YouTube has often said that accusations of piracy and copyright theft on its site are overblown. Now, a new study finds the video-sharing Web site may not deserve its reputation as a haven for copyright abusers, as the music and motion picture industries have contended.
A new study by Vidmeter, an online tracking company, found that unauthorized copyright-protected videos make up a relatively small portion of YouTube’s most popular videos. When analyzing the number of actual online views, the number falls even lower.
Vidmeter found that of the 6725 most popular videos on YouTube, only 621 had been removed because of copyright requests. Slightly less than 6 percent of the top-video views went to removed video.
While the study did find a fair number of blatantly pirated full-length clips from TV shows and movies, Videmeter said the bulk of views of removed videos consisted of music videos and short clips from comedy sketches and unique sporting events.
To download the full report, visit http://www.vidmeter.com/i/vidmeter_copyright_report.pdf/.
