This is a legitimate use of a DMCA takedown. The author of the obituary (presumably the decedent's family or friends) owns the obit and therefore owns the copyr

This is a legitimate use of a DMCA takedown. The author of the obituary (presumably the decedent's family or friends) owns the obit and therefore owns the copyright to it. Whether Youtube would honor that type of takedown is a different question, but it's as legitimate as any other copyright takedown and not subject to any fair use. A better approach, in my opinion, would be for websites like legacy.com, where the obit author originally posted, to seek authorization to pursue DMCA takedown requests on these obit pirate videos through a clickwrap agreement when the author makes the initial post. That way, there's value-add for the original obit-posting website, and it adds legitimacy/weight to the DMCA takedown requests because YT can centralize the DMCA takedown processing from fewer sources.