How is this not a form of pirating? Pirating is the reason we have the stupid DMCA to begin with and now we have this happening!
If it were handled the DMCA way, here is how it would go.
1. Someone complains to the hosting service alleging that you are violating their copyright.
2. The hosting provider takes down the material and notifies you. If you do not want to dispute this, that is the end of it.
3. If you want to dispute their claims, you notify the hosting provider. It doesn't really matter, as far as I recall, if you dispute the claims because you say the claimant does not hold copyright, or you say that they do but your use is covered by fair use, or any other mean.
4. The hosting provider puts your material back up, and tells the complainant that if they want to take it down, they need to take you to court, and provides your legal contact information for filing said suit.
If the claimant takes you to court, and wins, following the above procedure absolves the hosting provider of any liability for the infringement.
A claimant trying to use DMCA where it is not justifiable faces a couple other deterrents.
First, unless the claimant is representing themselves in the case, they are going to have an attorney, and that attorney is going to take into account Rule 11(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure [1]. If the claimant doesn't have a fairly reasonable case, he is going to have trouble finding an attorney.
Second, knowingly including false information on a DMCA takedown notice is perjury. The claimant can face criminal charges for that (although it would probably have to involve someone doing this on a large scale to get Federal prosecutors to prosecute).
Knowingly filing a false DMCA takedown also makes you liable for civil damages, including costs and attorney fees, incurred by the target of the takedown notice, the hosting provider, and in the case where neither the complainant or the target are the copyright owner, the actual copyright owner.
If the complainant who knowingly files a false takedown notice actually follows through and sue you for infringement, I'd guess that the damages due to you for the false notice would be handled there.
If the complainant isn't that stupid, and drops the matter after the notice and counter-notice, you could sue them over the false notice.
I've reviewed the DMCA a few times and I am pretty sure this isn't true. It's supposed to be the "teeth" of the DMCA to prevent false claims, but the actual teeth are very blunted.
The requirements a DMCA takedown notice are[1]
1. you have to sign it as someone authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner.
2. you have to identify the work you claim is being infringed.
3. you have to identify the work you want them to take down.
4. you have to give them your contact information.
5. you have to state that you have a "good faith belief" that the content is infringing.
6. Direct quote, and the only use of the word "perjury" in the notification requirements: "A statement that the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly in-fringed."
The only thing you must declare under penalty of perjury is that you are authorized to act for the copyright owner. The only other claim you make is that you are acting in "good faith", which is super fuzzy. An actor sending out notices on content detected by content-id bots is almost certainly acting in "good faith" if they haven't been made aware of potential errors by those bots.
[1] https://www.aclu.org/other/text-digital-millennium-copyright... (search for "ELEMENTS OF NOTIFICATION")
Maybe youtube should by default bundle the complaints? Ideally you'd have rich tools for slicing and dicing a complaint and responding to different slices in different ways.
The content is never taken down.
Not true
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7000961?hl=en
Throughout the dispute process, we'll hold the revenue separately and, once the dispute is resolved, we'll pay it out to the appropriate party.
The case where an uploader loses all their revenue is if the video is completely demonetized (or completely taken down in the case of a DMCA request)
Pirates don't really steal data, they just copy. But this is actually a kind of theft. Most pirates would consider that immoral, I'd guess.