Decius wrote:

Even more surprising, the videos that have been removed make up just 6 percent of the total views (vidmeter.com).

I don't see why this is so surprising. It's akin to expressing surprise that most telephone calls are not "commercial" (as in delivery of paid content). Or that most email traffic is not copyrighted.

I would be more interested in looking at the overall distribution ... a Long Tail plot.

Unfortunately, it seems like this press coverage is mostly orchestrated to drive traffic to Vidmeter, which is distinctly in the short head business:

Vidmeter gathers data from across the web to provide an accurate representation of the most popular online videos.

RE: YouTube’s Favorite Clips Aren't Copyrighted