How many Content ID claims does YouTube make each year?
YouTube's Content ID system made 2,502,941,368 copyright claims in 2025, according to YouTube's own Copyright Transparency Report. That was about 13.5% more than the 2,205,133,336 claims in its 2024 edition, and about 1.69 times as many as in 2021. YouTube's How YouTube Works site rounds the 2024 figure to more than 2 billion claims.
The report changed shape in 2024, and it is easy to misread. From 2021 to 2023 YouTube published half-year editions. The next two editions are coded "2024H2" and "2025H2" in the report's data feed, which reads like July to December, but each covers a full calendar year: the report's own footer says its data was collected between January and December 2024, and the next edition says the same of January to December 2025. No January-June edition exists for either year. Read as a half-year and set against the second half of 2023, the 2024 total looks like a doubling. Set against the whole of 2023, the rise was about 10.5%.
| Year | January–June | July–December | Full year |
|---|
| 2021 | 722,649,569 | 759,540,199 | 1,482,189,768 (our sum) |
| 2022 | 757,993,607 | 826,242,639 | 1,584,236,246 (our sum) |
| 2023 | 980,133,450 | 1,016,137,305 | 1,996,270,755 (our sum) |
| 2024 | Not published | Not published | 2,205,133,336 |
| 2025 | Not published | Not published | 2,502,941,368 |
Almost every claim is made by machine. In the second half of 2021, YouTube reported that 99.6% of Content ID claims came from automated matching, and in the second half of 2022 manual claims made by partners were fewer than 0.5% of the total. The data feed splits every newer edition the same way:
| Period | Automated Content ID claims | Manual Content ID claims |
|---|
| January–June 2023 | 976,231,079 | 3,902,371 |
| July–December 2023 | 1,008,498,132 | 3,723,117 |
| 2024 | 2,198,208,336 | 6,931,719 |
| 2025 | 2,496,968,764 | 5,978,360 |
The two columns do not always add up to the headline total. In the first half of 2023 they match exactly. In 2025 automated plus manual comes to 5,756 more than the published total, and in the second half of 2023 to 3,916,056 fewer, by our subtraction. YouTube does not explain the gaps. They are small against a total of billions, but they mean the report's tables were not built from one reconciled count.
Content ID made about 99.5% of the copyright actions YouTube counted across its four tools in 2025, by our calculation from the report's figures. The other three tools file removal requests, which take a video down and can carry a copyright strike, where a Content ID claim usually monetizes, tracks or blocks it. YouTube's own statements of Content ID's share have moved between over 99% in the first half of 2021, over 98% in the second half of 2021 and over 99% again in the second half of 2022.
| Tool | Rightsholders with access, 2025 | Rightsholders that used it, 2025 | Actions, January–June 2023 | Actions, 2025 |
|---|
| Content ID (claims) | 7,626 | 4,454 | 980,133,450 | 2,502,941,368 |
| Copyright Match Tool (removal requests) | 4,102,721 | 173,338 | 2,751,181 | 4,478,219 |
| Public copyright webform (removal requests) | Anyone with an account ("Billions") | 295,531 | 1,975,086 | 2,969,817 |
| Enterprise Webform (removal requests) | Not used here | Not used here | 3,143,336 | 5,606,154 |
Content ID is a small club. Over 9,000 partners had access at the end of 2022. The feed shows 8,945 rightsholders with access in mid-2023, of which 4,828 used it, and access has since fallen to 7,626. That works out at about 562,000 claims for every rightsholder that used Content ID in 2025, an average that hides how unequal the users are; YouTube publishes no breakdown.
The Copyright Match Tool, which finds re-uploads of a channel's own videos, is far wider: over 2.5 million channels had access at the end of 2022 and 4,102,721 at the end of 2025. It filed over 1.6 million removal requests in the first half of 2021, YouTube's blog said. Outside Content ID, YouTube's Help Center says it received removal requests for over 16 million videos in 2022.
The report also counts uploads its systems stopped because they copied a video already removed for copyright: over 4 million in the second half of 2023, 7 million in 2024 and 6 million in 2025.
