But it's tied together with the requirement to block access on receipt of a takedown notice, which is precisely what gets abused so often. I think this provision is a case of the "cure" being worse than the "disease".
(Btw, I'm not sure how much of a "disease" there would be in the absence of this provision anyway. Internet providers could defend against accusations of copyright infringement by pointing at their terms of use, assuming they were smart enough to have them and make customers agree to them, as pretty much all of them are.)
Because you are still contributing. The DMCA is the only thing that provides the safe harbor to prevent this claim. It's the only good part of the law.
The DMCA is the only thing that provides the safe harbor to prevent this claim.
Is this really true? Is there case law pre-DMCA that showed that website owners or ISPs were being forced to pay large judgments for copyright infringement even when they showed that the infringer had violated their terms of use?
I understand that without the DMCA, the claim could still be made, and that it might cost a website owner or ISP quite a bit of money to defend it in court. But that's more a sign of how broken our court system is than anything else; the way to fix that is to raise the penalty for frivolous lawsuits. "Loser pays" would be one way to do that.
(Btw, I'm not sure how much of a "disease" there would be in the absence of this provision anyway. Internet providers could defend against accusations of copyright infringement by pointing at their terms of use, assuming they were smart enough to have them and make customers agree to them, as pretty much all of them are.)