The entire point of the provisions was a way to immediately take down the content pending things like injunctions, court orders, filing lawsuits. If we're talking about a site hosting a pirated copy of Windows, for example, the Microsoft could be losing money with every copy downloaded while it takes them a week or so for the proper judicial procedures to be followed to get it taken down.
The DMCA has good and bad parts about it. It's like a "Good Idea, Bad Idea"[1] short:
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Good Idea: Make it relatively easy and cheap to send takedown notices so that the 'little guy' without fancy lawyers on retainer can participate.
Bad Idea: Make it relatively easy and cheap to send takedown notices so that the 'big guy' can send out millions of them relatively easy.
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Good Idea: Make it so that you only need a 'good faith' belief to file a notice, so that the 'little guy' doesn't accidentally get caught up in legal terms and procedures.
Bad Idea: Make it so that you only need a 'good faith' belief to file a notice, so that the 'big guys' can get away with filing obviously stupid takedown notices because their fancy lawyers on retainer can easily quash any perjury charges over bogus takedown notices.
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Obviously none of the 'little guy' stuff was considered during the drafting of the legislation though. It's just a by-product. Legislators also never considered the implications of bad actors, because they were only thinking of large content companies (which would obviously never do anything bad). It's also worth it to consider that this was passed on 1998 (and drafted earlier). The Internet was not as pervasive as it is now (even though the dotcom bubble was in its early stages).
The DMCA has good and bad parts about it. It's like a "Good Idea, Bad Idea"[1] short:
----
Good Idea: Make it relatively easy and cheap to send takedown notices so that the 'little guy' without fancy lawyers on retainer can participate.
Bad Idea: Make it relatively easy and cheap to send takedown notices so that the 'big guy' can send out millions of them relatively easy.
----
Good Idea: Make it so that you only need a 'good faith' belief to file a notice, so that the 'little guy' doesn't accidentally get caught up in legal terms and procedures.
Bad Idea: Make it so that you only need a 'good faith' belief to file a notice, so that the 'big guys' can get away with filing obviously stupid takedown notices because their fancy lawyers on retainer can easily quash any perjury charges over bogus takedown notices.
----
Obviously none of the 'little guy' stuff was considered during the drafting of the legislation though. It's just a by-product. Legislators also never considered the implications of bad actors, because they were only thinking of large content companies (which would obviously never do anything bad). It's also worth it to consider that this was passed on 1998 (and drafted earlier). The Internet was not as pervasive as it is now (even though the dotcom bubble was in its early stages).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Idea,_Bad_Idea