How often are Content ID claims disputed, and who wins?
Uploaders disputed about 0.51% of the Content ID claims made in 2025, and about 67.4% of those disputes ended in the uploader's favour, by our calculation from YouTube's own claim counts. Manual claims, made by a person at the rightsholder rather than by matching software, are disputed more often than automated ones in every period the report covers, and at twice the rate or more since 2023.
The report's claim tree follows every claim from filing to outcome. Here are the oldest and newest editions in the data feed, side by side:
| Step | January–June 2023 | 2025 |
|---|
| Content ID claims made | 980,133,450 | 2,502,941,368 |
| Disputed by the uploader | 3,869,604 | 12,840,608 |
| Dispute succeeded (claim released or expired) | 2,541,721 | 8,656,873 |
| Dispute failed (claim reinstated) | 1,327,883 | 4,183,735 |
| Block claims taken straight to appeal | 67,118 | 378,006 |
| Appeals filed | 147,556 | 624,076 |
| Appeal succeeded | 86,804 | 465,877 |
| Appeal failed (claimant filed a removal request) | 60,752 | 158,199 |
| Failed appeals that ended in a copyright removal | 14,208 | 46,065 |
| Uploader cancelled the appeal or deleted the video | 46,544 | 112,134 |
| Removals then answered with a counter notification | 3,357 | 10,698 |
| Share of disputes won by the uploader (our calculation) | 65.7% | 67.4% |
| Share of appeals won by the uploader (our calculation) | 58.8% | 74.7% |
In between, the feed counts 4,180,335 disputes in the second half of 2023 and 11,451,129 in 2024. The PDF editions tell the same story in rounder numbers: 3,698,019 disputes in the first half of 2021, over 60% of them resolved for the uploader and 38,864 ending in removal; over 55% resolved for the uploader in the first half of 2022 and over 60% in the second.
Appeals have become more likely to succeed. In September 2022 YouTube cut the time a claimant has to answer an appeal to 7 days instead of 30. The share of appeals won by the uploader was 58.8% in the first half of 2023 and 74.7% in 2025. YouTube does not say whether the shorter window caused the rise. When an appeal fails, the video is not always removed: over 30% of failed appeals ended in a copyright removal in the second half of 2022 (13,841 removals, against 31,883 cases where the uploader withdrew or deleted), over 20% in the first half of 2023 and over 29% in 2025. In the second half of 2021, uploaders filed 3,965 counter notifications against removals that came out of Content ID disputes.
How often are copyright removals challenged, and how often is the system abused?
Uploaders answered 9.88% of the copyright removals made through YouTube's public webform in 2025 with a counter notification, against 3.13% for the Copyright Match Tool and 2.46% for the Enterprise Webform, according to the report's data feed. The public webform is open to anyone, which is also where YouTube finds the most abuse.
| Removals answered with a counter notification | Public webform | Copyright Match Tool | Enterprise Webform |
|---|
| January–June 2021 | over 5% | fewer than 2% for each |
| July–December 2022 | over 4% | fewer than 2% for each |
| January–June 2023 | 5.9% | 1.6% | 1.3% |
| 2025 | 9.88% | 3.13% | 2.46% |
Most counter notifications are rejected. YouTube accepted and forwarded 30.2% of the counter notifications filed against 2025 removals, rejected 67.6% and gave 2.2% another outcome, according to the feed. The acceptance rate has risen: fewer than 19% in the second half of 2021, fewer than 25% in the second half of 2022, and 22.8% accepted against 75.4% rejected in the first half of 2023. Very few end in court: fewer than 1% of counter notifications in the second half of 2022 led to a lawsuit.
A forwarded counter notification starts a clock set by U.S. law. The service must put the video back not less than 10, nor more than 14, business days after receiving it unless the claimant sues, and YouTube's Help Center gives claimants 10 U.S. business days to show they have. The U.S. Copyright Office concluded in its 2020 Section 512 report that the ten-to-fourteen-day window is at once too long for creators whose videos are down and too short for rightsholders who must file a federal lawsuit.
