> For example, I've never quite understood how a site like Pinterest isn't flagrantly violating existing copyright laws
They have a DMCA process which seems to protect them.
They have a DMCA process which seems to protect them.
Even with those safe harbour provisions, just because the hosting services have successfully covered themselves, it doesn't make it any more legal for their users to upload copyright-protected material to them without the consent of the copyright holder. For the services where the user doesn't actively upload the material but instead directs the site to find it somewhere else on the Web and has the service fetch it themselves, I wonder whether even the safe harbour laws are entirely clear in some places.
In any case, I have significant reservations about the broad brush safe harbour protections afforded by some of these laws. It seems to me that they are still very much enabling large, very profitable businesses to circumvent the normal rules even to the point of knowingly running services whose main or only purpose is to facilitate actions that are most likely illegal, with just enough of a nudge and a wink to avoid any legal responsibility for doing so.