YouTube didn't bribe congress. They built significant tooling that gave the rights holders what they wanted, even beyond what the law required them to.
To this day, rights-holders don't even have to take legal action or issue a formal DMCA takedown to have videos taken down or siphon off the profits of those who use their content. It is even automated.
Google has had a massive lobbying effort for a long time, and donating to Congress is a part of it. If not for it, how is it that a takedown process wasn't sufficient for Mega, but it is sufficient for Google? How is it that the rights-holders didn't engage Mega into having such tooling?
Quite simple really. Merely having a takedown process isn't enough to comply with the law. It must actually be complied with. YouTube went above and beyond in this, not only complying with DMCA requests, but not even requiring them. Megaupload's takedown process was a sham. Yes, they had a page where DMCA requests could be submitted, but actual compliance was poor, and intentionally so.
Compliance is a critical part of the DMCA. Once a site knows about infringing content, they lose safe harbor provisions.
Also, how do you think lobbying Congress would even hypothetically help YouTube in court? The DMCA doesn't have any different provisions for YouTube than it does for Megaupload.
> how do you think lobbying Congress would even hypothetically help YouTube in court
With regard to Megaupload, this much is simple. The Justice Department can freeze an investigation under pressure from Congress. Whether an investigation comes to its conclusion or not is strongly under the influence of Congress.
YouTube was found to be in compliance with DMCA in federal court due to Viacom's case years before the DOJ bought a case against Megaupload. I don't know why YouTube would be worried about DOJ investigating something they had case law to support them on.
This quote from Kim, in the op, indicates the same:
> “[T]he obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload, unsolicited, and what copyright holders were able to remove with direct delete access instantly and without question.”
Yes, like many criminal defendants, he always claimed to be compliant with the law.
They did have an "Abuse Tool" available. The problem was, it was intentionally flawed. It was a sham, intended to make it appear like they were compliant, when they were not. It didn't remove infringing content. It just removed the link. Also, Kim intentionally limited content holders in the number of requests they could send. So, pirates using the system just created more links to the same infringing content.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y....
To this day, rights-holders don't even have to take legal action or issue a formal DMCA takedown to have videos taken down or siphon off the profits of those who use their content. It is even automated.