Your argument is based on intent. YouTube shows their intent to not infringe by the effort they put into removing infringing content.
But the GP discards intent as a relevant point and says if you host it, you should be thrown in jail, regardless of intent.
Likely, somewhere in the middle is more reasonable. But the parent is correct in that the volume of infringing content on YouTube appears to be significantly larger than just about anywhere else, and no one is raiding their offices. No one is going to jail.
So the asymmetry is striking. If it were all purely civil rather than criminal, I'd get it.
Good point about intent. That's something that seems lost on much of the general public. The entire notion of "mens rea" is overlooked by many, yet it is critical. It's what differentiates between different crimes or levels of crimes (i.e. degrees of murder) and it's what keeps hotel employees and landlords out of jail on aiding and abetting charges when they are unknowingly giving a fugitive a place to sleep.
The fact that GP discards intent as a relevant point makes his/her whole argument invalid - that's the whole point, in our society and law intent matters a lot, it's one of the most important things in determining whether something is a violation and if so, how severe it is.
An argument based on intent is an argument about the reality we live in, an argument that ignores intent might as well be about a fictional world and isn't relevant to ours.
>YouTube shows their intent to not infringe by the effort they put into removing infringing content.
I'd disagree, I think that Youtube shows their intent to allow infringing based on the gross amount of copyrighted content they allow on their website.
Does great Britain? I know the US has the DMCA which among many other things says people can't be held labial for infringing content hosted on their site if they respect and follow DMCA take down requests.
You couldn't have continuously operated OiNK without the intention of enabling mass copyright infringement, which was clearly the raison d'etre of the site.
But the GP discards intent as a relevant point and says if you host it, you should be thrown in jail, regardless of intent.
Likely, somewhere in the middle is more reasonable. But the parent is correct in that the volume of infringing content on YouTube appears to be significantly larger than just about anywhere else, and no one is raiding their offices. No one is going to jail.
So the asymmetry is striking. If it were all purely civil rather than criminal, I'd get it.