Here’s the company’s official statement: “The individual in question violated the company’s standards of conduct by repeatedly copying and distributing a variety of materials without permission.”

Not that it needs much unpacking, but just to be clear: NBC is saying, without actually saying so, that its position is that it canned the leaker for behavior beyond posting that single clip.

And not to be too square and get-off-my-lawn about it, but there are lots and lots of companies–including, for instance, Google, which owns YouTube–that fire people for distributing things on the Internet that aren’t supposed to be distributed on the Internet.

As PaidContent’s Andrew Wallenstein argues, the fact that the clip is funny and interesting and had already been on TV 17 years ago–and on NBC’s own Web site today–doesn’t mean the NBC guy had the go-ahead to do it. (It also points out the complexity that YouTube has in policing authorized and unauthorized clips, but that’s a different story.)

But, as noted: The clip is funny and interesting! And reminds us of what Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric used to look like. Let’s watch it again!

But it’s hard not to make news when you turn down a $6 billion buyout offer from Google.

Meanwhile, Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO and co-founder of LivingSocial.com, has remained relatively quiet. As the head of the second-largest company in the local, group-buying space, it wasn’t because he didn’t have anything to talk about.

Just about 24 hours before Groupon’s rejection leaked out, LivingSocial announced it had secured $175 million from Amazon, and $183 million in total new investments. In that same release, the Washington, D.C.-based company confirmed that it was booking revenues of more than $1 million a day on average and is projected to book well over $500 million in revenue in 2011.

To be sure, Groupon and LivingSocial are pulling away from the pack when it comes to defining the nascent daily-deals market. O’Shaughnessy, who claims that the two have 90 percent market share combined, said: “I think the idea conceptually that you can buy things online and go interact with merchants in offline is starting to take hold and be widespread. But it’s really been less than two years…It’s definitely the first couple of innings right now.”

Here’s our interview with O’Shaughnessy:

eMoney: Give me an update on where your business is today.

O’Shaughnessy: As of yesterday [Dec. 16], we were in 136 markets. We launched five new markets yesterday. We tend to do them in batches, and five or eight will go out at once. Overall, we’ve been averaging a market a day.

What about up-to-date figures on uniques?

We are at more than 10 million, or I think the last number we said publicly was 12 million. That’s primarily Canada and the U.S. that are signed up for the daily deal. We are in five countries today. [LivingSocial is in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland and Australia.]

What’s the competition like internationally?

Groupon has been acquisitive, and they’ve become established in lots of places. The U.S. is the most mature by a large margin, and there’s some countries with a few players that have established themselves, and finally, there’s some countries out there that’s a fairly green-field environment.

It’s fairly established that Groupon is No. 1, and LivingSocial is No. 2. But there’s a huge debate about who is No. 3?

There’s a pretty big gap. One of the things I’ve said is that it’s a pretty easy business to get into. All you have to do is know how to process a payment, and have a brother-in-law that has a restaurant that is willing to participate. But it’s a hard business to scale.

We have a competitive spreadsheet with 200 names on it, and if you do a couple of filters on how many deals someone has run, starting with 100, the vast majority drop off. And then if you up it to 500, you are up to the top two. It’s a pretty big drop-off.

Six months ago, we [Groupon and LivingSocial] collectively had 90 percent market share, and last month that was still true.

In that time, the market got bigger, and some others have grown for sure, but our market share has grown quite a bit. The signal-to-noise ratio is off, relative to who is doing what.

Is that what gives you confidence?

That’s one data point to look at, but what gives me confidence is what I see and I know we do every day. The degree of effort that goes into it and how many things can go wrong when you are managing merchant relationships, that’s what gives me the confidence.

What about the critics who say there’s no loyalty in this business–a consumer will always go with the provider who has the best deal for the business they want to visit.

There’s some loyalty that’s there, and I think people buy through us pretty regularly. They know that it’s going to be a merchant that’s vetted, and we work really hard at that. We are a good solid legit company that’s able to deliver. People place value on that. The brand matters, and enhancing user trust is an important thing.

What about the critics who say the margin will erode over time?

I think that the erosion of margins is just like any single other business if you stop innovating and do the same thing over and over. If we continue to innovate and provide additional value to merchants, the value per dollar increases. I don’t tend to be hugely concerned about the margin front.

The conduit has been 50 percent off a service, but there’s additional value we can provide to merchant communities and consumer communities. Overall, we aren’t not going to do the same thing over and over.

Can you give me an example?

We’ve started working with merchants in completely different ways, and sometimes we are going and operating events. We just did something called “tubbing and tasting,” where we worked with three merchants.

