>You can then appeal to YT directly (good luck with that) but in the meantime the claimant can issue a "strike" on your account.
Sure ... These "strikes" are DMCA claims.
"If they had to file real DMCA claims, these claims on obviously fair-use materials would disappear."
So your position is that YouTubers aren't disputing claims because they're scared of strikes, but also that if the only option was strikes then they would vanish? How do you figure?
You can get a strike from a DMCA notice or YouTube's internal system.
The difference between the two systems is that the DMCA has language about fraudulent claims, whereas wading through the ToS and contracts you have with YouTube will be nigh impossible. A lawyer might take your DMCA case where youtube wouldn't really be directly involved, but nobody is up for a fight with YouTube directly. It's never worth the money to these YouTubers at their current scale.
Either YouTubers need a union as powerful as the major media cabal to bargain with YouTube on their behalf or some particular publisher needs to be making movie studio money before this system is fixed.
A copyright claim not made through the DMCA does not lead to a strike, full stop. See https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7002106?hl=en, which differentiates between takedowns through a formal notice (i.e. DMCA), and content ID takedowns.
And if you dispute a content ID claim, the claimant must either retract it or convert it into a DMCA notice. So they have no additional legal protections if they want to keep it down permanently.
I really don't see how this system is broken and needs to be fixed. Money is kept in escrow while claims are disputed, and ultimately the rights owner must allow the content to be reinstated or file a lawsuit.
> I really don't see how this system is broken and needs to be fixed.
As I understand it, for YouTubers who rely on monetization of their videos, the system is completely broken. A ContentID strike takes down or demonetizes the video immediately. The YouTuber disputes the strike. Once processed, that video goes back up -- but it's too late, the monetary damage has already been done, as most of the money a video will make is made in the first few days. Having the video taken down and reinstated does not reinstate the lost revenue.
That said, I think that anyone who has a business that relies so heavily on income from from YouTube has a very precarious business to begin with. I'd advise them to get the majority of their nickels in some other way.
That's a valid point. I looked into that and it appears the policy says they'll put the video back up during the dispute but won't monetize it:
"If the policy is set to block (don't allow users to view the video on YouTube) or track (allow users to view the video without advertisements), this policy may be temporarily lifted until your dispute is resolved. Learn more about policy and claim basics. During this time, your video cannot be monetized."
Strikes are not perfectly 1:1 with DMCA requests. I don't know how to prove that, but I don't trust some reductive Google support pages to have the whole picture either.
I'm fairly confident in what I've said (there's content ID claims, both manual and automatic, and then there's DMCA claims). The EFF does not mention any third option. They mention ToS issues, which are strikes but which aren't because of copyright. And there's a brief mention of contractual obligations, which I mention in my post as well. Those aren't a separate way to take down content, but rather an agreement not to consider disputes from certain rights owners (as far as I know, the only one that's been identified is UMG). This is rare and I have not heard of widespread abuse of this.
It's somewhat confusing because Youtube doesn't always use the term DMCA in their documentation. But it's fairly clear when they say "formal notice", mention that it's a legal requirement, and link to the counternotice page.
You are probably right about all takedowns being done through DMCA. I wish Google was more clear about it.
Your Reddit guide was very good but I would still not call a strike the same thing as a DMCA notice. YouTube doesn't have to have a strike system, they do that to placate the major rights holders who don't want to deal with serial offenders so that there's not a big court battle about whether YouTube knows they are uploading copyrighted content. ContentID serves the same purpose, to shield YouTube from liability. But YouTube lets copyright holders abuse these tools and so far has gotten away from trouble for doing so.
Sure ... These "strikes" are DMCA claims.
"If they had to file real DMCA claims, these claims on obviously fair-use materials would disappear."
So your position is that YouTubers aren't disputing claims because they're scared of strikes, but also that if the only option was strikes then they would vanish? How do you figure?