[cratermoon]

> you can totally sue them for damages, and you'll probably win

Yeah, you can totally sue Disney or Warner Bros if they file a false infringement claim against you. You'll definitely not win unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to go up against their phalanxes of corporate lawyers.

The DMCA doesn't take into account unequal parties.

[derefr]

In theory that is a problem; in practice, the companies making knowingly false ContentID claims are 99% of the time small actors. Just like patent trolls are 99% of the time small actors.

Mind you, I say knowingly false. Big companies unknowingly make false claims all the time, because they don't know what-all they actually own — but you can't sue them for that anyway, since there's no mens rea there.

[yellowapple]

> but you can't sue them for that anyway, since there's no mens rea there.

"I don't know whether or not I own this intellectual property but I'm going to sic the DMCA on you anyway" is blatant negligence, at best. That our legal system doesn't consider that to be mens rea is one of a 3.7-mile-high stack of indictments against said legal system.