You could pick 10 to 12 Saturdays, and you’d meet in Midtown Manhattan, where a coach bus would take you to a snow hill, where you’d go snow tubbing. At the lodge, there was a bonfire and s’mores, and a beer tasting with a bunch of microbrews.

In that circumstance, we worked with three merchants–a coach company, a ski mountain and a brewery–in an entirely different way than how they associate with folks. I think it cost $60 and it sold out virtually every Saturday in January and February. I don’t see anyone else doing that, by finding unique hand-picked, curated ways to work with local businesses.

So, how will you be working with Amazon?

Right now, our first step is focusing on getting the relationship from a financial perspective locked down, and we’ll figure it out at a later point.

I assume the funding will go toward expansion?

We will be very aggressive on additional market launches as we build up our brand and user base. It’s very much a global game, and this is a global opportunity. We’ve gone from one country to five, and we’ll likely continue to expand globally.

A lot of this year was laying a foundation and the building blocks, and adding more value for the merchants, like LivingSocial Escapes. It’s on fire right now. It’s a weekend getaway, or a “staycation.” They are curated packages that are within a short driving distance from where you live. We also have LivingSocial Family Edition, which has things parents can do with their kids.

Your plans include tripling your employee count next year to 1,800 and more than doubling the number of cities you are in to 300?

We will continue to be pretty aggressive. Earlier this year, we were in six markets and we added 130 markets this year. We are a little more mature and one would hope that means we could move faster next year. We were around 30 employees, and over 600 now. It’s been a pretty crazy ramp-up.

The timing of your investment was so closely timed to Groupon-Google’s negotiations.

I’m a firm believer that we can’t control what other people do. Obviously, the deal we did with Amazon takes time to put together. We had decided awhile ago, if we want to become the biggest player in local commerce, we should be aligned with the biggest e-commerce company. That’s a lot of [what was] driving it. The timing was very coincidental.

So, no regrets?

No, not at all. We are thrilled and excited and expect to gain more market share over the coming year.

You can get it right now, by heading to FilmOn.com, where you can get streams of several local L.A. TV stations, which means you can get whatever NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox are broadcasting. You can also get a few cable channels, like Time Warner’s CNN International, as well as a couple of porn feeds.

It’s incredibly easy, and it’s a very high-quality feed, with very little lag. This screenshot of NBC’s “Today Show” isn’t very exciting, but it is current–I took it a few minutes ago.

You can also get FilmOn via a conventional PC, but that requires a download, so it’s not quite as convenient. But it’s still very easy, and while FilmOn has said it would charge for the service, it’s free for now.

How is this possible? It shouldn’t be, according to the networks, who are suing FilmOn and founder Alki David. They’re also suing ivi.TV, which is doing something similar with feeds from Seattle TV stations.

Both FilmOn and ivi are arguing that they’re within their rights based on an interpretation of FCC rules that allow “secondary transmissions” of broadcast signals.

The networks, of course, will work very, very hard to shoot down that argument, for obvious reasons. Ivi and FilmOn have been out for several weeks, but a note from industry analyst Rich Greenfield (registration required) this morning is going to increase the attention the two companies have been getting.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see how Apple plays this. Steve Jobs has big plans for the TV business, but they generally involve working with the networks and studios so that they can charge money for their shows on his devices.

On the other hand, since FilmOn is getting to the iPad over the free Web, instead of an Apple-approved app, I’m not sure how Jobs could stop the transmission. Even if he wants to.

UPDATE: Ivi’s Hal Bringman wants us to know that in addition to Seattle, his service also offers streams from New York broadcast stations, and will start offering from L.A. this weekend. Up next–Chicago and Philadelphia. Bringman says his company also has an iPad app in the works, but that one will require a $4.95 monthly fee.

Here’s a video of former eBay CEO Meg Whitman talking to Matt Lauer on the “Today” show this morning about her nascent campaign to be governor of California as the Republican candidate.

Whitman, who was a favorite of failed Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, seems to have perfected the art of saying exactly nothing, even after Lauer asked her if she was nuts to run the “arguably ungovernable”–referencing a writer for the Sacramento Bee–California.

“Running a business is different from running a state,” said Lauer.

Whitman’s answer: Prioritization!

Another former eBay (EBAY) exec, who worked for Whitman, Steve Westly, is also being mentioned for the governor’s race to replace current Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, on the Democratic side.

I say we have an auction to determine which eBay exec gets the nod.

Until then, here’s the “Today” show video from the Meg2010Campaign site on YouTube:

Can you blame them? That lion is pretty cool. And, it turns out, MSNBC.com viewers like watching that story almost as much as YouTube viewers do: NBC’s site has generated 2.4 million views by talking about the clip, while the original YouTube clip has generated 3.2 million views, says Beet.TV. Happy holidays!