1. The entire pre-DMCA-takedown process (the first round of complaint and appeal) is not required by law. I think it's a good idea in general (it's nice to have a low-stakes option before you launch into the DMCA process) but the immediate presumption that the complainant is in the right is offensive. Something like "we will start displaying ads if you do not dispute within 24 hours" would sit a lot better.
2. Once the DMCA process has started, the poster was required to go through Youtube's "copyright school", and was limited to posting only short videos. I wish they would wait until one or the other party lost the dispute before doling out punishment and education.
Youtube is within its rights to behave this way, but it's Youtube's choice, not something required by law.
And then, after your content has been down for a week and a half and finally goes back up, any new set of jerks (or as we saw here, maybe even just the same old jerks) can come along and file another takedown against the same content and it goes back down for another ten days or more.
I would say that it's amazing it doesn't see more abuse, except that it does. SEO companies and similar such scumbags regularly file fraudulent takedowns against their competitors. As far as I can discern, the process Hollywood employs to decide what to issue a takedown for comprises some combination of untrained monkeys and a random number generator. Wendy Seltzer wrote a paper detailing a whole slew of other such issues a couple years ago[1] but still nothing has been done to address it.
[1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1577785
In reality this is how the legal system works for almost everything else: First you ask nicely, and if the parties can't agree then you go to court. But in most cases the party in the wrong (at least in theory) knows that they'll lose in court and so concedes immediately and everything works as it ought to without taxing the court system.
It's a bit of a side track, but: Any commentary on a work could reasonably be expected to feature that work substantially, couldn't it?
Now I am in favor of fairly wide latitude for this sort of reuse, which is a big reason I favor much, much shorter copyright terms, and graduated copyright at that (eg exclusive for 20 years, mandatory cheap licensing for the next 30, PD after that - for example). But it's hard to ignore the rightsholder's concern that this work is less about commentary than simply hitching a ride on a currently-popular franchise. It's not cashing in, since the person isn't trying to monetize it directly, but the person is trying to build their creative reputation from rearrangement of others' work, while denying any and all revenue to the original creator.
As someone who has spent the last decade making films from scratch rather than remixing others' work, I think this is pretty weak sauce, just as I think that DJing falls far short of musicianship. I engage in both activities, but when I'm DJing I don't consider that to be creatively equivalent to composing something original. People who say all creativity is fungible are lying to themselves.
Rifftrax is additive, not transformitive
The person designated by the federal government to recommend who is exempt from DMCA restrictions recommended this work by name as an example of a work that would be hurt by not having exemptions to Decryption prohibitions. They considered it a valuable documentary.
>“Based on the video evidence presented, the Register is able to conclude that diminished quality likely would impair the criticism and comment contained in noncommercial videos. For example, the Register is able to perceive that Buffy vs Edward and other noncommercial videos would suffer significantly because of blurring and the loss of detail in characters’ expression and sense of depth.” -Recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, October 2012 (Page 133) Maria Pellante
Why do you think this? A good remix requires just as much ingenuity, just as much creative juices, as an original work. In fact, a remix might require even more ingenuity, because of the constraints of the remix. Of course, there are people who claim to be remixing, but is just putting things thoughtly side by side. But then again, you have original works that are also rubbish.
To me, the eye of the law should treat remix and originals exactly the same - works in their own right. A remix may have derivative works from else where, but as long as it is fair use to a reasonable person, it should be considered as an original.
Please see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5033525 above.