YouTube measures abuse of the public webform against its other tools. The attempted abuse rate there was more than 10 times the rate across YouTube's other copyright removal tools in 2025, the same multiple as in the first half of 2023 (10). The PDF editions gave more than 30 times in the first half of 2021, more than 20 times in the first half of 2022 and more than 10 times in the second half of 2022, though the comparison group was worded differently each time. Over 8% of videos requested for removal through the webform in the first half of 2021 were the subject of abusive requests, and over 5% in the second half of 2022.
Abuse is not only a YouTube estimate. A Google representative told a Copyright Office roundtable in 2019 that in one week, after one sender automated its submissions, over 50 percent of the DMCA notices Google received were fraudulent. The largest independent audit of takedown notices, by Jennifer Urban, Joe Karaganis and Brianna Schofield, drew on 108,331,663 requests archived in the Lumen database between May and October 2013. In a random sample, 4.2% targeted content that did not match the work claimed and a further 28.4% had other characteristics that raised questions about their validity; among requests sent to Google Image Search, 70% raised concerns. Those notices were sent to Google Search, not YouTube, so the study describes the notice system rather than Content ID. Lumen, run by Harvard Law School Library, now says it holds over seventy-five million notices.
How much money has Content ID paid to rightsholders?
YouTube says Content ID has paid more than $12 billion to rightsholders from ads alone as of December 2024, from content claimed and monetized through the tool, according to the Copyright Transparency Report's own text. That is $3 billion more than the $9 billion YouTube reported as of December 2022. Each figure below is YouTube's or Google's own cumulative total, as first published.
The report's data feed shows how slowly the headline moves. The edition for the second half of 2023 still said $9 billion. The 2024 edition moved to $12 billion, and the 2025 edition kept $12 billion, dated December 2024. YouTube has published no end-2023 total. Separately, the U.S. Copyright Office's 2020 report recorded YouTube as having paid $2 billion to rightsholders through Content ID over the previous five years, which is YouTube's own figure repeated.
Most claims earn money rather than block videos. Rightsholders chose to monetize about 90% of Content ID claims in 2025, according to the data feed, which publishes the same value in every edition, so it is a rounded figure rather than a fresh measurement each year. The H2 2022 PDF says over 90%, and Google's 2018 piracy report gave 90% for 2017.
Content ID money is a small share of what YouTube pays out overall. YouTube says it paid more than $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies in the four years before January 2025, a figure repeated in the 2025 edition's data ($100 billion) and at Made on YouTube in September 2025 (over $100 billion). Earlier editions gave more than $30 billion over three years to late 2020, $50 billion over three years to June 2022 and $70 billion over three years to January 2024. The last window is four years long, not three, so the jump to $100 billion is not like for like.
For music alone, YouTube says it paid over $4 billion to the music industry in the 12 months before June 2021, over $6 billion from July 2021 to June 2022 and over $8 billion from July 2024 to June 2025. User uploads, the videos Content ID claims, drove over 30% of YouTube's music payouts in the 12 months to June 2022. For scale, Alphabet reported YouTube advertising revenue of $40,367 million for 2025 in its annual report, and YouTube counted over 125 million Music and Premium subscribers, including trials, as of March 2025, up from over 80 million in September 2022.
What are YouTube's copyright rules, in numbers?
A YouTube channel that gets 3 copyright strikes within 90 days is terminated, and a strike only expires after 90 days if the uploader completes Copyright School, according to YouTube's Help Center. Without Copyright School the strike stays active. The table collects the other time limits YouTube publishes; each links to the Help Center page that states it.
