YouTube is way more successful than Megaupload or Napster. The difference is that YouTube went above and beyond to comply with the law and Megaupload and Napster didn't.
They didn't, but then they did, to the satisfaction of the Viacom case. Napster and Megaupload never built the tools to comply to the degree that YouTube did. Maybe if they had, they would still exist.
I think the other issue is that, if Megaupload and Napster actually complied hard, they wouldn't have many content or users left. YouTube may have had pirated content, but it also had enough original content to stand on its own.
The DMCA doesn't give anyone a score based on how many movies they have, or don't have. What is relevant is that YouTube provides tools that comply with the DMCA.
> YouTube went above and beyond to comply with the law
History just gets rewritten daily.
They took probably 10 years to attempt compliance at all. What's more, Google Video never had any organic participation (i.e. normal people uploading videos of themselves), and was almost exclusively pirated content. Its main differentiation (long forgotten in the age of youtube-dl) was actually how easy it was to download that content compared to Youtube, who made it annoying. Eventually Google realized that they still weren't going to attract the pirates/copyright violators that section 230 allowed them to use as a proxy (piracy still preferred Youtube because people were on youtube), so they bought it.
Youtube was absolutely loaded with copyrighted material, and the source of lots of pirated files still being traded is directly from youtube. Eventually they started aggressively scanning things for copyrighted music (because they wanted to make deals with the music industry), and then started preemptively responding to any DMCA claim by suspending the video so as not to look like hypocrites while they were going after music; section 230 implies a lot of helplessness for platforms in the face of users that removing audio tracks from videos where people were singing copyrighted songs doesn't bear.
They started getting rid of pirated (and amateur content in general) once they had the monopoly on video, not before. Now they wanted to push exclusive, expensively-produced content, and since producers didn't have any other online outlet, they were going to monopolize that, too. They didn't need the pirated content anymore.
> They started getting rid of pirated (and amateur content in general) once they had the monopoly on video, not before
That's a rewriting of history.
Google/YouTube started cracking down after Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc was reopened after appeals court ruled in Viacom's favor to listen to it's appeal in 2012 [1].
Google did develop ContentID as part of Google's damage control [0] when the case was in district court (2007-09) but half assed enforcement until the ruling in 2012 re-opened litigation, which forced Google's settlement with Viacom in 2014 [2].
People seem to forget that the Viacom litigation was an existential crisis for Google/YouTube, as the appeals court ruling could open the floodgates to litigation, and competitors ranging from Microsoft to CBS to the MPAA all supported Viacom [3]
> They took probably 10 years to attempt compliance at all.
ContentID has existed for all but 2 years of YouTube's entire existence. It was initially released less than a year after Google's purchase.
> Youtube was absolutely loaded with copyrighted material
And if they comply with Safe Harbor, it doesn't actually matter.
By comparison, what did Napster and Megaupload do?
Napster did nothing. Their argument was that they didn't need to comply at all.
Megaupload publicly pretended to comply, but intentionally nerfed their tooling to support non-compliance, and internally documented that they weren't complying.
Did it? If I go to youtube right now, I will get tons of ads selling illegal stuff which Youtube profit from. This is against the law but it seems that they don't get bothered by the law enforcers.
