>"Youtube wouldn't be providing that take-down utility if it wasn't required to do so by the DMCA" Can you cite which part of the DMCA says that content hosting platforms/distribution channels need to /make it easy/ for publishers to take down stuff? AFAIK, YouTube was NOT required to provide this -- they just did it because they were probably getting hundreds of DMCAs per day and it was eating up time trying to validate them all.

I deal with DMCA takedown requests and we do things a lot differently. It's pretty commonly accepted that ISPs and networks have a 24-48 hour grace period before they MUST disable the content. The actual "grace period" isn't defined, but this page provides more info and suggests 6-12 hours, which I feel is unreasonably short for a user to take the content down by their own action: http://www.shearsocialmedia.com/2010/08/dmcas-safe-harbor-ma...

Here's the thing, we do web hosting. When DMCA idiot lawyers call us, they want /the entire server or IP taken offline/, sometimes just for one image (like a 400x300px JPG of the cover of a magazine). That, again IMO, is crazy. We never do that to our clients, but that's what the copyright thugs demand. We also force them to send all requests to abuse@ our domain and we refuse to discuss issues via phone. We've never been in legal trouble because of any of this, but we've had some of these thugs threaten to sue us (and they've also lied to us about what we're required to do).

Back to the meaning of "expeditious", Wikipedia has some great info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_... and suggests that 24 hours might be acceptable. Did I mention that most of the agencies sending us DMCAs do so at 10PM EST on a saturday, or other times obviously meant to force us to pull the content rather than give the client time to take it down willingly (we get a lot in the morning hours of Sunday as well). Lots of these firms are in India and just use something like TinEye to match images, then have aggressive people call during their day, but I still hold that this type of behaviour is pretty obviously done on purpose.

Anyway, regarding my original point, I think that it's not reasonable to expect someone like YouTube to provide a tool that is easy to use to take down videos. I think this was developed out of some big idea to try to gain favour with the MAFIAA, and I'd be very surprised if YouTube was in fact required by any law to develop a tool that makes it convenient for rights holders to pull content.

>Anyway, regarding my original point, I think that it's not reasonable to expect someone like YouTube to provide a tool that is easy to use to take down videos. I think this was developed out of some big idea to try to gain favour with the MAFIAA, and I'd be very surprised if YouTube was in fact required by any law to develop a tool that makes it convenient for rights holders to pull content.

I think I see where the misunderstanding came from here. I never meant to say that the DMCA explicitly said they have to provide a tool for ease of use, what I meant is that given the volume of requests they likely deal with the only economical option is to automate the process somehow. I don't agree with the decision, I don't know if I would make the same one, but given the volume and mandatory time-frame I don't think there are many other acceptable scenarios.

With regard to your anecdote, it sounds to me like the volume of take-down requests you deal with is manageable by a group of one or more people, I'm just saying I don't think throwing a group of people at the volume of requests YouTube gets would be enough to meet the safe-harbor time-frame and we both know they will do whatever it takes to get indemnity.