...you see that copyrighted content accounts for a sizeable percentage, maybe 5 to 10 percent of what's there. Five or 10 percent is "sizable"? Really? So people dancing by themselves on webcams beating out high-production-value copyrighted material by somewhere between 10-to-1 and 20-to-1 is what, then? What this shows is that people really couldn't care less about copyrighted material - both in the sense that they don't care about Fox' presumed infinite monopoly on seeing its material, and also in the sense that it isn't the copyrightness of the material that causes them to upload and view it: it's that it's marginally amusing, but no more so (and, in fact, much less so) than other random stuff that citizens of the Internet produce. Clips from "How I Met Your Mother," not so much. I really think that the big content companies shouldn't start getting into conversations about how much their content is worth - because for most people and most content, the answer is "not a heckuva lot.

From the perspective of a publisher in the pet industry I observe that the genre of the funny pet video is emerging. Just as people are uploading their baby's first steps, so are they sharing their companion animal's antics with viewers they assume also love animals. From comments I read beneath some pet tube uploads, that is not always the case. The point I am making here is that uploaders assume they know their audience. That audience is often quite the opposite. e.g. one comment I read on a really cute puppy video was "In my country we eat dogs".

JKD, i hear you on the quality issue. I enjoy UGC more than I do most professional video, with the exception of The Wire, Entourage, Lost, and comedy central stuff. My point, which I should have made more explicit, is that copyrighted content makes a brief appearance as the most popular items but rapidly fades in significance after a few days. The "damage" (if you can call it that) is done quickly -- in that light, safe harbor provisions are a pretty bad safeguard. That dynamic probably scares the hell out of content owners.

You said "The 'damage' (if you can call it that) is done quickly". I'd be interested to hear what the damage is. Does watchning a 2 minute Daily Show clip cut into viewership of the actual show? Or does it cause the exact opposite effect - more viewership? I think the later, which is why it will be interesting to hear exatly what damage is caused.

I don't see any damage that YouTube is claimed to do. Playing short clips of copywrited material acts as more a a free viral marketing campaign.

By "damage" I mean damage perceived by media companies and their lawyers. If you've read my blog or columns before, you know I think YouTube is a boon to television and movie numbers.

WAit...since when is looking at the FRONT page and calculating the percentage of copyrighted material a god indicator of hte TOTAL percetnage for the site? (It isn't, and it is ridiculous to think itis, whih is why this article is meaingless, based on the dumb assumptions made by the author.) YouTube can be liable simply becuase htey have not a=done ANYTHING to prvent it from happening. (If Google implement their proposed system, then that could change. Yes, they take it down when asked, but chances are someone else has either ALREAY re-uploaded it, or will within a few minutes of it coming down. This does NOT fall under safe harbor rules at all. This is not the first time that EFF has been outrageously wrong. YouTube has to make a reasonable effort to prevent it from happening in the first place. They are not. You can't say "Well, only 1000 people viewed this file" when there are 50 different files of the same copyrighted material, and 200,000 viewers combined.

Don't misunderstand copyright. I'm certain that upwards of 99.5 percent of all content on YouTube is copyrighted material. EVERYTHING is automatically copyrighted once it is created. The distinction that needs to be made is not copyrighted or not, but posted with permission or not.

Who didn't see this coming? Many it's funny how this country operates. http://www.webdev101.com/google/on-your-marks-get-set-sue

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