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>What, and stop being able to get free advertising on what is effectively the largest audio streaming website on the internet?

Not just free advertising. A damn lot of these music videos are "monetized", and about of half the ad revenue goes to the studios (if and how much of that money is passed on to the artists... that's another question).

Youtube should do proper DMCA, I fully agree, at least when it comes to the notice-counternotice-lawsuit process defined by the law.

However, it's not as easy. The DMCA is law in the United States, but - surprisingly to some (I have dealt with processing DMCA notices and similar, not for Youtube/Google tho) - it is not a law elsewhere and other nations have their own laws. Even the question of what happens when there is a dispute and party A is in the US and party B is e.g. in Germany is not that easy... Not even what jurisdiction Youtube itself then falls under. Browsing Youtube from Germany gives an imprint that states that the service is provided by Google Ireland Limited (the EU mothership) but also mentions the legal department of Google Germany GmbH (the German subsidiary). Youtube has been sued in German courts over copyright before (e.g. the GEMA case), and Youtube did show up because if they had ignored it instead they would have risked losing the entire German market, if not the EU market.

The kafka-esque system they have right now - with three strikes, ContentID, reporting made extremely easy for alleged copyright owners, challenging these reports made difficult and black box for the channel owners - is most likely a result of their legal department pushing for the global lowest common denominator of any jurisdiction they care about with the smallest risk of Youtube being sued and found liable for user conduct in those jurisdictions.




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