You don't know your history. The DMCA was passed in 1998 with the express purpose of saving that fully functioning internet, as BBS systems and ISPs were being held liable for vicarious copyright infringement and contributory copyright infringement, making the business of operating an ISP legally and financially untenable. There was a realistic danger that no business would continue operating a public ISP under the existing legal framework after notable cases like Playboy Enterprises Inc v Frena. ISPs lobbied legislators in the 104th Congress (1995-96) for legislation that would preserve the open internet by shielding them from that liability for users' actions, and this lobbying directly resulted in the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act (aka Safe Harbor) getting written into the DMCA.
> The DMCA was passed in 1998 with the express purpose of saving that fully functioning internet
Given this blatantly incorrect reframing of the DMCA as anything other than being intended to serve the copyright lobby’s interests, it’s hard to believe you’re arguing in good faith.
Yet not one of the biggest sites with user content was formed before the DMCA. Why didn't any of those fully functioning internet user sites dominate? Certainly other, non-user content sites from then were big.
Its almost as if providing safe harbor allowed such sites to grow......
Geocities had ~1.8M users in Dec 1997. They were often sued for copyright (e.g., here[1]) infringement since then providers were liable. This made it harder for them to raise money, since as copyright holders became more saavy about what companies were doing on the internet, they were increasingly targeting them.
After DMCA when those suits were gone, they raised $$$, became much more valuable, grew, and soon got bought by Yahoo. They went from the 5th most visited to 3rd, even with much more competition. They grew the user base.
The same thing happened to Tripod and Angelfire from that time.
Instead of trying to cherry pick one example, look at all companies before and after. That is the accurate way to see what happened. If you think the safe harbor content protection did not and does not matter, look how hard current companies are pushing to keep Congress from removing such laws.
None of that automatically means a safe harbor provision can only exist if claimants are able to make obviously bogus claims without redress, though, which is what the original point was before or was derailed into a false dichotomy of having any safe harbor vs not. Either the DMCA is defective in that regard, or it's a deliberate feature. Either way, it's open for abuse.