| Rule | Number |
|---|
| Questions in Copyright School | 4 |
| Ways to resolve a copyright strike (wait it out after Copyright School, retraction, counter notification) | 3 |
| Copyright strikes a single video can carry at once | 1 |
| Live streaming restricted after a live stream is removed for copyright | 7 days; 14 days after another strike |
| Active strikes on a linked channel that put your channel at risk | 3 |
| Delay a claimant can set on a scheduled removal request | 7 days; deleting the video inside the 7 days avoids the strike |
| Legally required statements in every removal request | 2 |
| Time a claimant has to answer a Content ID dispute | 30 days; if it does not, the claim expires after 30 days |
| Time a claimant has to answer an appeal | 7 days |
| Time an uploader has to cancel an appeal met with a scheduled removal | 7 days |
| Dispute within this many days and revenue is held from the first day of the claim | 5 |
| Do nothing and held revenue goes to the claimant after | 5 days |
Shorts have their own rules, and one of them changes on September 24, 2026. Until then, YouTube's Help Center says Shorts of 1-3 minutes are blocked when they carry an active Content ID claim, whatever policy the claimant chose. From September 24, 2026, new Shorts over one minute with an active claim will no longer be blocked automatically. Most songs in YouTube's Shorts library can be used for up to 90 seconds, and monetizing Shorts creators keep 45% of their allocated revenue whether or not they used music.
For licensed music in long videos, YouTube's Creator Music adjusts the standard 55% creator revenue share and takes an extra deduction of up to 5% for other music rights. Its paid licences were phased out: creators had until August 10, 2026 to buy and use them. YouTube Studio's trim, replace-song and erase-song tools can clear a claim without re-uploading, but channels outside the Partner Program may not be able to save those edits on a video with over 100,000 views, and since June 2025 saved edits cannot be undone.
On fair use, YouTube says courts weigh four factors, matching the four standards of U.S. copyright law, and that calling a use non-profit is only 1 factor, not an automatic pass. Through its invitation-only Fair Use Protection program, it covers up to $1 million in legal costs for selected U.S. creators whose fair-use videos draw a lawsuit after a removal request. Copyright generally lasts for the life of the author plus 50-70 years, depending on the country.
What does the law say, and what have regulators counted?
U.S. notice-and-takedown has run on Section 512 of the Copyright Act since 28 October 1998. The damages behind it are why a strike matters: a copyright owner can elect statutory damages of $750 to $30,000 per work infringed, and up to $150,000 where the infringement was willful.
The U.S. Copyright Office's review of Section 512 received more than 92,000 written responses to its first call for comments. Its May 2020 report records Google receiving takedown notices for about 882 million URLs in 2017 and requests to delist more than 4.6 billion URLs in total. It also records more than 9,000 rightsholders using Content ID as of 2020.
Since 2022, the Copyright Claims Board has offered a small-claims route, capped at $30,000 per proceeding. Claimants had filed over 1,700 claims by the Copyright Office's February 2026 report, including 301 misrepresentation claims, the board's route for challenging a false takedown notice. Only 43% of all claims had been found compliant on first review. Motion pictures were the work type in 26% of claims from June 2022 to March 2026. The board publishes no count of claims involving YouTube or online video.
In the EU, Article 17 of the 2019 Copyright Directive made large content-sharing services such as YouTube directly responsible for uploads, with lighter rules for services online for less than three years with turnover under €10 million, until they pass 5 million monthly unique visitors. Member states had until 7 June 2021 to write it into national law.
Piracy outside YouTube sets the context. The EU Intellectual Property Office found about 10 accesses to pirated content per internet user per month in the EU in 2023, 5 of them for TV content, using site-visit data from an anti-piracy vendor. The UK Intellectual Property Office's 2022 tracker survey found 32% of people aged 12 and over had accessed at least some online content illegally.
How does YouTube's copyright volume compare with other platforms?
YouTube received 422,018 copyright notices from EU users under the Digital Services Act in the first half of 2025, more than Facebook and Instagram combined, according to each company's own DSA transparency report. The DSA made every very large platform report notices in the same categories, so these are the most comparable numbers that exist. Outside the EU, each platform counts in its own units, and the table says which.
