The problem here is copyright duration being insanely long. Works from 1926 should not still be under copyright but they are. YouTube is just doing the best the

The problem here is copyright duration being insanely long. Works from 1926 should not still be under copyright but they are. YouTube is just doing the best they can do within the confines of our ridiculous system. If copyright were only 20 years with an application to extend in special circumstances (equivalent to patent law), we wouldn't waste so much of our economic power devising and enforcing systems to uphold our archaic copyright laws.