It's a common YouTube scam - find a video with a lot of views that's rising quickly, download it and reupload it to your own account and submit it to Content ID. YouTube will automatically scan its library for copies of "your" video, and gives you the option to either take the copies down, or monetise them via ads.

Because of the DMCA's stupid counter notification process, it takes YouTube two weeks before they'll release the copyright claim, by which time the video is no longer viral and the original content creator has missed out on the bulk of the video's revenue.

The thing is, YouTube isn't really to blame for all of this, it's the idiotic way the DMCA is written and applied. As a service provider, YouTube is obliged to immediately respond to DMCA claims, regardless of how spurious a claim might be, or risk losing its protection under the DMCA's safe harbour provisions.

If the person against whom the DMCA takedown was lodged wants to challenge its validity, they have to send a counter notice, which starts a two week timer. If the person who submitted the takedown doesn't start actual legal action by the end of that two week period, YouTube is allowed to reinstate the content... at which point the DMCA troll can submit another takedown request, starting the whole Kafkaesque process again.

In the case of ContentID, which bypasses the DMCA, yes, they are to blame, along with all the media companies that demanded its creation.

People sometimes confuse the things which trigger DMCA safe harbor provisions with mandates but they aren't, and the only reason to be guided by them is to take advantage of the safe harbor attached to them. Real businesses often want to have better relations with big money content suppliers than the minimum required to avoid copyright liability, and can already structure their relations with end users in a way that they would have no liability for any take-down in any case, so exceeding what is necessary for the safe harbor on the content owner side while not concerning oneself with the safe harbor on the end-user side if perfectly rational, and doesn't bypass anything.

It might underscore why the DMCA isn't as balanced as it seems on the surface but instead radically tilted in favor of content owners, since only one of the superficially parallel safe harbor provisions is even relevant to most hosts.

AFAIK ContentID claims mechanism merely mimics DMCA mechanism – ContentID infringement claims are not actually DMCA notices.

That means that false-positive ContentID claims basically carry no legal consequences, unlike false-positive DMCA claims (perjury).

That means you can throw automated infringement notices at users knowing that X% of them will be false positives. That wouldn't work with DMCA.

It doesn't even do that, nor is it intended to. This isn't bypassing DMCA, though.

> That means you can throw automated infringement notices at users knowing that X% of them will be false positives. That wouldn't work with DMCA.

Sure, but DMCA isn't even relevant. DMCA notice provisions are a requirement for content owners to bypass the DMCA liability shield for third-party hosts in filing infringement claims -- they have to file notice in accordance with the DMCA, and then if the content host doesn't act within the parameters of the safe harbor, they can pursue whatever infringement action they would, absent the DMCA liability shield, have had against the content host.

DMCA notice requirements do not protect users from infringement claims, they protect content hosts. (And counter-notice requirements protect content hosts from liability claims from users stemming from take downs based on the DMCA notices.)

There are no DMCA provisions that exist to protect users posting allegedly infringing content.

Because of the DMCA's stupid counter notification process, it takes YouTube two weeks before they'll release the copyright claim, by which time the video is no longer viral and the original content creator has missed out on the bulk of the video's revenue.

What I don't understand is why someone uploading videos like that isn't being sued for straightforward copyright infringement.

The measures under the DMCA (and similar measures elsewhere, such as under the EUCD in Europe) were supposed to protect YouTube, the hosting service, in cases like this. Otherwise, the host is vulnerable to fallout from illegal acts committed by others and of which it has no knowledge. It's a similar argument to the common carrier principle in other communications channels.

Now, you can certainly debate whether the protection is too generous. For example, under this sort of scheme it is possible to build a business that facilitates and encourages copyright infringement and generates huge revenues as a result of that business model, yet wash your hands of it by claiming to just be the innocent third party host. This is still about the hosting service, though.

As far as I know, none of the DMCA-style laws protect the original uploader who actively and in this sort of case knowingly shares someone else's content in breach of copyright. If they're doing that with the kind of content that picks up millions of views and consequently denying advertising revenues and marketing effects to the legitimate creator/rightsholder, why isn't that grounds for a regular copyright infringement suit and, in a jurisdiction like the US, seeking statutory damages that make it worth pursuing one?