[gruez]

I know "fair use" gets bandied about quite frequently on youtube uploads, but offering full verbatim downloads of any work is highly unlikely to be considered fair use if a court were to rule on it. The only reason such sites are still up is that the rights holders don't care enough to sue.

[kmeisthax]

Yes, and this is also the real tragedy of automated copyright enforcement. All the funny grey area uses get marginalized.

[fair_enough]

We need adverse possession ("squatter's rights") for intellectual property.

I'm surprised copyright trolls are not buying IP from defunct game/film/music companies and suing youtubers left and right for uploading video game music and anime OSTs.

If I were a sociopath and didn't care how I make my money, I draft some legit-looking legal threat letter template demanding $10,000 to avoid a civil lawsuit worth millions, fill in the blanks with a name, IP address, and title of pirated content, then mail out the letters by the tens of thousands using USPS-subsidized cheap mail.

If you mail out about 20k of these threats, you only need 3 of them to pay up to come out on top.