Production houses have been making YouTube come down hard on a lot of copyright violations lately. They have been making YouTube take down the video entirely, or if the copyrighted material is just the audio bit of the clip, YouTube mutes it.
Now, I'm sure the ethical angles on the subject of piracy and copyright violations have been thrashed out in detail elsewhere. In this case though, surely the smart thing for the companies to do would be to tell YouTube to leave the clip up, but to degrade the quality of the audio and the video. Not so much that it would make the clip unwatchable, but enough to make the bad quality noticeable. People who then like the clip's content could pay for the full HD product - either just for the clip on the spot (say $0.15) in which case both YouTube and the production house get money, or by buying the DVD from which the clip was taken.
The thing is, we live in a world where there is absolutely no shortage of entertainment options. It isn't like the TV of bygone decades where you had a more or less captive viewership. If your show is hard to get, many of your potential customers will just go somewhere else. In the context of such a situation, the low quality video on YouTube just acts as free advertisement. People who like it a lot will probably buy the full HD version. People who don't like it much wouldn't have bought it anyway, so you aren't really losing any money by showing them the clip for free. And the stated free advertisement might get you quite a few new customers. But if you just don't put up the clip, chances are that people just won't know what you have to sell. And with so many options to choose from, they aren't going to go through the hassle and cost of finding out what you have to show when your competitors are showing free content. Moreover, those who look for your stuff will likely find someone's pirated videos of your content which have managed to evade YouTube's sweeps.
Perhaps right now, while TV is still going quite strong as a stand alone service, you may get away with sticking to the heavy handed model. After all, TV does this 'free advertising' bit for many people - and those who didn't watch the show on TV can stuff it. But the day when TV merges with the internet is not very far off. The amount of proper content on YouTube that is independently made (i.e. genuinely directed and produced stuff, and not just some shaky video off of someone's handycam of their dog farting) is increasing as is the amount of content with expired or deliberately unenforced copyright. YouTube IS TV for a lot of people. And they're members of a rapidly growing club.
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