A lot of people do abuse it. YouTube is just so massive it would have to be a huge amount of people.

Here's the form: https://www.youtube.com/copyright_complaint_form

Click "copyright infringement" and "infringing on me", add the target video's URL and it will be taken down automatically. It won't be restored until the appeal process is finished (usually several months).

So could most of youtube be automated down with this?

Yes and no.

While most of the content on YouTube is just "random junk" the most watched / popular content belongs to large networks, large networks work with YouTube through their content ID program which is treated slightly differently when it comes to DMCA claims.

Things get slightly more tricky because videos can have Multiple content ID's tagged to them by YouTube so if you upload a video with various music clips one owner can decide to mute it while another decides to block it completely.

That said if you are an original content creator once you've submitted content to YT's content ID program and you prove that you own exclusive rights for that content it pretty much protects you from the normal DMCA process.

That sounds like a fun weekend project to bring attention to the problem...

Theoretically.

I'm surprised I've never heard of this being the go-to way to troll on YT. There must be something holding would-be evildoers back from dominating large swaths of the YT community with this form. There would presumably be automatic abuse detection measures in place...

It's a little more political than that. Fullscreen (who represent the Fine Bros) has a very cozy, personal relationship with YouTube. While some random person issuing 10,000 DMCA takedown requests would likely get ignored; when Fullscreen does it, some VP at YouTube calls some VP at Fullscreen to make sure the request was legit. If so, they let it run its course.

There are few enough (more than 100, less than 1000) major YouTube distributors that YouTube just manages the relationships individually. This is often cited as a perk of joining a distribution company - they have greater clout in resolving disputes with YouTube because they have access via back channels due to representing so many content creators.

The entire abuse process on YouTube is far more manual and bureaucratic than most people on the Internet seem to think.

This website explains the process in a bit more detail: http://fairusetube.org/youtube-copyfraud

The best part is, a YouTube takedown is not a DMCA takedown - they've consciously chosen to make their own process to avoid the responsibilities (and protections) of the latter.

So what could YouTube possibly do to you for misusing the process? It's not a federal legal thing anymore. I suppose the takedown-ee could sue you for missed revenues if they really wanted to, but seeing as how there's nothing preventing bogus-named accounts from filing takedowns....

Well usage of the takedown process is bound by the terms of service. Suing every fraudulent take-down-er might be impractical, but the least they could do is penalize them within YouTube itself, like what they do to accounts flagged as repeatedly copyright infringing.

I remember a case where a DMCA takedown was used to get access to the victim personal informations. I do not remember if this occured on youtube, but maybe it is related ?

Yeah, that's a trivially abused weakness. If you DMCA something, and the takedown-ee contests it, YouTube automatically shares the contact information of both parties. In effect: "We wash our hands of this, settle it amongst yourselves".