Vidmeter has released a study, which examines the issue of copyrighted videos on YouTube. According to the study “Analysis of Copyrighted Videos on YouTube.com”, Viacom content had the most views accounting for 2.37 percent of all YouTube views.
YouTube’s Copyright Problems Overblown
Out of 6,725 most viewed YouTube videos 621 or 9.23 percent were removed because of reported copyright violations. The removed videos received a total of 94,187,203 views and accounted for 5.93 percent of the most viewed videos over the last three months.
For the study Vidmeter kept track of the most watched YouTube videos noting the day, week, month and the most watched videos of all time. Information on each video such as number of views, the name, and the copyright holder was collected from each video’s URL. The study is based on sample and not the site as a whole.
The top five videos that were removed by Viacom’s request were music videos. Other popular videos that were removed were Comedy Central clips of the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and South Park.
The study concluded that unauthorized copyright videos on YouTube make up a small percentage of the sites most popular videos and a smaller portion of views. The majority of the videos were short clips such as music videos, comedy sketches and sporting events.
While Viacom should certainly defend their copyrighted material the results of this sample study bring to light that the problem of copyrighted violations is not as widespread as originally thought. Still though a problem does exist and will continue to be an issue until YouTube provides a solution.
