And the Internet Archive DMCA 512 Comments are here:

https://archive.org/details/InternetArchiveDMCA512Comments

And if you want the plain text version of the above:

https://archive.org/stream/InternetArchiveDMCA512Comments/In...

Is the DMCA working the way Congress intended? All we ever talk about here is how it's constantly abused, and used as a club by large organizations over smaller parties.

Or, is that pretty much "what Congress intended?"

There are two parts.

1. Safe Harbor for websites, means you don't have personal liability as long as you comply

2. Ability for copyright holders to get stuff taken down quickly

1 is working fine, 2 is subject to abuse. The post says that 1 works.

If 1 was working fine, google wouldn't have had to implement Content ID. Which in turn led to even more of 2.

My understanding is that Google did that to cut down on the amount of time they spent responding to DMCA requests, not because they were worried about legal issues if they hadn't.

No, they were forced to implement it, as the copyright holder did not want to discuss with google every time. They wanted the right to shoot first, then ask.

The original post introducing it explicitly says it wasn't for legal reasons.

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/state-of-our-video-i...

Do you have a source that says they were forced to do it by outsiders? Or any plausible way in which the DMCA required that?

Edit: also, content ID is automated checking of uploads. The ability for copyright owners to take down content directly is under a different program, I think.

That's correct. Also, note that Google's take down system is NOT a DMCA take down request. It does not satisfy the requirements in several places, and it is actually stricter than the DMCA.

Google is basically volunteering to allow people to issue take down requests without consequences; if it was an actual DMCA take down, they would have to

And yes, Content ID is another system entirely where Google pattern-matches uploads (and old stuff when they feel like it); when hits are found, Google tends to reasign the monetization to the "content owner" that registered with Content ID. Getting that money back has generally been impossible, even in cases where Content ID clearly screwed up (false positive).

If you're interested in the history of how Google has been using Content ID, there is an older discussion[1] from a few years ago when Google really started to abuse Content ID hard.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt1ubSVMwaw

Viacom sued YouTube when it first got big. Viacom argued that YouTube encouraged copyright infringement and knew about. The safe harbor is voided if the hosting company knew the content was copyrighted or made itself willingly blind of that fact.

So YouTube introduced content id to show that it really was taking copyright serious, and not just using plausible deniability.

Viacom mostly lost the case because there never was much better evidence that YouTube employees knew about individual copyrighted videos on the site.

Google probably keeps the system to avoid new suits and to make business partners happy. A lot of Google content isn't crowdsourced anymore, it's uploaded by big business suppliers who are essentially business partners. I imagine those contracts include content id to be used.

Huh - this would be a great website to check laws, to compare what laws are used for and what we were told they are for, maybe have some sort of score + highlight the best and worst (also trends, too see if scope is being widened or narrowed for certain laws).