They had been facing lawsuits and legal scrutiny since 2007; the only parties that ever won were the legal departments. Until relatively recently, YouTube wasn’t even profitable, and Content ID itself was, according to Google, over $100 million of investment to develop over the years. Given the scale of YouTube, I actually think it’s fair to take this at face value.

Ultimately I am not a lawyer and I can’t analyze how and why the case ended the way it did. However, I do think it is obvious to anyone that Content ID is a key component of how YouTube managed to escape further lawsuits and legal scrutiny. And as can be seen in the Oracle case, fighting something all the way into legal precedence can backfire in enormously painful ways, like having APIs all be eligible for copyright.

That is absolutely the battle YouTube fought that lead to Content ID and the claims system that doesn’t have the leniency you wish that it did. It’s not even ambiguous; this is the system that we got. In fact, the system actually improved vastly since it was initially implemented.

Really. It was all a direct reaction to the lawsuits: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB118161295626932114

When I say it has improved, I mean it genuinely has. Back in 2008 the usual outcome of copyright strikes were deleted videos and deleted channels. Copyright cartels monetizing videos they didn’t make due to dubious Content ID matches may seem like an unreasonable response, but it is still a better compromise than content flying down blackholes.

And yes. It would be great if all of these problems could just be solved. I’m sure they’ve heard every idea imaginable. There is no one obvious way to solve everything. So asking “why don’t they just do this?” is not productive. What we could ask is “how did we get here?”

And the answer to that is that copyright is broken. And if we could fix that, or at least make it less broken, some of these problems would literally disappear.

And if you don’t believe me, there’s tons of backup from people more persuasive who have perspectives of being in the direct line of fire. Like Tom Scott: https://youtu.be/1Jwo5qc78QU

And yeah YouTube could do better, but all too often you get the perspective that this is all their fault because they could solve it with one easy trick. It’s easy to say that when none of the competition managed to stick around to prove it.

Instead, the opposite happened instead, when Twitch had its own copyright reckoning.

We knew copyright on the internet was fundamentally broken in the Napster days. Did we forget?