Ever wanted to view a YouTube clip but you couldn't do it because it had been removed for copyright complaints? Ever wanted to know what happened with the clip and what's the reason for the removal? Now you can get all the information straight from YouTomb, a new service that tracks the YouTube clips which have been removed for copyright complaints and publishes details about them.

As you know, YouTube hosts a huge amount of videos, some of them published without the authorization of the owners. Because of that, YouTube is based on the DMCA act which requires the Google video sharing service to remove a copyright infringement clip once the copyright holder requires it.

YouTomb is a project developed by MIT Free Culture and currently monitors 223,593 videos according to some stats placed on the official page. No less than 4416 were removed for copyright violation while 13,437 were deleted for other reasons, it is added.

Clicking on one of the YouTomb entries discloses the uploader, the upload time, the removal reason as well as the tags of the clip. Moreover, YouTomb also lets you know the time of the removal and how long it has been viewable through YouTube. However, please note that YouTomb does not allow you to view or download clips, it only provides data about the removed YouTube content.

"YouTomb is a research project by MIT Free Culture that tracks videos taken down from YouTube for alleged copyright violation," it is mentioned in the About section of YouTomb.

"More specifically, YouTomb continually monitors the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns. Any information available in the metadata is retained, including who issued the complaint and how long the video was up before takedown. The goal of the project is to identify how YouTube recognizes potential copyright violations as well as to aggregate mistakes made by the algorithm."