The problem is there’s the statutory notice and takedown then counter-notice then lawsuit process that must be followed. There is also a requirement to have a policy to deal with repeat infringers and that doesn’t really have an ‘only for new content’ exception as it’s generally all still under copyright. If Google doesn’t follow those requirements, they can be found liable for the copyright violations instead of being covered under the safe harbor. No business is going to want to open themselves up to that kind of potential liability for all the thousands of hours of videos they get a day.
That said, the whole ContentID and non-DMCA copyright process they have is on them, as that part is voluntary (to some extent, they got pressured by the music industry and friends).
But you’re not really a repeat offender if the video is years old since you haven’t been doing it since then. I guess that goes too much into legal stuff tho and I’m not an expert there at all. Nonetheless, it just feels unfair.
By the repeat infringer policy, I was generally talking about multiple infringing uploads, not just a single video over time. Apologies for the confusion.
One of the nice things about the DMCA for the average user is that it’s generally on the copyright holder to notice infringing content is out there and demand that it be taken down, instead of forcing some kind of pre-upload approval system that would never scale to the amount of content that is being uploaded daily.
I totally think it’s unfair too though, just trying to point out how the law currently works. I feel it’s ridiculous that something could have been created before you were born, you live to a very full life expectancy, and by the time you die the work still hasn’t entered into the public domain. That does not feel like copyright is for a “limited time”.