| Platform | What is counted | Scope | January–June 2025 | July–December 2025 |
|---|
| YouTube | Copyright notices under the DSA | EU | 422,018 | New EU template; not comparable |
| Facebook | Intellectual property notices under the DSA | EU | 129,103 | Not used here |
| Instagram | Intellectual property notices under the DSA | EU | 121,175 | Not used here |
| Pinterest | Copyright removal actions on Pins (actions, not notices) | EU | 4,614,956 | Not used here |
| TikTok | Copyright removal requests | Worldwide | 342,167 | 401,471, of which 253,016 led to removal |
| Reddit | Copyright takedown notices | Worldwide | 58,920 | 69,154, 71% acted on |
| GitHub | DMCA takedown notices processed | Worldwide | 1,107 | 1,354 |
| Wikimedia projects | DMCA takedown requests (granted) | Worldwide | 13 (6 granted) | 11 (1 granted) |
None of these counts is on the scale of Content ID, which made 2,502,941,368 claims in 2025, because Content ID claims are generated by matching software rather than sent as notices. The closest comparison is Google Search, where copyright notices also arrive at industrial scale: Google's EU report lists 2,418,126,251 URL-level removals from Search for intellectual property in the first half of 2025, processed worldwide, and its copyright transparency report counted 17,917,574,286 URLs requested for delisting since March 2011, in a capture from September 2026.
YouTube's two later EU reports, for July-December 2025 and January-June 2026, are published only as spreadsheet archives and use a new EU-wide template introduced in July 2025. Their copyright counts are about half the earlier figure, which reflects the change in template rather than a fall in notices, so they are not set against the earlier numbers here.
What the popular YouTube copyright numbers really say
Eight claims turn up again and again in articles about YouTube copyright. We traced each to the earliest document we could date. Most are YouTube's own numbers quoted after YouTube replaced them, some describe a different thing from what they are quoted for, and one has no source at all.
"98% (or 99%) of copyright issues are handled by Content ID"
This is YouTube's own figure, but its meaning has shifted. Google first said in July 2016 that over 98% of "copyright management" on YouTube took place through Content ID. Its 2018 piracy report said over 98% of "copyright issues" in one sentence and 98% of "copyright claims" in its sidebar. The Copyright Transparency Report, from December 2021, measures "copyright actions": Content ID claims plus removal requests, counted tool by tool. Its share then moved between over 99% and over 98% from one edition to the next.
In every version it is a share of actions by volume, driven by software that files billions of claims. It is not the share of copyright problems resolved, and it says nothing about accuracy. What to use instead: Content ID made about 99.5% of the copyright actions YouTube counted in 2025, by our calculation from the report's own counts, with the year attached.
"Content ID has paid out $X billion"
Every version is YouTube's, and which one an article quotes mostly reveals when it was written. The chain runs from more than $1 billion in 2014 to more than $12 billion as of December 2024, and the wording "from ads alone" first appears with the $5.5 billion figure in YouTube's first transparency report. The $9 billion figure, still widely quoted, is dated December 2022.
A newer variant says Content ID paid $3 billion in 2024 alone. It began with a May 2025 trade-press report that dated the $9 billion total to the end of 2023. YouTube dated it to December 2022, and has published no end-2023 total. So the $3 billion rise covers two years, and YouTube gives no yearly breakdown. What to use instead: "more than $12 billion to rightsholders from ads alone as of December 2024", with that date.
"A few seconds of a song is fair use"
No law, court rule or YouTube policy sets a safe number of seconds. The only document we found that attaches seconds to fair use is a set of 1996 guidelines for educational multimedia, printed in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's 1998 report on the Conference on Fair Use. It suggested using no more than 30 seconds of an individual musical work. The guidelines say they do not apply outside educational and scholarly projects or to commercial use, and the conference never reached consensus on them.
The shorter versions of the rule have no origin at all. The earliest datable repeat we found is a 2015 post on a creator forum, where other users called it a myth. The U.S. Copyright Office says there are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, notes or percentage of a work, and YouTube's copyright myths page says any amount used without permission, "even if it's just a few seconds", may cause copyright issues. What to use instead: courts weigh four factors, and Content ID matches regardless of length.
