Youtube certainly became less attractive for me after the content ID system was put in place. Studying Russian, I liked watching Soviet era films on YouTube. These films cannot be copyrighted by definition, since they were made in USSR. I needed to watch each movie several times. I discovered that often, after going back to a movie that I watched, the ENTIRE channel (account) of a user who uploaded it would be deleted for a copyright violation, together with my NON-COPYRIGHTABLE movie.
The blame should be placed on the end user who is claiming content which they apparently shouldn't be. I'm not sure there is a technical solution around that which can determine if a certain video is inherently 'free' or not.
Essentially, once something was published, it was pretty near free game. 103(4) grants:
> The permission to use scientific, artistic, literary, or oral works (speeches) in film, radio, and on television, provided the original work existed already in a form amenable to such use.
