It's absolutely Youtube's fault. Nothing in the existing body of law requires them to proactively block copyrighted material from their platform. They only have to act on DMCA takedown notices in the required timeframe.

Their automation obsession has resulted in a firehose of erroneous takedowns that 100% aren't required by law, and they deserve all the ridicule and damage to their business that comes with that.

It's not just YouTube that's automation obsessed. The groups filing the DMCA takedowns are also automatically scanning and flagging content on YouTube.

The vast majority of content YouTube removes is not due to DMCA requests. It's pretty dumb to file DMCA requests with YouTube, because their manual claim process is easier to do and operates outside of the legal framework of the DMCA.

If YouTube actually followed the law instead of making up their own bullshit system those people could be sued for damages in court for filing false take down notices!

If YouTube actually followed the law it would have been shutdown even before google bought them.

I'd like to see the lawyers censured for barratry.

> Nothing in the existing body of law requires them to proactively block copyrighted material from their platform

The fight doesn’t have to take place in the realm of law. At best copyright holders would have sued youtube into oblivion if they didn’t do proactive takedowns. At worst, well considering that Comcast owns both tons of copyrighted property (through Universal Studios) and major telecommunication infrastructure, I can’t imagine how dirty they can play if they had to.

I think the latter scenario is why Google was so willing to go out of their way to appease the entrenched media conglomerates with their extrajudicial copyright enforcement. They want to get into licensing deals with the media oligopoly, and to do that they had to play ball by going above and far beyond the DMCA.

Does Naxos pay Youtube for these takedowns?