Also behind that link, IIRC, is the option to contact the claimant via email

The key bit being that youtube and it's employees never make copyright decisions. They provide the tools, but all actual disputes must be settled between the parties or in court.

I've worked in digital rights management for YouTube media, and (dare I say) it is far from being pretty good. Claimers can basically deny revenue to uploaded videos for months at a time while the dispute process is occuring. This period is a killzone as many content creators often rely on both the timing and month-to-month revenue to pay bills (content creation doesn't pay well to begin with). The end effect is that claimers bully the industry far beyond what the legal rights that they hold.

I also make my living from Youtube and I would strongly disagree that it is fair. On the absolute most simple basis, false claims can be damaging to the creator but the same false claims are completely risk free to the issuers. The problem shown in the OP is an additional layer of complexity where another company is contacting the creator on behalf of Disney which muddies the waters on who exactly is filing the claim and whether they have the right to. The only thing in the Content ID system that is built in favor of the creator is if the claim issuer doesn't progress the counter claim and it is automatically dismissed. This doesn't even get into the likely diminished recommendations the video will get after being flagged, the time wasted by the creator to manual fight things that can be spammed with the API (0), and the unfair revenue splits that can result if the creator did make an ho…