Daily Motion

Forbes.com - Magazine Article: "
Technology
YouTube's Doppelganger
Andy Greenberg 11.29.06, 6:00 AM ET

It's getting tougher and tougher to break copyright law on YouTube these days. The site now performs frequent purges of television shows and other proprietary content uploaded by users. But those forbidden files can still be had. They've largely migrated to DailyMotion.com, another video-uploading site that replicates YouTube's model of user-provided videos. DailyMotion, by contrast, seems to do little if any regulation of copyrighted material, nor does it limit the lengths of clips.

At any given time, DailyMotion hosts hundreds of copyrighted television episodes, allowing users to watch the shows free of charge and without commercials. And try as they might, television networks have had little success in plugging the streaming-video leaks in their intellectual property dam.

DailyMotion, based in Paris, displays no advertisements and has no apparent source of revenue. Its executives couldn't be reached for comment, and its business model remains a mystery. But if the site's goal is to build a large audience before seeking profit, it's starting to succeed. Its market share, though a tiny 0.22% compared to YouTube's 65%, has increased 300% in the past three months, according to researchers at the Web analysis firm Hitwise. DailyMotion recently claimed its millionth registered user, and according to analysts at ComScore Media Metrix, the site had 7.6 million unique visitors in September.

DailyMotion's store of contraband has lately been attracting the attention of a more entrepreneurial set of technorati. The site's fans have created a small industry of 'portals,' amateur pages that catalog entire seasons of television shows and link to those shows "