I think it's just lame that a site like this could be accused of copyright infringement, unless it's a text-only post or a comment. Linking to copyrighted material should not be illegal - the DMCA takedown notice should have to be directed at the linked site, not the linking site. It's not YC's job (or Google's job) to fight copyright infringement by policing their indexes.
But more importantly, it shouldn't be the job of small organizations with few resources to have to create a DMCA policy like this, much less enforce it.
Anyone could copy-paste a news article verbatim. That's a copyright violation, and without a DMCA policy like this Y Combinator is by default liable for the infringement.
The DMCA policy and registered agent gives a content creator a method to notify Y Combinator of the violation so YC can take it down. How else would they know who to contact or how to protect their rights?
If a site has a proper policy and agent (and abides by the policy) it gets safe harbor - it's not liable for the infringement. It's not an unreasonable amount of effort, and the scheme is a pretty decent compromise between protecting copyright holders rights and allowing user generated content.
TPB is legal. And they don't even link to copyrighted material, they link to a swarm from which you can git information on where to download copyrighted material.
Absolutely agree that it's entirely reasonable to comply with the requirements of 512(c) to get the safe harbor, but to pick a couple of nits:
1. Copying a news article is likely to be infringing, but it might not be; it's always worth considering whether it's a fair use, especially for very factual material.
2. More importantly, it's not that HN would be liable "by default". Without the safe harbor, they would be open to claims of secondary liability, but the copyright holder would still have to prove the elements of contributory, vicarious, or "inducement" infringement.
Again, still worth it to be able to avoid lawsuits or at least dispose of them at an early stage, but the risk isn't automatic, full liability for the hosting site.
The reason for setting up a DMCA takedown policy is precisely so that the site doesn't have to deal with copyright infringement: by doing a fairly minimal task of responding to takedown notices, the site operator gets freedom from liability for pretty much any related copyright infringement lawsuit (which otherwise could cost a lot of time and money).
It's pretty easy to set yourself up with such a policy, and anyone running a site that includes user-provided content should have one. EFF used to run a startup boot camp that went through all the steps of how to do it, and if they still offer it I would recommend it.
I see full-copies of the content of sites that have gone down under load all the time on here. I can imagine a situation in which someone might take exception to that.
(I agree, it's dumb, but you can see how it might happen; especially for a site where someone has been smashed for being stupid, taken a post down, but a copy of it remains in the comments...)
This is why bad laws like DMCA need to be fought before they get passed, because it could take decades before they are tested in court for stuff like this, whether linking falls under DMCA or not.
But more importantly, it shouldn't be the job of small organizations with few resources to have to create a DMCA policy like this, much less enforce it.