The effect to which you are subject to American law is very strongly determined by the extent to which you are in America, or are an American.
The big sites get away with flouting US law be neither being Americans nor in America, so American law does not apply, and they can thumb their noses at US lawyers *cough* pirate bay *cough*
The added complication is that America has copyright treaties with most of the western world, so American law can and does reach out into most of the first world. So, to get away from the US lawyers you need to go to the third world, or to the few hold-outs in the west, who are mostly in Scandinavia.
If you have money, you can do this kind of thing (see wiki leaks as an example), but it's neither easy or cheap, so it's natural that most sites don't go that route.
What this means is that in general, there are three kinds of sites:
1) those that obey the law and last a long time
2) those who flout the law and are shut down fast
and
3) those who have enough money and resources to get around the law
By adhering to the law the owners of this site are helping to ensure that this site continues to exist, it really is as simple as that!
Just to give a little more detail on the DMCA itself, it defines people who run sites as service providers, and grants the immunity IF, and ONLY IF, they respond to DMCA take-down requests. So, if you run a service and respond to DMCA notices you cannot be sued, only the people doing the actual posting can, but if you ignore DMCA notices then the owner AND the uploader can be sued. So, obeying the DMCA is how you CYA (cover your ass) as a service operator, or owner of a site like this. It's the same provision that gives immunity to your ISP for the shit you, and the rest of their customers, get up to.
Hope that makes sense poison824.
Finally - to those crying that the site owners here are not prepared to go to jail for their free porn, you have two choices:
1) go to other sites
2) run your own
I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the balls to run a site like this, which is why I'm most grateful that others do, and why I won't ever criticise the powers that be for obeying the law.
B.