"Content ID scans X years of video every day"
These figures are YouTube's, but they are more than a decade old. YouTube's press statistics page said Content ID scanned over 100 years of video every day in December 2010 and over 400 years by December 2013. The line was gone from the page by June 2015 and has not been replaced. The same goes for reference files, the copies rightsholders upload for matching: the newest count YouTube has published is 80 million+ active reference files, in November 2018. What to use instead: claim counts from the current transparency report, which YouTube does update.
"500 hours of video are uploaded every minute"
Every edition of the copyright report from 2021 and 2022 says more than 500 hours of video are uploaded every minute, without a date or source. That matches the figure YouTube's CEO gave in September 2019, which our video editing statistics page traces. It is YouTube's own number, but a 2019 one; YouTube has not published a newer upload rate.
"A third of takedown notices are invalid"
This comes from the Urban, Karaganis and Schofield study described above, and it is usually misquoted twice. First, the study found 28.4% of sampled requests had characteristics that "raised questions" about their validity, and 4.2% fundamentally flawed; a questionable notice is not a proven invalid one. Second, the notices were sent to Google Web Search in 2013, and the study notes that Google's transparency reporting does not cover YouTube. The Image Search figure people quote comes from the March 2016 version of the study; the authors revised it in March 2017 to the 70% given above. The study was part-funded by a gift from Google; the authors say no funder reviewed their methods or results.
"Copyright strikes expire after 90 days"
This was true until 2025. From at least June 2020 until July 2025, YouTube's Help Center said simply that copyright strikes expire after 90 days. By August 2025 it had been replaced by the current rule: a strike expires in 90 days only if the uploader completes Copyright School and the channel has fewer than three strikes. Guides written between 2020 and mid-2025 are out of date on this point.
"Most Content ID claims are false"
No YouTube document or independent study measures how many Content ID claims are mistaken. The number usually offered is YouTube's own statement that over 60% of disputes in the first half of 2021 were resolved for the uploader. YouTube counts a claim the claimant simply let expire as resolved for the uploader, and only a small fraction of claims are ever disputed. YouTube's current version says over 70% of 2024 disputes succeeded, because claimants released the claim or did not respond in time. What to use instead: uploaders disputed 0.51% of 2025 claims and won 67.4% of those disputes. That is a measure of disputes, not of false claims.
How we built this page
We started from the questions people search for about youtube copyright statistics and looked for the organization that actually produced each answer. Every figure on this page sits in an evidence ledger with its source, the exact table or paragraph it came from, the measurement period, the population measured, and the date we checked it. This edition holds 245 figures from 15 publishers.
On September 22, 2026, every figure was re-fetched from its source on a cleared cache and matched against the recorded wording; all 252 checkable sourced rows in the evidence ledger re-verified automatically. YouTube's Copyright Transparency Report is rendered by script, so its figures for 2023 onward were read from the report's own public data feed, and its wording from the page script Google publishes, through dated Internet Archive captures because that script's address changes with each release. Meta's DSA reports, older YouTube and Google pages, and the Lumen database were read from dated Internet Archive captures of the publisher's own pages. We left out YouTube's two newest EU DSA reports and the UK Intellectual Property Office's 2024 tracker, which are published only as spreadsheet files we could not check automatically; counts from the EU DSA Transparency Database, which deletes records after six months; and a line of YouTube report text that appears unchanged for every period, so it is not a measurement of any one year.
We only cite the producer: government agencies, regulators, company filings and official posts, and the survey owner's own report. We do not cite statistics roundups, Statista-style aggregators, or salary sites without a public method. We did not bypass paywalls or sign-up forms; where a full report was gated, we used only the figures its publisher states publicly.
