Since you said, "Correct me if I should be wrong"... the burden of proof is on the person who uploaded the content to prove they have the right. The only burden on the UGC company is to take down content that is in dispute.
But to also correct you on your implied sob story for UGC companies...
Some person you don't know comes to you and says, "I wrote this e-book, or I wrote and recorded this song, or I made this movie," and they upload it to your site. You take them at face value without any due diligence, even though in some cases the file is called "Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin". Laws require you to have a license to play copyrighted works, but thanks to the DMCA they now say you can proceed as if you have that license, even if the person who gave it to you is not who they say they are. Thanks to this clusterfuck, you are protected as long as you take it down upon complaint. You must do no work to research whether you're dealing with the true copyright owner, no "due process", if you will.
Now, someone comes along and says, "Hey, that content is mine. Please take it down."
And you're upset that you have to take down this content and make the person who uploaded it verify ownership. You're upset about the work involved, even though your entire business is built on the backs of not verifying claims, and the entire creative world is left to police your site and every one like it. After you've had the content up on your site and, in many cases, profited from it being there, you're upset that now your user has to do some work when someone complains.
Let's take the number of real copyright abuses and hold it up to the highly dramatized number of false claims and see who deals with the larger clusterfuck.
But to also correct you on your implied sob story for UGC companies...
Some person you don't know comes to you and says, "I wrote this e-book, or I wrote and recorded this song, or I made this movie," and they upload it to your site. You take them at face value without any due diligence, even though in some cases the file is called "Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin". Laws require you to have a license to play copyrighted works, but thanks to the DMCA they now say you can proceed as if you have that license, even if the person who gave it to you is not who they say they are. Thanks to this clusterfuck, you are protected as long as you take it down upon complaint. You must do no work to research whether you're dealing with the true copyright owner, no "due process", if you will.
Now, someone comes along and says, "Hey, that content is mine. Please take it down."
And you're upset that you have to take down this content and make the person who uploaded it verify ownership. You're upset about the work involved, even though your entire business is built on the backs of not verifying claims, and the entire creative world is left to police your site and every one like it. After you've had the content up on your site and, in many cases, profited from it being there, you're upset that now your user has to do some work when someone complains.
Let's take the number of real copyright abuses and hold it up to the highly dramatized number of false claims and see who deals with the larger clusterfuck.