[jjoonathan]

> There's no other scalable solution given existing copyright law.

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No, practicality does not demand "binding shitty algorithmic decisions for thee, extreme latitude for egregious errors from me." Determinations don't need to be scalable to backstop a system of back-and-forth escalating claims that keeps the incentives correct for everyone at all stages: human beats algorithm, identified human beats unidentified human (note that at this point and all subsequent points rights holders have an enormous, automatic scalability advantage), identified human with legal commitment to consequences for being incorrect beats uncommitted human, and finally bump it to the legal system if all else fails, but by now everyone has skin in the game committed to their claims so none of the disagreements will be spammy.

This is all possible, it's not even particularly difficult, but it wouldn't create a cozy relationship with big rights holders which is what youtube actually wants, so instead we get "binding shitty decisions for thee, extreme latitude for egregious errors from me."

[talldayo]

> Determinations don't need to be scalable to backstop a system of back-and-forth escalating claims that keeps the incentives correct for everyone at all stages

That's yesterday's game. It might have been possible to do this in the 90s, but today's copyright claims are automatic, authoritative and legally legitimate enough to scare a platform owner. This is entirely legal, too; nothing stops Sony from dumping 800,000 alleged infringements on YouTube's lap and giving them a 2 week notice to figure it out. If Google doesn't respond to every claimed abuse, then Sony can force them to arbitrate or sue them in court for willful copyright violation.

> This is all possible, it's not even particularly difficult

But it's not automatic, it creates unnecessary liability, and it's more expensive than their current solution. It's not overly generous to Google to assume that they also hate the rights-holders, but literally can't be assed to do anything about it because the situation is stacked against them. Even assuming the overwhelming majority of copyright-striked content is Fair Use, the losses incurred by the 0.1% that isn't could make defending YouTube a net-negative. Record labels and movie studios keep IP-specific lawyers on-payroll for this exact purpose, and fighting it out is a losing battle any way you cut it.