Board Thread:Wikia Discussion/@comment-22224-20190129194843/@comment-31911856-20190131022955

The Safe Harbors are not legally required to disclose their own findings, or even research the validity of a notice, although in many cases it is publicly and commercially beneficial for them to do so.

They are required to disclose certain things though. One of the conditions for qualifying as a Safe Harbor under 17 U.S.C § 512(i) is that the service provider must give explicit notice to its users of its policies regarding copyright infringement and the consequences of repeated infringing activity. Court precedent has stated that it must be "reasonably implemented" so that subscribers and account holders are informed of the terms, although they have not clearly defined what "reasonably implemented" means.

You can file a DMCA notice or counter-notice and have sufficient legal standing if you can prove that you honestly believe the material is infringing (in the former case) or that the material is non-infringing (in the latter case). Again, this is based on current court precedent, and it is the courts that decide the interpretation of the law.

The law also provides legal recourse to victims of fraudulent notices, should those users seek to claim damages from the sender of said fraudulent notices. In that situation, the Safe Harbor would be required to disclose the contact information included in the fraudulent notice to those users to satisfy the conditions in 17 U.S.C § 512(f).

I got to have a nice chat with my former entertainment law professor about this.