>[YouTube] entirely disregard[s] key aspects and intents of the law, leaving fair use and fair process as a joke.

I make my living from YouTube, and I am very familiar with their policies surrounding copyright. I think your characterization of YouTube in relation to copyright is totally off base.

YouTube is covered by the DMCA, and YouTube responds to DMCA takedowns because if they don’t, they could be liable for contributory copyright infringement.

The DMCA provides safe harbor to online service providers (OSPs) who follow its notice-and-takedown procedures. Those procedures don’t allow OSPs to make subjective decisions about whether fair use might apply in relation to a copyright claim.

Nevertheless, YouTube sometimes does exactly that. YouTube responds to some DMCA takedowns by, instead of promptly taking the video down, requesting additional information from the claimant in support of their claim. As I understand the DMCA, that is YouTube going well-beyond their legal obligations - to their potential (albeit unlikely) detriment.

So that’s the DMCA takedown process.

Now let’s talk about Content ID.

When a creator receives a Content ID claim, that’s the beginning of a process, not the end. Content ID claims can be disputed, and during the dispute, all revenue from the video is held in escrow, eventually going to whomever prevails in the dispute.

The first level of the dispute process is essentially the uploader asking the claimant to reconsider, with the option to provide a brief explanation of why the uploader believes the claim is invalid.

If the dispute is rejected, that’s still not the end of the story. The uploader can press the dispute further. Doing so forces the claimant to either abandon their claim, or ‘upgrade’ it to a formal DMCA takedown. If a takedown is issued and the uploader believes their work is not infringing, they can respond with a counter-notification, which forces the claimant to either (a) sue the uploader within ten days, or (b) lose the dispute. In the latter case, the video goes back up and any escrow revenue - along with all future revenue - goes to the uploader instead of the copyright claimant.

I am making two main points here:

(1) I believe that YouTube does try to comply with the law. Whether they do so out of civic duty or “to avoid expensive litigation” is irrelevant.

(2) Although the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions don’t allow OSPs to make subjective evaluations regarding fair use (while retaining their safe harbor), YouTube often does exactly that, when they feel it may be relevant.

In fairness, I think part of that is because of they were emboldened by the recent-ish decision in Business Casual v. YouTube, but whatever the reason, it happens. And YouTube was doing that long before the decision in Business Casual. (Which held, in part, that YouTube can’t be liable for infringing the copyright of any content that is uploaded on YouTube, since their TOS include a provision that essentially grants YouTube a license to do whatever they want with the work. Crazy stuff.)

There is more to copyright on YouTube, and I like to think that I am very familiar with how it all works. If you think I’m wrong about anything I wrote above, I am interested in hearing why. Similarly, if you have any questions I’ll do my best to answer them.