““this has been YouTube’s strategy: pretend not to know there is infringing material being uploaded by users and take down the content when notified by the copyright owner. But this of course neglects one crucial provision of the DMCA—does YouTube receive financial benefit directly attributable to the presence of infringing content on the site? The answer, of course, is yes: in fact you could argue that YouTube achieved success in a crowded field precisely because of its laxity toward pirated content. Competitors such as Yahoo and RealNetworks were thinking they were in a boxing match, where there were rules, while YouTube was performing in a professional wrestling match, where there are no rules.””
