If the site owner becomes aware of content that is obviously infringing on copyright (i.e. that the "infringing activity would have been apparent to a reasonable person operating under the same or similar circumstances.") then they also have a duty to take it down.
So really, if /anyone/ sends them a notice that they're hosting Harry Potter, they should take it down straight away. They should insist on receiving a compete DMCA take-down notice from the copyright holder.
It's over this provision that someone could take Scribd to court. Until or unless someone does, however, they're going to stick to their policy on DMCA take-down notices.
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Originally Posted by Shaggy
Legally, only the copyright owner is allowed to issue a DMCA takedown. As far as self policing, you're right, once you start down that road it at the very least creates the impression that anything they missed was left up on purpose (not to mention the near impossibility of doing it with 50,000 documents a day).
That's basically YouTube's (and other similar sites) stance as well. They don't have the resources (not to mentioned the expertise) to research the copyright on every upload, so they leave it up to the owner to inform them when there is a violation. They're just a hosting service. Ultimately it's up to the users to know whether something is legal to upload, and up to the copyright owners to inform them of any infringement.
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