Well, I don't think it's Ilia-specific for NBC. They took down all of the Worlds skates, not just his. It's just really frustrating that these copyright issues just so happened to start the year Ilia turned senior though so there are really no good quality skating videos of him on YouTube... Ilia has the on-ice charisma and style to pique interest in the sport outside the small, devoted FS fan base, but it's never going to go anywhere if his home country won't even keep online one of the most astounding performances that the sport has ever seen. There were so many posts from major media outlets and celebs who watched this skate and so many comments in the vein of "I don't watch figure skating, but this was incredible."
I suppose we should be happy that he even had so many people watching. To me, it just shows me that people are still interested in figure skating when it's presented to them, and they ARE thrilled by incredible jumps, big tricks, and clean skates. When a video has enough views, you can see the "most viewed" points of the video, and Ilia's was the 4A, the whole 2nd half of the program starting from 4Lz-Eu-3F, raspberry twist (peak views), and when he received his score. If anything, I feel sorry that Ilia himself won't be able to go back and watch and relive the moment in HQ glory! Let's hope he has a good VPN.