Figures marked "our calculation" are arithmetic on the cited numbers, and anyone can reproduce them:
| Figure | Formula | Inputs |
|---|
| DRV-001 | 722,649,569 + 759,540,199 = 1,482,189,768 | VOL-001, VOL-002 |
| DRV-002 | 757,993,607 + 826,242,639 = 1,584,236,246 | VOL-003, VOL-004 |
| DRV-003 | 980,133,450 + 1,016,137,305 = 1,996,270,755 | VOL-005, VOL-006 |
| DRV-004 | (2,205,133,336 - 1,996,270,755) / 1,996,270,755 x 100 = 10.46%, shown as 10.5% | VOL-005, VOL-006, VOL-007 |
| DRV-005 | (2,502,941,368 - 2,205,133,336) / 2,205,133,336 x 100 = 13.51%, shown as 13.5% | VOL-007, VOL-008 |
| DRV-006 | 2,502,941,368 / (2,502,941,368 + 2,969,817 + 4,478,219 + 5,606,154) x 100 = 99.48%, shown as 99.5% | VOL-008, VOL-025, VOL-026, VOL-027 |
| DRV-007 | 12,840,608 / 2,502,941,368 x 100 = 0.513%, shown as 0.51% | DSP-014, DSP-013 |
| DRV-008 | 8,656,873 / 12,840,608 x 100 = 67.42%, shown as 67.4% | DSP-015, DSP-014 |
| DRV-009 | 2,541,721 / 3,869,604 x 100 = 65.68%, shown as 65.7% | DSP-026, DSP-025 |
| DRV-010 | 465,877 / 624,076 x 100 = 74.65%, shown as 74.7% | DSP-019, DSP-018 |
| DRV-011 | 86,804 / 147,556 x 100 = 58.83%, shown as 58.8% | DSP-030, DSP-029 |
| DRV-012 | 2,502,941,368 / 4,454 = 561,954, shown as about 562,000 | VOL-008, VOL-035 |
| DRV-013 | $12 billion - $9 billion = $3 billion | MON-005, MON-004 |
| DRV-014 | 2,502,941,368 / 1,482,189,768 = 1.69 | VOL-008, VOL-001, VOL-002 |
| DRV-015 | 1,016,137,305 - (1,008,498,132 + 3,723,117) = 3,916,056 | VOL-006, VOL-015, VOL-016 |
| DRV-016 | (2,496,968,764 + 5,978,360) - 2,502,941,368 = 5,756 | VOL-008, VOL-019, VOL-020 |
This edition contains no Mark Studios customer data.
Limitations
- Almost every Content ID figure comes from YouTube. No independent body audits the Copyright Transparency Report, it does not publish a method, and its own tables disagree by small amounts, as the claim counts above show.
- The report switched from half-years to calendar years in 2024 without saying so. Its data feed still labels the annual editions as July to December; the page text and footer say January to December, and we follow the page.
- Many figures are floors or rounded statements. "Over 60%" and "fewer than 0.5%" are bounds, and some values, such as the 90% monetized share and the tenfold webform abuse multiple, repeat unchanged across editions.
- Winning a dispute is not proof a claim was wrong. YouTube counts a claim the claimant lets expire as resolved for the uploader, so no figure here is a false-claim rate.
- Platforms count different things. The comparison mixes notices, requests, actions and URLs, and EU-only DSA counts with worldwide ones; the table labels each.
- Help Center rules are a snapshot. They were read on September 22, 2026, carry no dates, and change without notice. The Shorts blocking rule changes on September 24, 2026.
- The main independent study of takedown accuracy is old. It covers notices sent to Google Search in 2013, not YouTube.
How to cite this page
For a single figure, cite the original publisher named next to it, and link here if the verification trail is useful to your readers. Each figure has its own anchor, so you can link straight to it, for example https://www.markstudios.com/research/youtube-copyright-statistics#VOL-008. To cite the page as a whole:
Mark Studios. "YouTube Copyright Statistics." Last verified Sep 22, 2026. https://www.markstudios.com/research/youtube-copyright-statistics
Our calculations and the evidence table are free to reuse with attribution and a link to this page. Each underlying figure remains the claim of its original publisher, and some publishers ask for a link when their figures are reused.
