[raldi]

> I was under the impression that what I was doing was legal, protected under DMCA’s fair use policy, which by practice is what makes sites like Youtube legal: although they host millions of illegal content uploaded by users, as long as they agree to take down said videos when requested by copyright owners, they are in the clear because it is difficult/impossible to monitor what gets uploaded to their sites.

Actually, YouTube doesn't just passively sit around waiting for copyright holders to whack each mole one at a time; it has an incredibly sophisticated and powerful content-matching engine that does monitor what's being uploaded, and automatically checks new videos against a giant corpus of known copyrighted works.

There's a cool video about it here:

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en

[morrad]

> it has an incredibly sophisticated and powerful content-matching engine that does monitor what's being uploaded, and automatically checks new videos against a giant corpus of known copyrighted works

This is above and beyond the requirements of the DMCA though. Doing this isn't what makes Youtube legal, it just attempts to appease copyright holders.

[raldi]

That's a dangerous oversimplification. Read about the billion-dollar Viacom / YouTube lawsuit, and how it was anything but a sure thing that YouTube would win, despite their DMCA protections.

[horseapples]

Lawsuit came before DMCA. Lawsuit was filled in 97 and 98 was when DMCA was passed.

[dangrossman]

Viacom v YouTube was filed in 2007. YouTube didn't exist in 1997; it was founded in 2005. 1997 was before Napster even.

[horseapples]

My bad, no ideas what I was thinking.

[farginay]

I believe there was a copyright safe harbor for content on the internet before DMCA. However, it may have been just through case law. BBS and USENet operators took advantage of it back in the day.

[btilly]

Not just attempts to appease. It also provides youtube with advertising options on popular content because some copyright owners would like to leave material up and take a cut of ad revenue.

[sfall]

keep in mind that youtube was around for 2+ years before content id was first introduced

[gr3yh47]

none of that is required by the DMCA though