While the DMCA has been abused by large corporations, it has been invaluable in helping protect the little guy. It's been a huge boon to independent content cr

While the DMCA has been abused by large corporations, it has been invaluable in helping protect the little guy. It's been a huge boon to independent content creators that you can just send somebody a DMCA takedown notice and they'll comply. Before the DMCA, you had to pay out the nose for a lawyer, and you'd be in for a long and very, very expensive legal process. Your average photographer can't afford that, so copyright enforcement was solely a privilege of the rich prior to the DMCA. Here's an example. I know someone who shared pictures of herself in a private women-only group. Someone who ran a really disgusting cyberbullying page on Facebook had a mole in the group and posted the pictures publicly while making fun of her appearance and calling her slurs. Since the photographer was a friend of hers, the photographer simply sent Facebook a bunch of DMCA notices telling the cyberbullying page to take down the pictures. Facebook complied in under an hour. The cyberbullying page tried to post the pictures again; more DMCA notices were sent, and the whole page was unpublished.