By the repeat infringer policy, I was generally talking about multiple infringing uploads, not just a single video over time. Apologies for the confusion.

One of the nice things about the DMCA for the average user is that it's generally on the copyright holder to notice infringing content is out there and demand that it be taken down, instead of forcing some kind of pre-upload approval system that would never scale to the amount of content that is being uploaded daily.

I totally think it's unfair too though, just trying to point out how the law currently works. I feel it's ridiculous that something could have been created before you were born, you live to a very full life expectancy, and by the time you die the work still hasn't entered into the public domain. That does not feel like copyright is for a "limited time".