You're saying that they were registering content on youtube as theirs when it wasn't (first taking down other people's version of that content)? It seems weird, just because it would work for videos that people posted of random records they bought, but I assume it would actually hit a copyright owner fairly fast, they would retaliate, and the company's scheme would be revealed when multiple copyright owners contacted youtube.
Anyways with imageshack it's different I think because they don't have the same revenue model. When people embed images on a webpage, it doesn't earn money for the imageholder's account does it?
I've noticed that there used to be like every record ever on youtube and now it's hard to find anything. I couldn't figure out what was happening and it seemed to start happening when they implemented their new search. I assumed it just wasn't showing search results. I thought they were maybe cracking down on copyright violations, but there's no way that someone made a claim on the super obscure records I was looking for. I then thought maybe they cracked down and closed the accounts of copyright violators, so if they had other videos that violated (including the ones I'm looking for), all their videos would be taken down. I guess what you're saying now is another potential explanation.
I was reading the other day about how to beat the youtube audio fingerprinting. Apparently you either have to add so much noise that the noise floor is like 50% and it overwhelms the song, or you have to pitch the track up or down by at least 5%. I was wondering if that's why there are so many audio tracks on youtube that play too fast, I had previously assumed it was some sort of glitch on uploading / conversion, etc.