Youtube is walking a rather fine line. If they don't cooperate with groups like the RIAA etc they will get sued. Essentially cooperate or face attempts to take youtube down entirely. These "copyright" organisations have a mini-me in just about every single country as well as varying degrees of copyright friendly law. Youtube would be sued all over the world. Even if they win most of the cases, which is doubtfull, it's very likely that they will still lose in many countries and be shut down there entirely. At the very least they would be forced to remove a lot of their content or face massive fines if anything slips by.
In any case, they lose. Doing this just makes them lose a bit less.
Edit-
This crap is never going to stop untill people elect politicians that will actually change the laws that allow this sort of thing. So, not very likely any time soon.
