I'm thinking the parent comment's point is more that if I upload an original composition on YouTube and someone else issues a takedown request claiming to own the copyright it'd be really hard for me to dispute that if the person making the request had deep enough pockets. Not sure whether that is true though.

It's not true. All you have to do is to assert that you instead have copyright and that you indemnify the hosting party from any fall-out and your content will be right back up. They can still sue you after that but they could do that regardless. So the DMCA is actually pretty good when it comes to this aspect.

And in the case above you'd have to sue the party claiming to have copyright on your creation but that's optional.

Well, that's the way the law works, perhaps, but is that the way it is generally implemented? You occasionally hear about Kafka-esque takedown request disputes with big services like YouTube and I guess even if they're indemnified there's no obligation to put your stuff back up.

Yep. But that's YouTube's own content system, which is way harsher and tilted toward major labels: they commonly poach other people's stuff.

The GP's point as I read it was actually that if sending take-down requests was _made to be_ expensive, it would be less abused by RIAA types but also would become totally unavailable to the garage-band would-be enforcers.

Hmmmm. Optimal would be if it was made to be expensive when used in mass. If somebody sent a single lone take-down request for my work, in genuine mistake, I would not begrudge him at all, and would not seek to penalize them. To err is human.

But if somebody sent a take-down request for my work, and it happened because they had sent a million take-down requests to everything on the internet matching a string search, then I would begrudge them and seek to penalize them. They would have done so KNOWING that a huge percentage of them would be wrong, but deeming it acceptable since it's no cost to them.

A knowingly false DMCA claim can result in a perjury charge.

https://www.eff.org/press/archives/2004/10/15

I suppose sloppy work like the OP isn't "knowingly"

Which means it is easy for trolls to use and abuse. What we need is something easy for content creators but hard for trolls, but the very nature of digital work makes this a very difficult, if not impossible, task.

I think what yason was trying to say is that how it currently works isn't the best option, but neither are obvious alternatives, such as making it a financial investment to send takedown notices.

"If DMCA claims were expensive... the garage bands and individual artists/musicians would be left out of the game completely, they couldn't use DMCA to take down their music."