Normally, it makes sense to allow companies to certify their compliance with these types of regulations. It would be a waste of resources to have the government inspect every new model ahead of time to make sure they have things like mirrors and steering wheels. It’s not like they can lie on the forms and no one will notice. Nor would a normal car company have any reason to, since they’d just be setting themselves up for lawsuits, fines and costly recalls.

The difference here is that Tesla decided they could issue themselves an exemption from regulations, which is not the same thing. They want to declare the car street legal without including basic items mandated by law. Other companies making self-driving cars that wanted approval for models that lacked required equipment got exemptions before they launched their models. Tesla just said “it’s fine, we gave ourselves an permission” without even consulting NHTSA.

But that’s pretty much the way Tesla operates. They have a long history of ignoring laws, lying to regulators, withholding evidence, and generally acting like they can do whatever the hell they want. It’s been backfiring on them a little in more recent years, but not nearly as much as it should.

Surely this will get Donny his Nobel Peace Prize.

While they could, that is also a different situation. YouTube copyright claims are generally done through YouTube’s own system, not through the actual DMCA process. That system is designed first and foremost to prevent YouTube from getting sued. It’s rigged in favor of the people claiming copyright because those are the ones doing the suing. Any attempt to fix it increases the chances of a lawsuit.

These trolls messing with Google are making actual DMCA claims, which is a formal legal process and opens the claimant up to potential liability. False claims are perjury. And by affecting Google search results on a large enough scale, they are hurting Google’s business. Those sites getting taken down abelong to current or potenti customers.