Clips thrown off the Tube 'only a small portion'

[KiwiCoromandel]

Videos removed at the behest of copyright owners accounted for only a small percentage of viewership on top online video service YouTube, according to a study published last week.

The finding is drawing the ire of media companies, which dispute the conclusion.

Fewer than one in 10 videos on the Google-owned site were uploaded without the permission of copyright holders, according to a study by online video tracking firm Vidmeter.com. Pirated clips that were pulled off YouTube attracted only 6 per cent of viewers, the study found.

But media companies complained the study only counted videos that were removed as unauthorised content and not the myriad others, many of them duplicates, that escape attention.

The report comes amid a high-profile US$1 billion ($1.3 billion) lawsuit, filed by MTV Networks owner Viacom in March, that charged Google and YouTube with "massive, intentional copyright infringement" and growing concern in the media industry over Google's clout.

"We have concluded that unauthorised copyright videos make up a relatively small portion of YouTube's most popular videos and an even smaller portion of views," the report's authors wrote.

Viacom called the study's findings and methodology "flawed". Privately, another media industry source also disputed the conclusions.

"The Vidmeter study undercounts the volume of copyrighted content on YouTube by a significant margin," a Viacom spokesman said.

"Among other things, during the sample period, and even at present, many copyright owners had not sent take-down notices for their copyrighted material."

Vidmeter said it counted videos taken down by YouTube, with a page replaced with the content owner's name and not the myriad other clips that continue to reside on the service.

Clips of Viacom's South Park animation shows, for example, can still be found on the service, even after YouTube removed more than 100,000 clips.

Viacom said: "YouTube's site is designed in ways that make it impossible for rights holders to locate all of their copyrighted content, so even a robust take-down notice programme will miss significant amounts of copyrighted material."

The report studied video clips and usage over four months, beginning in December 2006 and comprised a small subset of 6725 most-watched video clips on YouTube.

Some 9.23 per cent of videos on this list were taken down at the request of copyright holders that include Viacom, Time Warner, and Walt Disney.

About 2 per cent of the scanned video clips were owned by Viacom. Also contrary to popular perception, the report found that music videos were among the most-viewed category.

"Even with these flaws, however, this study can put to rest Google's protests that it doesn't know about the massive copyright infringement taking place on YouTube," the Viacom spokesman added.

source:Reuters

image:Reuters:Clips of South Park episodes can still be found on YouTube.