YouTube, by pulling music videos off its site in the UK, is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, punishing innocent songwriters in the process.

Google, the site's owner, accuse the Perfoming Rights Society of being greedy in negotiations, but what they conveniently fail to mention is the pittance that they pay for the professional content on YouTube.

The PRS is not a big corporate giant like Google – it doesn't have shareholders that need to see a profit - it's simply a society set up to collect royalties on behalf of songwriters for the use of their compositions and to represent them in negotiations.

In the agreement Google made with the PRS in 2007, they tied the collection society to a confidentiality agreement, which means that they're not even allowed to tell their own members the details of the deal. But, as a songwriter myself, I can tell you that most songwriters haven't seen any income from YouTube at all, since a music video has to be viewed hundreds of thousands of time, to take it over the required threshold where you even get a payment. I've been told that videos by Coldplay and similar acts would make a couple of hundred pounds, at most, for getting millions of hits on a single video.

Another point that Google has failed to address is that a large part of the content they have or plan to take down is music written by people who are not covered by the PRS. The expression "using a sledgehammer to crack a nut" comes to mind. Andrew Shaw, managing director of broadcast and online for the PRS, tells me that Google actually only pay anything at all for the music they license in three to four countries.

One of the disagreements in the negotiations between Google and the PRS is over providing data. Google wants the PRS to give them a list of who they represent and what songs and then Google will pay those composers if they get enough hits. The PRS want Google to give them the data of all that is being streamed on their site, and then they'll tell Google which songs are covered by the PRS. Surely the latter method would mean more checks and balances.

"I'm not insinuating that Google would in any way be dishonest," says Shaw, "but if we agree to trust them to pay our members accurately, it will set precedent for any other deal we make".

Some argue, as Johnny Vaughan did on his show this morning, that music videos are promotion, so songwriters shouldn't get paid at all. But it's becoming apparent that streaming - instead of owning - is how more and more music fans choose to enjoy their music, as they don't want or need to clog up their hard drives with huge catalogues of songs. It's ironic that Vaughan would make such a statement, when the difference between Capital Radio and YouTube streaming is that the listener actually gets to choose what they listen to. As Rob Dickins, the former chairman of Warner Music UK, once said: "It's promotional when you play my record when I want you to!"

The PRS has been in negotiations with sites like MySpace for years and never blocked them from using music while the negotiations are ongoing. My guess is that Google are trying to force PRS's hand by taking down all this content and trying to portray them as greedy and backwards thinking. A shrewd move, as they've gagged the collection society from revealing the real facts and details of the, no doubt, paltry deal that is on offer.

Lindvall is a member of the Swedish collection society STIM

