Probably why I'm still not a partner
but to be honest I really don't want to be a partner because of copyright would take down most of my older videos (and new) and I really don't want money for short blockland videos
You can still be a partner with copyrighted material, as long as you don't try to monetize it it doesn't matter. I've accidentally monetized a video I didn't own all the material to once, they just disabled the monetize video for that video.
The main reason I wanted to be a partner is just so I could pick video thumbnails, the rest would just be a bonus to me
The new partner system means that becoming a partner isn't what it used to be. You can't use thumbnails yet, the huge million subscriber partners get a different treatment.