Recently, CBS News broadcast a story about an autistic kid in Rochester, New York who pulled a miracle in a high school basketball game by pumping in 20 points in 4 minutes.

The network aired the story twice. It’s up on the CBS News site. But when it went up on YouTube, it pulled something like 1.2 million views in the blink of a CBS eye.

CBS has asked YouTube to pull the video, saying that “it’s uncool for people to take our video without permission. It’s interesting and encouraging that there’s that much of an audience for our content. But this stuff should come back to the core site, otherwise it’s theft.”

Well, yes. And no.

As the originator of the video, this is clearly the intellectual property of CBS News. No getting around that. But is it smart for CBS to interfere with a runaway viral train like this, one that can only benefit the brand?

It will get better, of course. A day will come soon when old media will join with new media to create something extraordinarily seamless and powerful. But there are kinks to be ironed out. We have no doubt that they will. And sooner rather than later.