Sources
Download the evidence table (CSV)
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed (actioncount, period 2025H2) (2026-06-30). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed (actioncount, period 2024H2) (2025-05-27). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), Copyright Tools: Rightsholders and Creators - How YouTube Works (undated). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report, report page text (site script, archived) (2025-05-27). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report H1 2021 (2021-12-06). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report H2 2021 (2022-06-06). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report H1 2022 (2022-12-07). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report H2 2022 (2023-06-30). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed (actioncount, period 2023H1) (2024-05-19). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed (actioncount, period 2023H2) (2024-07-24). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed (contentidclaimcount, period 2023H1) (2024-05-19). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed (contentidclaimcount, period 2023H2) (2024-07-24). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed (contentidclaimcount, period 2024H2) (2025-05-27). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed (contentidclaimcount, period 2025H2) (2026-06-30). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed (copyrighttoolcount, period 2025H2) (2026-06-30). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed (copyrighttoolcount, period 2023H1) (2024-05-19). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), Access for all, a balanced ecosystem, and powerful tools (2021-12-06). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), About copyright removal requests (undated). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: disputedcontentidclaimpercent, period 2023H1 (2024-05-19). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: disputedcontentidclaimpercent, period 2023H2 (2024-07-24). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: disputedcontentidclaimpercent, period 2024H2 (2025-05-27). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: disputedcontentidclaimpercent, period 2025H2 (2026-06-30). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: claimtree, period 2023H1 (2024-05-19). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: claimtree, period 2025H2 (2026-06-30). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: claimtree, period 2023H2 (2024-07-24). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: claimtree, period 2024H2 (2025-05-27). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: failappealpercent, period 2023H1 (2024-05-19). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: failappealpercent, period 2025H2 (2026-06-30). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: counternotifications, period 2025H2 (2026-06-30). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: counternotifications, period 2023H1 (2024-05-19). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: counternotificationresponses, period 2025H2 (2026-06-30). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: counternotificationresponses, period 2023H1 (2024-05-19). Accessed 2026-09-22.
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- Google (YouTube), Submit a copyright counter notification (undated). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- U.S. Copyright Office, Section 512 of Title 17: A Report of the Register of Copyrights (2020-05-21). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: webformabusemagnification, period 2025H2 (2026-06-30). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: webformabusemagnification, period 2023H1 (2024-05-19). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- UC Berkeley School of Law and The American Assembly (Columbia University), Notice and Takedown in Everyday Practice (Urban, Karaganis & Schofield), updated March 2017 (2017-03-22). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Lumen (Harvard Law School Library), About :: Lumen (undated). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report, report text (Internet Archive copy, 1 May 2025) (2025-05-01). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), Continued progress on fighting piracy (Google Public Policy Blog) (2014-10-17). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), Continuing to create value while fighting piracy: an update (2016-07-13). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), How Google Fights Piracy (November 2018) (2018-11-07). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: paidrevenue, period 2023H2 (2024-07-24). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: paidrevenue, period 2024H2 (2025-05-27). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: paidrevenue, period 2025H2 (2026-06-30). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: monetizedclaimspercent, period 2025H2 (2026-06-30). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report, report text (Internet Archive copy, 16 April 2026) (2026-04-16). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Copyright Transparency Report data feed: creatorpayout, period 2025H2 (2026-06-30). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), The next 20: Powering the future of entertainment together at Made on YouTube (2025-09-16). Accessed 2026-09-22.
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- Google (YouTube), $4 billion paid to the music industry in last 12 months (2021-06-02). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), $6 billion paid to the music industry in 12 months (2022-09-13). Accessed 2026-09-22.
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- Google (YouTube), Submit a copyright removal request (undated). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), Dispute a copyright claim (undated). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), Appeal a copyright claim (undated). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), Monetization during copyright claim disputes (undated). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), Learn about copyright claims (undated). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), Understand three-minute YouTube Shorts (undated). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), YouTube Shorts monetization policies (undated). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), Understand Creator Music usage details (undated). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), Get started with Creator Music (undated). Accessed 2026-09-22.
- Google (YouTube), Remove copyright-claimed content from videos (undated). Accessed 2026-09-22.
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Update policy and change log
We re-verify every figure quarterly and when a major source publishes a new edition. The next scheduled review is December 2026. Corrections go to contact@markstudios.com.
- Sep 22, 2026: First published with 245 figures from 15 publishers, each checked against its original source.
