While I hate the heavy-handedness that the DMCA operates with and I think it's ridiculous that LL's video was banned it's worth remembering back to pre-YouTube

While I hate the heavy-handedness that the DMCA operates with and I think it's ridiculous that LL's video was banned it's worth remembering back to pre-YouTube to recall how we got here. Before YouTube there wasn't any consumer-accessible dissemination of AV media online. You had to have serious equipment, there was no social distribution and copyrighted material couldn't get used anywhere. YouTube came along and simply overpowered the copyright holders with both sheer volume and variety of copyright infringements and followed through with the financial and legal muscle of Google behind it. There was a long time when it wasn't clear whether YouTube would actually survive its legal battle and I assume that the instant-take-downs were a compromise that was reached to allow them to continue. I'm glad that Lawrence Lessig is fighting this case and it's a good time for it to happen. However it's also worth keeping in mind why these instant take-downs were instituted in the first place - it was (I presume) because it was the only way to placate copyright holders into allowing the whole thing to continue.