Your assessment is incorrect for the legal options a DMCA claimant will use and doesn't match how previous legal proceedings actually played out.
E.g. Viacom still filed a lawsuit against Google because they disputed that 'safe harbor' applied Youtube.[1]
Google did settle with Viacom (helped by offering ContentID as a tool) but they didn't win any definitive court ruling on "safe harbor" that makes Google lawsuit-proof in the future.
[1] Example articles from 1st page of results: https://www.google.com/search?q=viacom+lawsuit+google+%22saf...
https://www.finnegan.com/en/insights/blogs/incontestable/goo....
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/03/viacom-and-googl...
> Viacom said it was not seeking damages for any actions since Google put in its filtering system, known as content ID, in early 2008.
Obviously other media giants weren't going to let Viacom be the only one with access to this profit machine, so now pretty much all global media giants have access to Content ID.
But in the realpolitik sense, I agree. Foreign company, angry US business interests, etc. I doubt this was argued out reasonably in a court beforehand.
I've seen a lot of software legally distributed using torrents where even the software creators link to torrents that you can use.
Because we all know that website and what torrents it had. That "torrents aren't necessarily illegal" are neither here, nor there. Their torrents were illegal.
(Not that I'm against it, but well, it's not like they're fooling anyone with the "torrents aren't necessarily illegal" defense for their particular case. That wasn't some FOSS/PD software torrent site, and that wasn't why people visited it, or why it was run...).
Was that true in the countries where they had a local presence?
Illegal in the US.
Media companies insist that Google do more and more and they are willing to drag google into court and will lobby congress to force google and (everyone else) to bow to their whims.
Extorting 14 year old kids and broke college students for settlement money is nice and everything, but Google has very deep pockets and the the media cartels would love to get their hands on Google's money just like they want to take billions from ISPs
I do blame google for going along with it when they have the clout and resources to fight them, but the real issue is our horribly broken copyright system
If YouTube was divorced from Google, YouTube would be friendlier to creators.
Counter argument: some of the top performing content on YouTube is made by the establishment. But then again, Google created this status quo by using their algorithm to promote content that satisfies their partners.
Your theory that it went beyond the requirements of the settlement with Viacom is interesting, but unless you have insider information as to the terms of it, it is at best, speculative.
Would you stake billions of dollars on the legal theory that if YouTube followed the DMCA to the letter of the law, publishers would not be able to successfully sue them?
Counter-anecdote: None of my recommended content on YouTube is from established media companies. YouTube's profiling of my account definitely puts me squarely in the "Tom Scott and Technology Connections" demographic - but even so on the times when I've let YouTube's auto-play do its thing I've never been steered towards mainstream media from Viacom and the like (unless you count the occasional clip from a decades-old Discovery Channel docu or unauthorized BBC Top Gear upload)
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What weirds me out about "normal-persons' YouTube" that I see when borrowing non-tech-sector friends' devices is there's a lot of top 40 that's right there - I wonder if that's what you're seeing?
If YouTube was divorced from Google it would have ceased existing a decade ago.
It's immensely complicated, because videos are cached all around the world. Someone in Bangladesh watching YT videos is not always fetching them from the US, you can be sure of that.
So "profit" is definitely an opinion, not a fact. If YT was divorced from Google, it would become a fact.
YouTube's primary means of profit is as a music platform playing RIAA protected copyrighted music mostly owned by Sony, Universal and other media conglomerates.
YouTube's profits are fully dependant on whether these conglomerates allow their popular artists to host music on the platform so your idea is very very misguided.
No, it's not. Google has gone so far above and beyond the DMCA's requirements here that it's hard to even see the DMCA at play at all.
If they were only following the DMCA rules, the video uploader would have the opportunity to send a counter-claim to Google, saying that they don't believe the content is infringing. Google then would put the video back up, without taking on any liability. If the original DMCA claimant still believes there's infringement going on, then their only recourse is to file a lawsuit against the uploader (not against Google, as Google has done their duty under the safe harbor provisions).
But instead, Google has decided to bend over backwards and create this Draconian mess that prioritizes the will of the big copyright holding cartels.