Death by 30,000 cuts?: YouTube backs down on copyright complaint

In what must surely be the largest cull of its kind in YouTube’s brief history the firm took down 29,549 videos after complaints of copyright infringement by a Japanese entertainment group, says the New York Times:

Most videos posted on YouTube are homemade, but the site also features copyright material posted by individuals. YouTube’s policy is to remove such clips after it receives complaints, though some have suggested that the start-up could eventually be sued, especially with Google about to buy it for $1.65 billion in stock.

The first question is: will this be the last big deletion of videos by the firm? Probably not.

The second is: how much will these interventions in the community undermine its usefulness and prompt users to look to the likes of Revver, Metacafe and MySpace Videos as an alternative…

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