Yes, the laws cater to the megacorporations (what else is new). If you were working in the (mass) recording industry, you'd have all the processes in place for tracking down current copyright holders, obtaining permissions, negotiating licenses, etc., in a cost-effective manner. But the hardships placed upon independent artists who need to do this--or to defend themselves against spurious copyright infringement claims by corporations--are below the concern of our governments.

As for "making it difficult for anybody to pay them", why should a corporation bother with the hassle of granting you permission and collecting your piddly royalties when it can have its own artists record those songs, with a much larger piece of the pie ending up in its own coffers? They aren't making it difficult for people to pay them, they're just rechanneling where the dollars come from, and keeping more of it.

And yes, olddude, YouTube should pull down all the covers where permission was not obtained, even if it means that 90% or more of the current videos would need to be taken down. If YouTube had to do that, perhaps enough people would get boiling over the crippling way copyrights get applied and extended to DEMAND reforms from their governments instead of passively rolling over. Petty acts of civil disobedience will only leave people open to potential prosecution; we need concerted grass-roots efforts if any meaninful change in our favor is to occur. So while I'd greatly miss not being able to view all the bootlegged videos on YouTube, a massive clamp-down there may be what's needed to get a critical mass going toward serious copyright reforms.