You can say those cases are frivolous, but it hasn't stopped Robin Thicke from being ordered to pay out millions. Fair use doesn't always prevail in court or even within youtube when it should.
There is a chilling effect on creativity when this happens. There will be fewer people willing to risk a massive financial burden by creating something independently if sounding too similar to something else could get you sued into bankruptcy by a group that already has essentially endless wealth.
Currently, the industry doesn't even want the burden of dealing with the court system. They put pressure on youtube under threat of legal action to act on their behalf for free. It's the same with ISPs. The DMCA gave ISPs legal immunity from acts of copyright infringement committed by their subscribers, but only under very specific and poorly defined circumstances.
Right now, they are fighting in courts against half a dozen different ISPs to try to define that wording so that they can make unsubstantiated accusations against internet users and if an ISP doesn't cut the accused individual off from their service forever, the ISP can be sued for billions. No court case or evidence proving that the subscriber has done anything will be needed. If they say someone did it often enough, their service has to be cut off forever. Because some users don't have many options for internet access getting permanently kicked off an ISP can mean getting cut off from the internet entirely, but court cases are time consuming for the media industry so they are willing to let that happen if it means they can make your ISP into their free copyright police. So far, in the courts the media industry is winning.
There is a chilling effect on creativity when this happens. There will be fewer people willing to risk a massive financial burden by creating something independently if sounding too similar to something else could get you sued into bankruptcy by a group that already has essentially endless wealth.
Currently, the industry doesn't even want the burden of dealing with the court system. They put pressure on youtube under threat of legal action to act on their behalf for free. It's the same with ISPs. The DMCA gave ISPs legal immunity from acts of copyright infringement committed by their subscribers, but only under very specific and poorly defined circumstances.
Right now, they are fighting in courts against half a dozen different ISPs to try to define that wording so that they can make unsubstantiated accusations against internet users and if an ISP doesn't cut the accused individual off from their service forever, the ISP can be sued for billions. No court case or evidence proving that the subscriber has done anything will be needed. If they say someone did it often enough, their service has to be cut off forever. Because some users don't have many options for internet access getting permanently kicked off an ISP can mean getting cut off from the internet entirely, but court cases are time consuming for the media industry so they are willing to let that happen if it means they can make your ISP into their free copyright police. So far, in the courts the media industry is winning.