> I mean, YouTube has nothing to gain from making life difficult for content creators - they are acting in this way because they have essentially been compelled

> I mean, YouTube has nothing to gain from making life difficult for content creators - they are acting in this way because they have essentially been compelled to. To be fair to YouTube, their ContentID system is better now than when it was launched. (Now it'll actually tell you where in the video the infringing content supposedly is, and allow you to do automatic audio-replacement in some cases.) And to be fair, they've finally implemented an escrow system that can help for some false ContentID strikes. But they've still taken no action I can see to reduce the number of fraudulent ContentID strikes. Creators have a "three strikes, you're out" system; ContentID claimants seem to be able to push out millions of false claims with absolutely no response from Google. If I'm liable to lose access to my account for using someone else copyright without permission, than I see no reason a ContentID claimant should get off scot-free for claiming someone else's copyright (or a public domain work) without permission. If there was some enforcement of that in place, I'd call the system "fair". As-is, it's grossly unfair.