[just_observing]

Until there is a financial penalty for wrongful use of the DMCA this type of thing will continue.

They use robots to create reports (maybe not in this case) because for them there is simply zero downside.

That downside needs to exist.

[maxerickson]

This is probably just Content ID.

So there the problem is that Youtube gives preferential treatment to their more profitable users, they don't have to submit a legal document to Youtube, they just flag the content and are done.

I bet there was never even a human in this particular loop.

[pluma]

Supposedly you risk jail time when submitting illegitimate DMCA claims. In practice the only case I know of is when YouTuber thunderf00t used that threat against another YouTuber (VenomFangX) to make him publish a video statement clarifying that his claims were illegitimate and he won't do it again -- but none of that ever ended up in court (because VenomFangX complied, before temporarily retiring from YouTube in shame).

EDIT: Of course the ContentID system probably circumvents that entirely because technically your content is taken down automatically rather than because of a DMCA claim. Even though the effect on the uploader is the same: impacting the monetisation of a video they may have invested a significant amount of time into. If anything it's worse because there is no built-in way to counter-claim or claim damages (without directly going to court).

[Esau]

The real solution would be to require a human to certify the infringement complaint - no more automated requests.

[jobigoud]

But that can't be left to the claimant. So Google should charge a fee for each complaint to cover the cost of the verification. But then you could make the company pay more simply by uploading thousands of infringing videos…

In any case a simple air date sanity check would have prevented this particular case.

[codys]

By "certify", GP might mean "certify under penalty of perjury", where the specific wording (which would probably need some notes about certifying they had verified their ownership) is strict enough to give one a bit of legal ammunition against false complaints.

[Esau]

Exactly. Sorry if I wasn't explicit enough.