Apparently people are still fascinated by very public celebrity meltdowns. At some point, this sort of thing has to get old, but damned if folks aren’t still flocking by the millions to see Britney Spears ruin her life. Even more intriguing is the way this thing is providing a look into the whole digital rights/information wants to be free debate with MTV issuing a takedown notice to YouTube, therefore losing out on profit share money that they would have received if they’d simply provided YouTube with an official version of the clip.

From today’s Cynopsis Digital email:

Sometimes bad is good, but in this case it could have even been better. Britney Spears’ awful performance on the MTV Video Music Awards drove MTV.com to new heights. The site registered 4.7 million unique visitors on Monday, two million more than the daily record of 2.6 MM uniques set the day before. A total of 17.4 million streams were generated via MTV.com on Monday, and another 4 million views occurred using MTV’s syndicated video player, as word spread about the train wreck. What’s ironic about MTV’s success is that it is actually costing the company money instead of making it money. MTV ordered YouTube to pull the performance from its site. Instead, many are finding it via a “sponsored link” on Google. (According to Google Trends, “Britney Spears VMA video” ranked as the #22 most popular search on Monday). Had MTV participated in YouTube’s commercial video program, Google would have paid the network half the revenue it generated from ads embedded with the clip.

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