Ah... bullshit. Copyright is civil law. There's no assumption of innocence in civil law. Fundamentally, because there's also no guilt, in the moral sense, only

Ah... bullshit. Copyright is civil law. There's no assumption of innocence in civil law. Fundamentally, because there's also no guilt, in the moral sense, only responsibilities and obligations. Practically, it's often a matter of chance which party is slightly faster and therefore plaintiff. If the other filing gets there first, you're the defendant. That's also why the standard of truth is just 50%+x, i. e. "preponderance of the evidence": it's the only standard that works in a symmetric situation. And, at the moment that YouTube takes down your video, the preponderance of the evidence is (sometimes just momentarily) against you, both statistically (most copyright complaints they process are legit) as well as philosophically, since there is only someone's affidavit that they own the copyright in the content, and no reply to it (yet). So, at that moment, YouTube doesn't start investigating because that would be a gigantic waste of resources, considering the uploader is in a far better position to disprove the claim. Forwarding the claim isn't YouTube siding with the accusation. It's them following the process the law set out (and, maybe, being slightly cheap). False takedown request are annoying, yes. They are also a few orders of magnitude rarer than copyright infringements, which I imagine would also tend to annoy some creators. And, crucially, they are the fault of the complainant. Doing anything creates the risk of idiots suing you without cause, and there's just no argument why YouTube should (or could) absorb that risk.