I see no mention anywhere in the DMCA of "reasonable limits" to the number of infringement notices a provider needs to deal with, only the statutory language demanding that providers act expeditiously to react to those notices. Why was there a "quota" at all?
The article doesn't mention limits to DMCA requests - presumably, WB or anyone else could have sent as many requests as they wanted, all of which would be complied with. It's direct takedowns which were limited.
The article suggests that Megaupload gave content owners such as Warner Bros. a mechanism for directly removing infringing links (and again, without being required to handle it in that fashion--this being a massive convenience for both parties).
It would only seem natural that you'd want a way reigning in perhaps abusive usage of a delete/rm command.
On or about September 8, the [Warner] representative sent a follow-up request, and on or about September 9, the representative sent another follow-up request. On or about September 10, ORTMANN sent an e-mail to DOTCOM, stating, “They are currently removing 2500 files per day - a cursory check indicates that it’s legit takedowns of content that they own appearing in public forums.” ORTMANN also stated, “We should comply with their request - we can afford to be cooperative at current growth levels.” DOTCOM responded that the limit should be increased to 5,000 per day, but “not unlimited.”
"We should comply with their request - we can afford to be cooperative at current growth levels." Heh.
No specific feature is required by law. What's required by law is that providers
(C) upon notification of claimed infringement as described in paragraph (3), responds expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity.
There isn't any place in the DMCA that suggests any limit to the number of notices that can be provided. On a tactical level it seems like having limits was a mistake: they should have just queued them let the bottleneck express itself as a backlog and a delay.
On a strategic level, it doesn't matter. The argument that MegaUpload wasn't aware of its status as a piracy hub is totally implausible. It thus flunks 2 of the 3 conditions for establishing immunity under the DMCA.
There isn't any place in the DMCA that suggests any limit to the number of notices that can be provided.
There is no limit on notices. The limit is only on the direct-deletion of links, without review or notice, by parties like Time Warner. In other words, in addition to handling notices, Megaupload gave "Delete" buttons to certain parties that allowed them to directly control which links were available, but that button was limited in use.
