[SideQuark]

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......

[Oxidation]

With as much evidence, one can say that it's almost as if the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2002 allowed it.

Geocities, say, was huge before the DMCA and died after it.

[SideQuark]

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.

[1] https://washingtontechnology.com/1996/11/publishers-push-pir...

[Oxidation]

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.