Content owners have to sign up to be part of the ContentID system. Since the NASA video is public domain, NASA does not own it and cannot enter it into the ContentID system.
Content ID, unless I'm mistaken, is not a DMCA takedown request. It's is Google's own internal tool. It's their way of self-regulating.
You are correct though, this is not the first time this has happened. This is fairly common (or at least I hear about it often enough), and I assume that anyone who uploads a fair number of videos will eventually be hit with some Content ID complaint regardless of whether they infringed.
I think Google should explain itself, and introduce some measure of protection and repercussions against over-zealous media providers that provide Content ID with samples of media that they do not own. After all, if Google can be asked to moderate it's own site, I think it's fair that a media company can accurately mark the content that it does own.
Doesn't ContentID look at video in some fashion and compare it to new video uploaded? So, if the NASA video was IDed first, all the DMCA requests would have been rejected and saved Google -- and others -- all this trouble.
No excuse for Google here. Even if these were DMCA take-down requests, AFAIK Google can ignore them if they are confident the requests are baseless. They simply lose the safe harbor protection in case the complaint is legitimate.
The problem is that "safe harbor", as I understand it, is an all-or-nothing proposition. If they ditch the DMCA safe harbor clause for this one particular video, they're opening themselves up to liability for any and every video on YouTube. That is something that Google definitely does not want to consider.
No, because then Google would be legally on the hook for all the content they host. They need to maintain their role as "host" (not owner), which means they cannot step into the disagreement. The two dueling owners have to solve it themselves.
