Well, YouTube is kind of in a hard place. There are massive penalties for hosting others' IP, and basically no penalties for not doing that. The incentives are strongly aligned with taking content down if there's any hint that it may be infringing. If you'd like that to change, then you need to change the incentives -- the laws. YouTube is just operating in the system Disney and Cher created.
I understand that laws are weird and that you'd want to err on the side of caution. I don't understand that it's so easy to get someone's content taken down to the extent that (for example) a DMCA takedown request is a common retaliatory tactic between YouTubers when they're beefing, and that there's little recourse other than getting enough people Tweeting about it that a YouTube exec stumbles upon the issue during their morning coffee. I also don't understand why there's seemingly no process to revisit such strikes, or get a human involved in the process.
I guess there's some section of their TOS stating "we might just nuke your account because we feel like it" so they're legally in the right to do whatever they feel like. Just feels like such a weird way to operate such a business - to just go completely hands-off and let all participants tear each other apart via content reporting or takedown requests.
Yeah it's pretty bad. But look at it from their end:
Option A) Be a little more strict about honoring takedown requests, possibly get hit with $X,000,000 in damages by incorrectly hosting infringing content, or
Option B) Honor takedown requests unquestioningly, and incorrectly take down a tiny fraction of the site's content, which might have served like $20 in ads.
IMO, the win-win situation for YouTube, YouTube content creators, and copyright holders is for Google to simply make the DMCA claim/counter-claim system as streamlined as possible. The DMCA lets YouTube not give a shit after a counter claim gets made, because they've earned their immunity. Someone who makes a living uploading stuff to YouTube have a professional interest in making sure their content remains up, so they'll respond with the appropriate "your claim is bad, if you disagree sue me" counter-claim quickly. And for copyright holders, getting a reputation for successfully suing infringers will rapidly serve to chill people's abuse of their material.
> Just feels like such a weird way to operate such a business - to just go completely hands-off and let all participants tear each other apart via content reporting or takedown requests.
It's a free hosting site, the correct way to operate that business is to lower your operating costs as much as possible, such as for example by not employing thousands of additional lawyers to arbitrate in complex legal queries where, if the case goes to court, there is a significant chance the finding would be different to a legal analysis anyway (most analysis of fair use claims by a competent lawyer would have a substantial part of the answer be "I don't know but there's a risk...").
If you want a hosting provider who'll do that, bluntly they are much more expensive than YouTube are.
A DMCA takedown notice requires you to identify the infringing material and to state that it's accurate under penalty of perjury. Anyone who sends a false DMCA takedown is committing perjury and can be prosecuted.
If a channel gets three copyright strikes it's done... and all those subscribers and followers you lose. It's incredibly high stakes if youtube is your job.
