Looks like the DMCA Hitlerism is starting up again!

I'm mad!

For a while, YouPube had tried to mitigate DMCA abuse by naming third-party complainants outright. But this doesn't seem to apply to fourth-party complainants.

There was one user on YouTube that I always watched for updates. This user posted gobs and gobs of old TV commercials from the '70s and '80s that I remembered from my youth. This was where I found the Arrid commersh with the Ronald Reagan look-alike and other goodies. But now when I click on this user's videos, I'm confronted with an ominous pink box warning that the video has been removed for a terms of service violation. The warning does not name who complained.

Haven't people ever heard of fair use? Before the DMCA, everyone would have agreed the clips were permissible under fair use. But the DMCA polices thoughts, not just acts. The clips weren't available anywhere else and never would be. Copyright was invented to protect art and science, not to stifle it by keeping it consigned to the vaults.

Obviously the hilarious old ads were removed after a fourth-party complaint, because the real copyright holders (if they even still exist) had nothing to gain from pulling the clips. In other words, someone who never held copyright on the commercials complained. Such a fourth party would have had more to gain by throwing their weight around.

There's supposed to be a provision in the DMCA to charge those who make bogus complaints with perjury. But it's kind of hard to put a corporation in jail. So what I'd like to do is add a clause requiring DMCA complainants to post a $1,000,000 deposit when they complain. The deposit shall be returned to them only when the complaint is proven valid.

I'd also like to see a law requiring video sharing sites like YouPube to name complainants who get videos pulled under the DMCA.

Or better yet, the DMCA should be repealed.