representative said that wasn't good enough. It blasted the ad as "outrageous." Late Wednesday afternoon, the NBC rep said, "Our legal team is still in discussions with the Obama campaign about our request for them to cease and desist."

An Obama rep could not be immediately reached for comment.

The controversy mirrors a situation that transpired three weeks ago, when YouTube apparently removed a McCain campaign ad that featured CBS News anchor Katie Couric chastising Barack Obama after Couric's employer, CBS, complained. CBS objected because it frowns on the use of its news personnel in political spots. That spot took Obama to task for a saying, "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." The McCain camp claimed that quip was aimed at Sarah Palin; Obama's reps insisted it was about the economy.