There is a law protecting hosting providers -- it's the DMCA safe harbor provisions. But in order for those safe harbor provisions to apply, the host needs to t

There is a law protecting hosting providers -- it's the DMCA safe harbor provisions. But in order for those safe harbor provisions to apply, the host needs to take the content down almost immediately or have the account owner do it (grey area on how quickly this really is IMO, but it's usually <24 hours). After the content is taken down, the content owner can file a counter-notice (basically saying the complaint is incorrect). And then if no lawsuit is filed by the complainant in a certain number of days, the content owner can put the content back online. For the record, I'm no fan of the DMCA because it's rampant with abuse and trivial to forge notices. It is too easy to silence speech with the DMCA, at least temporarily, and the repercussions for sending false DMCA notices are a joke. Plus, anyone can send a DMCA, even foreign entities, which makes going after the complainant for damages for false reports not even worth the trouble.